I can thank the original Spyro the Dragon for showing my younger self what a video game can do. I’d played educational games on the PC, and Spyro wasn’t even my first PlayStation title, but it was the one that directly told me about breaking boundaries. Just to see what was on the other side. I hadn’t ever wondered what lay beyond the overworld before, I hadn’t realized I should be curious, that I should look for every advantage I may find. I just knew how to click on an object or how to jump.
Something Spyro also showed me was how, sometimes, a bad guy is just there to be an obstacle to overcome. I feel like I knew that even at the time, not that I could articulate this fact. Spyro The Dragon has some very minimalistic bosses who serve no purpose nor character other than being a guy Spyro beats up to get gems.
Youtuber Caddicarus went as far as to say they are some of the worst bosses in video game history. He was likely being hyperbolic for the sake of his style of video, but in my personal opinion, I have fought so many worse video game villains. I beat Immortals of Aveum if you want proof I’ve slugged through pointless bosses. I can’t help but agree with him for one character though, which would be the main villain of Spyro the Dragon; Gnasty Gnorc.
His introduction was the opener of this episode, and the reason I showcase a cutscene at the start of these blog posts is to try and condense the core reason I picked said villain in the first place. Maybe not their greatest moment, but certainly the moment it stuck with me how said character worked as a villain. Gnasty Gnorc’s intro isn’t an exception, but that’s only because, outside of the opening, there are zero cutscenes featuring him. And zero is also the number of cutscenes featuring any of the other bosses.
Gnasty comes in to state the reason Spyro has to run around and free the other dragons. That’s it. Literally it. He’s not deep and was never meant to be, he’s an object given a name. Heck, his backstory doesn’t technically exist, the dragons call him ugly, and “that tears is”, which means we’re only told there’s personal beef between Gnasty and the dragons but not even a shred of what the beef is. They do say in the interview that Gnasty learned a type of magic that turns gems into minions, so sure, that explains the beef; Gnasty steals the dragon’s gems and uses them to create an army of minions. The why is never answered, he could just be some punk-ass thief who thinks he’s bigger than that, and the dragons brushing him off could be evidence of the theory.
I’ve been snarky but haven’t explained why I agree with Caddicarrus for just Gnasty Gnorc. That’s because his fight sucks. It’s really bad, even as a kid I was surprised at how lackluster it is. He just stands up top shooting energy at you, then Spyro kills some bandits carrying keys, uses those keys to get to Gnasty’s level, then Gnasty runs away in this big loop until you attack him once, then runs through a chamber of lava where just one more hit kills him. On my first ever go around, I died quite a few times to misjudging the platforms at the end, but not to Gnasty himself. When I finally landed the last blow, kid me was surprised it was over. I had fully expected another phase.
Spyro bosses have three hit points, each and every one, until suddenly they don’t. That was a mind-screw as a kid, being smart enough to realize that if Doctor Shemp and Toasty needed three hits, I should expect Blowhard to also need three fire breaths. But then, Metalhead only had two cycles, followed by Jacques and then Gnasty as well. The bosses get weaker as you go along, such a strange concept when you say it out loud.
To be fair to the second half of the bosses, they reside in levels much harder to navigate. It’s the level Jacques resides that’s the real boss, with him just being the pushover you kill without thinking much about it. Yeah, just like Gnasty, he wasn’t a threat as a kid, but his stupid ass level gave me a headache! Still not a fan of it to this day.
So what are these bosses anyway? Well, Gnasty Gnorc is the leader of the Gnorcs, some invented fantasy creature for the Spyro universe that phonetically is a mishmash of Gnome and Orc. Toasty is a sheep on stilts wearing a brown coat and wielding a scythe with a jack-o-lantern for a head, which tells you just how hard some of the creature design goes in Spyro 1 (Toasty’s probably more iconic than Gnasty if I’m being real, maybe he should have been in Hero's Tale instead).
Back on track; Doctor Shemp is a large yellow/orange Gnorc wearing a metal apron and waving around a shaman stick. Not sure why he’s named after one of the stooges. Blowhard is a traditional long-bearded wizard but instead of a torso, he’s a tornado. Metalhead is a giant robot Gnorc and the only gimmick fight of the game; you have to destroy his little antennas instead of attacking him directly. You can even trick him into throwing minions into the antennas, it’s honestly my favorite boss, no competition. Jacques is just a jack-in-the-box come loose. Sure he’s got a creepy green face, sort of, but yeah weakest design and a low spot for the game overall.
There are no motives for these bosses, and heck, you don’t even have to fight them! Spyro The Dragon is a collectathon, and collectibles are required to go to further hub worlds, but it’s pretty easy to get the required amount of collectibles without stepping foot in every level from a world. A boss in Spyro 1 is nothing more than a special level, something where you step in and expect a challenge from a slightly harder foe than normal, and the level itself will even have other gems and dragons to collect that have nothing to do with the boss, even though all of the boss levels are named after the boss! The designs are too good to call them afterthoughts, work was clearly put into them and I find most of them to be fun enough for what they are, but to pretend these are traditional villains is a massive step.
And you know what? These kinds of bosses are rare in games now. Video games have evolved in the story department, heck even the following Spyro games had their stories directly explain the bosses and give them a greater purpose. I love well-written villains and games with great stories, but as I said earlier; Spyro the Dragon is the game that showed me what a video game can really be.
Spyro the Dragon is a fun-first type of game. A classic game that gives you a good enough excuse to run around and collect the collectibles. You have a bad guy you need to take down, and know just enough about him to understand why you should take him down. It doesn’t need a backstory for Toasty, or an epic cutscene where Metalhead breaks down the door and monologues about his desire for evil or revenge or what have you.
All Spyro the dragon needed was a Gnorc who doesn’t like being insulted, and 5 other bosses you can fight before him should you wish to. They’re simple, they’re no threat, and besides, they are ugly. But at the end of it, I love that I’ve fought them so many times. An obstacle with a face, never anything more, and I still cherish them to this day for wearing that concept like a badge of honor.
*Credit for featured image: All images used property of Sony Interactive, Universal, and Insomniac Games.