Spyro - ''Metalhead'' the Beast Slayer

Part 5 of 5 of my little side project of Spyro the Dragon (Spyro 1) boss revamps.

At last, I am finished! Look at them all!


Metalhead design wise and level wise was probably one of the few bosses in this game that I think was actually decently planned. There's a really good build-up to the boss battle (the gnorcs are turning the swamp into an electric wasteland and it accumulates to you fighting an actual robot after fighting just gnorcs armed with machines or guns) and the boss battle stage isn't just a bunch of random platforming with a boss at the end; the boss is the actual focus. Plus I really like the temple locale with the waterfalls of toxic sludge.

My revamp for this is probably one of the more dramatic changes to the design, but that's because there's one other Spyro game that has robot gnorcs in it, so I did a little story arc welding and now Metalhead's the prototype to something much grander...

In other words, yes, while his design does reference Metalhead from Spyro 1, I also made him look like the Mecha Gnorcs from Spyro: A Hero's Tail. He was the first and now those robots don't come completely out of nowhere.

The Origins of Metalhead

Once Gnasty Gnorc's second-in-command (and not much is known about "Gnester" save for the fact that he wore a ridiculous mohawk and agreed with everything "da boss" said) he was considered the perfect test subject for a robot conversion ray a Dragon Elder (who kept his name hidden even from Gnasty; he was still attached to the Dragon Council then) had created. The gnorcs are powerful but also stupid, mindless creatures prone to "emotion" and "poor judgement". Why, if you replaced all those things with computers and gears, you'd have an efficient army!

Or so it seemed. The resulting monster, while good for fighting dragons, also needs an obscene amount of power to remain running (this was thankfully solved with the discovery of Light and Dark Gems), to the point that destroying his power supply is considered an effective way of "bricking" him. The swamp the Beast Makers was then converted into an electric wasteland in hopes that more would be created for further testing, but these plans were thankfully foiled by a little purple dragon. 

The other major flaw in the design? Too much free will. Way too much free will. His personality stuck around and he's still an egotistical but friendly gnorc that just happens to also be a robot.
Attempting to program the robot to do something he's not willing to do either resulted into disobedience or, if the programming stuck, a bunch of psychic screaming from his soul as his sentience fought to gain control from his now metallic self.

Gnasty's mysterious ally made a note to rectify this little mistake in the future. The last thing we need is robots with free will...

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While drawing this, my friend linked me a song from the Donkey Kong cartoon that basically sums up my version of Metalhead: www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6-H2V…

I would say this design is about 50% the Mecha-Gnorcs from AHT (which I will admit, had cooler designs than the Spyro 1 brick that was Metalhead), 30% Metalhead, and 20% just making stuff up as I go along.

I like to think my version of Metalhead sounds like XL from the Buzz Lightyear series and that when he's chilling with the other four bosses, Blowhard's nice enough to create him his own thundercloud so he doesn't brick on them.

This originally had a background with the little electric things powering him up, but it wasn't going the way I planned so I scrapped it. Scrapped it like a hunk of metal.

...and yes I might be drawing Gnasty next.