Lateef: The screen went black for a moment and then came back, showing a cutscene, they had no voice, just showed the character, but no sound came out, only appeared phrases written as subtitles.
Tomas: I will translate here what I understood from the dialogue.
Spyro dialogue on
Marco: What are you doing here, Spyro?
Spyro: I'm back! I came to save the dragons...
Marco: It's late, Spyro... You should not have come back, I should have stayed there... The eggs, Spyro... Did not you see them?
Spyro: Eggs... What eggs?
Marco: On the way here, Spyro. Do not you remember what you did? Why did you come back? After all these years, you should have disappeared forever...
Spyro dialogue off
Cleetus: The screen went black again and again the Spyro appeared as if it were changing portal, but this time he was the Spyro puppy still and was flying in an awkward way.
Hunter: The message above informed me that I was going to confront Gnasty Gnorc, boss of the first game.
Tomas: It was for him to be dead, why was he on a level III bonus?
Bubba: I even wanted to hang up, I was starting to get scared, but curiosity overcame me and I decided to see what was going to happen.
Bartholomew: The Spyro puppy was transported to the Gnasty Gnorc's boss portal, but there was no sign of it, the doors were open and I did not need to chase after thieves to pick up the keys.
Damon: So I went ahead, in that tortuous rhythm, it took even longer when I had to skip something, since the Spyro always stumbled awkwardly.
Sgt. Byrd: I followed him to the area where you were supposed to set fire to Gnasty Gnorc, but there he sat on a throne, and there were several eggs around him.
Lindar: As I approached, a picture appeared below as it happens when a character comes to you in the third game, and his voice began to come out, low and hoarse, accompanying the text that was something like:
Cleetus: "Ah... So you came in. What are you doing here?" When everyone asked you for help, you simply ran away, you could not grow up like a real dragon and now you're such a deplorable creature.
Spyro: "All your friends are dead! The statues have been destroyed, see for yourself." Alone, without me controlling, Spyro approached the edge of the area and saw a river, several pieces of water-green glass floated, the same color as the statues of the dragons that you were to save.
Cleetus: Still alone, Spyro returned to the front of Gnasty Gnorc and he kept talking.
Lindar: "You are a shadow of your past, if even the great dragons did not succeed in defeating me, why would a malformed being like you do it? You ought to end up with all those eggs, to save them from the life of misery they are destined for.
Bartholomew: "Those, Spyro, free them from suffering."
Hunter: I was already horrified, glaring at the screen as Spyro started to run as if the quick power up had been activated somehow, and then he began to run over the eggs, crushing them.
Sparx: I tried to control it, but it was difficult and more and more eggs were broken, the fetuses falling into puddles of blood.
Damon: I tried to throw myself in the river, die, stop it, but there was a barrier that deflected Spyro, and he always came back to destroy more.
Hunter: I watched all this terrified and only when the last egg was crushed, and the ground, and Spyro himself were covered with the fetuses of the little dragons and blood, Spyro threw himself on the ground at the feet of Gnasty Gnorc and stood there, did not he moved, his eyes gray as if he were in shock. The camera went up to Gnasty Gnorc who laughed pleasantly as he stared at the Spyro cub at his feet.
Lindar: Suddenly he looked at the screen, as if looking at myself, another dialog box opened and the text was following his voice as he spoke.
Damon: "And you, why do you live? You should spare yourself from all this suffering."
Cleetus: The screen darkened again, and this time I ran to turn off the console, I did not even care to push the button, I went straight into the power outlet, I was too scared to worry that anything would burn.
Tomas: I took the CD from the console and put it in the box, playing in a drawer that I did not use much.
Agent 9: I did not know what to do, I had not expected that, I just wanted to quench my nostalgia by playing one of my favorite childhood games, and all that drug happens!
Astor: It's been a while since this happened, and I've never figured it out.
Bartholomew: Maybe something the creators have done to scare the pirate game buyer?
Hunter: Well, being that or not, since that day, I've never stopped asking myself...
Sheila: Should not I be spared from all this suffering?
Lindar: And also...
Agent 9: Should not I spare others?
Bartholomew: This is last creepypasta is, The Forgotten Ones.
Billy: Does anyone else remember playing the old Spyro games all those years ago?
Hunter: Of course you do—every self-respecting kid born in the late 90's or early 2000's had a copy of Spyro the Dragon.
Sgt. Byrd: I never got an N64 or Gamecube until I was much older, so half my young life was spent glued to that thing.
Hunter: Even fifteen years and many crappy games later I still love that little purple dragon.
Agent 9: My mom soon got rid of our Playstation after it broke, and eventually got an Xbox for me instead.
Tomas: I only had the chance to play the Playstation whenever I went to my dad's in the summer, as my parents are divorced.
Spyro: Eventually the discs got so dinged up from years of overuse that they became unplayable.
Agent 9: I was sad but shrugged and moved on, and a few years later my dad sent me the Playstation and all my games, since he had finally bought a Playstation 3.
Cleetus: Year of the Dragon was the only Spyro game that still worked in my tiny collection, but the old console stopped working just as I was about to beat the game.
Sgt. Byrd: Disheartened, I put it all in the closet, where it spent many years collecting dust.
Damon: Four years later, I was sixteen and decidedly bored out of my mind.
Hunter: School had just ended, leaving me with little to do except laze around the house all day.
Tomas: My days were all a cycle of playing the same things over and over again, until I was completely sick of all the video games I owned, and was left with little else to do.
Spyro: I thought I was going to go nuts.
Cleetus: Just as I was on the brink of insanity, I came across a few videos of the old Spyro games while I was browsing everyone's favourite video site.
Sgt. Byrd: I fondly recalled my days spent playing hours upon hours of the games, and was suddenly hit with a wave of nostalgia.
Cleetus: Remembering the Playstation, I dug it and my games out of the closet and hooked it up to the TV.
Hunter: Spyro 1 and 2 were probably broken beyond repair, but since Year of the Dragon was the last to go, I figured that it might be saved.
Lateef: Grabbing some toothpaste and a cloth, I set to work reversing the scratches that I had inflicted upon the disc. A half hour later, it was looking much better, and I popped it into the dusty grey box.
Billy: After a few suspenseful seconds as the Playstation logo faded to black, the words "Sony Computer Entertainment Presents" popped up on the screen.
Cleetus: I grinned.
Bubba: Success!
Tomas: The short opening cinematic played, and the catchy, upbeat music typical of a Spyro game played in the background as I opened up the file selection screen. My original game was still there, Spyro's head as the file logo smirking at me with a taunting "92%" plastered in gilded letters below it.
Sparx: Being a perfectionist I was tempted to just finish the old game, but I decided to start a new one instead, figuring I could just rush through and beat the game a second time if it bothered me. After choosing the Sparx logo for my new file, the game started up, playing the beginning cutscenes where it laid out the story: The Sorceress and her mage-in-training Bianca have kidnapped all the baby dragon eggs, oh no!
Spyro: Now it's up to Spyro to get them back.
Cleetus: And steal all the Forgotten Worlders' gems of course.
Sheila: The game began normally, with only a few hiccups as I ran around picking up gems as per usual.
Agent 9: I was just happy that the game was working and didn't mind the lag so much.
Hunter: Spyro ran over to the first egg in the game, and having played the game over so much I remembered the baby dragon's name was Isabelle.
Cleetus: A cute animation played, the beige hatchling flying into the air before flopping back down.
Tomas: But instead of the name showing at the bottom, it was just a messy jumble of symbols and letters, running off the darker patch where the name was supposed to be displayed.
Bartholomew: It was as if the game had been corrupted. Raising one eyebrow in confusion, I pulled my laptop over and did a quick Google search.
Bubba: I loved glitches, and often would intentionally break my games in order to see the hilarious results.
Tomas: But I'd never seen this happen before, and no one had ever mentioned it happening to them online.
Bartholomew: Well, I did just repair my broken disc with toothpaste.
Lindar: The game was probably going to freeze and glitch out every once in a while, and I just had to deal with it until it broke again and I could get a new copy of the game.
Lateef: Continuing to pick up gems, I made my way to Hunter and did his short jumping tutorial to get an egg.
Damon: Again the same thing happened: Same baby dragon, same animation, but with a corrupted name.
Sparx: I didn't own a capture card, so I instead found my mom's camera, as I wanted to show my friends the weird glitch later. Once I found another egg, the same thing happened yet again, so I snapped the picture and continued on with my game.
Spyro: Things were normal for a while after that; I headed to Sheila's Alp after paying the greedy bear we all love to hate.
Cleetus: I switched to Sheila the Kangaroo and played through until I got to the first goat I had to rescue. When he gave me his dragon egg, it said "You already have this egg" as the animation played. Confused, I opened up the Atlas and went through the pages, and to my surprise I saw that I already had some of the eggs and gems from the other homeworlds.
Billy: I sat back, confused.
Spyro: This made no sense to me at all.
Tomas: I knew there were some hacks that could give you eggs and gems from worlds even if you haven't played them yet, but I didn't own a Gameshark and there were no official cheats to do this.
Cleetus: Besides that, I hadn't activated any cheats.
Sgt. Byrd: Despite them being greyed out as they should be, I was able to go to their pages in the Atlas, so I clicked on Midnight Mountain.
Tomas: I noticed right away that Desert Ruins and Haunted Tombs, the levels I hadn't played on my other file, were the only ones that didn't have any gems or eggs.
Hunter: As a kid I had been too terrified of the enemies to even go in them, and didn't want to confront the Sorceress without finishing all the stages, which is why I had never beat the game.
Sparx: I concluded that somehow the game must not have been able to fully recognize which save file was which and became confused.
Billy: This explained the corruption at least.
Hunter: With my curiosity sated, I happily finished the rest of the levels in Sunrise Spring over the next hour.
Agent 9: Besides the dragon's names corrupting and the occasional lag, the game didn't do anything strange.
Tomas: Finally having one-hundred-percented the first realm, I headed to the balloon the leaders of each portal's world had built for me. Despite the fact that they only said something along the lines of "Hop on the balloon", I still liked to talk to all of them before I went. That was when I became convinced that this wasn't just a glitch.
Cleetus: I spoke to Sheila first, since she was closest to me.
Hunter: I couldn't remember what she usually said, but this time she definitely didn't deliver her usual line.
Tomas: "Spyro? Is that you?" she asked, and that was all she said.
Sparx: I tried talking to her again but she just asked the same thing. Strangely it was all voice acted by the original actor, but I knew she wasn't supposed to say that.
Bartholomew: I'd even used the sound test cheat once, and there wasn't a line like this anywhere in there.
Billy: It was the same for all of them, saying, "Spyro?" another, "How could you?" and one simply, "Why?"
Hunter: But then I came to Snappy the Seal, and a shiver ran down my spine as he spoke.
Cleetus: "It can't be. Spyro is dead."
Spyro fainting
Sgt. Byrd: This couldn't just be a glitch; it all had voice acting!
Bentley: I tried to think back and see if they had ever said this before, and that the dialogue had just been switched somehow, but I couldn't remember them saying this anywhere else.
Bartholomew: Especially for the seal's dialogue...
Cleetus: Why would they think that at any point in the game?
Agent 9: I was totally baffled, but even after running another search, I couldn't pull anything up.
Billy: Was this some sort of morbid secret the developers had put in, something that no one was supposed to discover?
Spyro: [Dreaming] I suddenly felt thrilled.
Agent 9: In a game almost as old as I was, I had found something that no one else had found before!
Lindar: Dark as it was, I was curious to see if all the characters said something different, and excitedly hopped onto the balloon.
Cleetus: I just had to get through the boss first.
Sparx: Another cutscene played, this time showing the creation of the first boss, Buzz, then throwing me into the small arena surrounded by lava.
Lateef: When I finished talking to Sheila, who helps you defeat Buzz, I nearly dropped my controller.
Lindar: Usually the round green monster only stood a little taller than Spyro, but now he was just gargantuan.
Bubba: Besides this, Spyro was completely glitching out, flickering between the black skin you can access through cheats and his normal purple colour.
Hunter: I stared in consternation at the screen for a few moments, wondering if this was a part of the Easter Egg or a cause of my shoddy repair work.
Agent 9: Tentatively I picked up the controller and began running around the arena.
Lindar: Buzz was no faster luckily, but his large size made it easier to catch up to me, and a few minutes later I had no life left and Buzz was still at full health.
Bentley: Occasionally a few sheep would get thrown my way, the butterflies inside eaten by your dragonfly companion Sparx and used to replenish your three hit points.
Hunter: It wasn't enough though, and after a few rounds I had zero lives and one chance.
Bubba: Of course I could just restart the battle with three lives again, but I was determined to beat this on my first try.
Lateef: My pride was quite wounded, considering that this was usually a laughably easy boss.
To be continued