Ripto

"A dragon?! You brought a dragon to Avalar?! I HATE DRAGONS! NAAAARRGGGHHH!"

- Ripto getting angry when he sees Spyro the Dragon. "Say hello to your new King!"

- King Ripto aka Ripto.

Ripto is a nasty, evil wizard, and a small, ill-tempered dinosaur. He is one of Spyro's evil archenemies. He appears in many Spyro games including the second game (Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage) where Ripto originally made his first debut as the game's main antagonist alongside his two huge and dim-witted dinosaur-like minions Crush and Gulp. Ripto also leads an army of small horned dinosaur-like creatures called Riptocs, the same species he also came from.

Origin
Ripto is a small, orange dinosaur-like creature called a Riptoc with some higher intelligience and a hot temper who wears a regal long black/or dark purple suit with a cape, casual black shoes, and a long ruby medallion around his neck. And he is also a skilled, yet troublesome wizard who uses his own trusted gold sceptre with a ruby crystal wedged in it, to unleash his magic and wreak havoc upon other creatures bigger or smaller than him. He is always followed by his two dim-witted, ferocious sidekicks: a big ogre named Crush with tiny wings and a horned club, and a huge dinosaur steed named Gulp. Normally Ripto is the brain while his two loyal servants act as both muscle and mount.

From the beginning, Ripto, a small dinosaur, has hated dragons. The reason for this is never discovered, but Spyro is shown to deepen his hatred. Being small in stature, he hopes to make up for it by doing great evil things.

Goals and Ambitions
Ripto desires to take over worlds and enslave the inhabitants.

In Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage, he tried to succeed that fiendish plot when he and his two monsters Gulp and Crush first entered the mystical alien world of Avalar and even tried make himself king of that world.

Fortunately the few people of Avalar, Elora, Hunter, the Professor, Moneybags, and Zoe sought out a dragon in need of help rescuing their world from Ripto. And so, they found Spyro and transported him to their world.

Spyro then helped them in freeing all of Avalar by beating Ripto and his monsters.

Spyro then defeated Ripto in his own majestic arena at the grand castle of Winter Tundra, one of Avalar's three great kingdoms which he was going to rename "Riptonia" as his own domain once he succeeds in his wicked plan.

Ripto also desires to make life difficult for dragons everywhere, especially Spyro.

In Enter the Dragonfly, Ripto scattered the guardian dragonflies, separating them from their dragons. Luckily, he failed, courtesy of Spyro and his friends who stopped his plans.

In Spyro 2: Season of Flame, Ripto returns and leads an army of Rhynocs to attacked the Dragon Realms once again and have stolen the 100 fireflies. Without firefly magic, the Dragons cannot breathe fire, replacing the fire for ice, thus making the realm colder. After retrieving all 100 fireflies around the Sunny Plains, Celestial Plains and Starry Plains (learning there how to breathe lightning) and other worlds with the help of Hunter and Bianca, helping Agent 9, Sheila and Moneybags and defeating Crush and Gulp, Spyro and Sparx finally arrive at Ripto's secret volcano lair, defeating him and returning fire breath to all the dragons.

In Spyro: Attack of the Rhynocs, Ripto causes more trouble, by leading an army of Rhynocs again to attack Spyro and his friends while seeking the special magic items called "Hearts" for the Professor's projector-like peephole machine he has stolen in his quest to change the fabric of time and space and to rule the universe. Spyro won the battle against the evil wizard at his Chateau and thwarted his schemes.

In Spyro Orange: The Cortex Conspiracy, Ripto formed an partnership with fellow madman Dr. Neo Cortex to destroy their enemies Spyro and Crash Bandicoot for good. They start by genetically modifying Ripto's "Riptoc" minions and disguising them as Crash and Spyro, leading the 2 heroes to believe they are against each other. Instead of fighting one another like Ripto and Dr. Neo Cortex had wanted, Spyro and Crash began working together to defeat their arch-nemeses and free the world once again.

Powers and Abilities
Ripto is a powerful sorcerer who uses his own sceptre to cast magic in battle as well as to cause trouble. Using the magic power of his gold scepter with a red crystal on top of it, he can shoot fireballs, create electric waves on the ground and shoot out energy blasts like a machine gun in his mischievous delight. He also can create a barrier of crystal balls made entirely out of magic in order to protect himself. Ripto can create and unleash a mechanized version of Gulp to ride, as well as make a mechanical bird-like pterodactyl to get away.

And last but not least, Ripto can transform himself into an ugly, giant version of himself with his magic scepter also turned into a club-like object with a power crystal on it.

Also, his Sceptre creates portals as a means of transportation as well as evasion as he did demonstrated this with teleporting him and his 2 monster minions Crush and Gulp to the throne room of his beloved Chateau.

Also, Ripto can use his Sceptre's magic to conjure not only giant mystical flat gems he rides on (with 3 statue heads bearing Ripto's likeness acting as conduits of the gems' sorcerous energy) at his Chateau in Spyro: Attack of the Rhynocs, but also a deck of 3 magic playing cards with 3 hearts on each of them (with the 3 Powerup Gates connected to the cards' magic) at his secret volcano lair in Spyro 2: Season of Flame. But both the gems and the cards in the 2 videogames have one shared weakness that puts the mad but weakling spellcaster in jeopardy: They possess 3 basic colors on 3 respective elements (red/orange for fire, blue for ice, and green for electricity) which is necessary to destroy them and defeat Ripto.

Trivia

 * He was voiced by Gregg Berger.
 * The manual for Spyro 2: Gateway to Glimmer says that Ripto was picked on at school as a child. He became so used to not joining in with games that now he only wants to ruin everyone else's fun.
 * Ripto got his name because Spyro's Japanese Katakana name (スパイロ) appears to look like the word "Ripto".
 * He appeared in the epilogue of Spyro 3 with Gnasty Gnorc discussing the "Spyro Problem". A picture of him can be found, oddly enough, on the underside of Spyro's Skateboard.
 * Also in Spyro 3, a skateboard trick, the "Raging Ripto", is named after him. This is performed by doing either two front flips or two black flips and three side rolls, essentially a Gnasty Gnorc with a extra roll. It is the highest scoring trick in the game, giving 3000 points the first time it is performed.
 * As a dinosaur, Ripto apparently has a good sense of smell, as when he arrives in Avalar, he sniffs the air to conclude dragons were not there. And in Spyro's arrival in Glimmer, Ripto immediately smells Spyro's presence before actually noticing him.
 * Ripto is one of the main villians to make numerous recurring appearances in the classic Spyro games, despite his apparent defeat and death in Spyro: Ripto's Rage!.
 * Despite the implication that Gulp had swallowed Ripto's Scepter in Ripto's Rage prior to recreating it with the Power Crystal, during the boss fights against Crush and Gulp and the "Gulp Defeated" cutscene, Ripto is actually seen holding his scepter while falling down to his "demise".
 * Despite Ripto's apparent hate for dragons, one of his servants, Crush, is a Riptoc that somewhat resembles a dragon, only his wings are quite very tiny (barely noticable in Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!) and is given a club, and supposedly cannot breathe fire.
 * Emperor Percival Tachyon, the main antagonist in Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, is rumored to be based on Ripto: they are both evil dictators who hate the species that the protagonist is of (Ripto hating Dragons, Tachyon hating Lombaxes).
 * Tachyon also uses a scepter, but it is unclear if he is a wizard, like Ripto.
 * Additionally, they both have rather short stature.
 * Ripto bears a very strong resemblance to the evil sorcerer Lord Balthazar from the Smurfs series.
 * He is sometimes known as "The Wizard" as mentioned on an alternate back cover of the Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!" videogame case.