Around a year and a half ago, one of the game's developers sent me a VHS transfer of some animation and colour tests, showing Spyro the Dragon in some of its earliest stages. We estimate that the version of the game showed here dates to early 1997, well over a year before the game was finalised.
You might've heard Spyro was originally intended to be green, but prior to his colour scheme being finalised, they tested out a handful of other colours, too - one of the clips on this VHS shows those colour tests. Sadly, despite a couple green dragons being depicted here, his original colour scheme was apparently totally overwritten by the first clip on the VHS, showcasing some animation tests of a more final-looking version of the dragon. At this point, Spyro's model was nearly complete, but the whites of his eyes are notably vertex coloured, rather than textured. The final section of the video shows off an enemy that was made during testing but never used in the final game. Apparently it would have featured in a test level created early on in development.
I figure it'd be worth sharing here, since a lot of people here might not have seen this before! I've also linked a Hidden Palace page below where I recently did a longer write-up on this video and its background.
Hidden Palace: Link
Internet Archive: Link
