Spike (Spyro)

Spike is one of the Sorceress' minions and a villain in Spyro: Year of the Dragon.

He was a Rhynoc minion of the Sorceress who was transformed into a muscular horned creature with a metal hammer which is also a laser gun-like weapon, in order to fight Spyro.

History
At her castle in the Midnight Mountain kingdom within the Forgotten Worlds, after the Sorceress was through with her novice apprentice Bianca's failure at stopping Spyro, she then used her magic to turn Spike, her mere Rhynoc subject into a muscle-bound monster to eliminate the dragon.

The fight with Spike takes place in a creepy arena in a lake of green lava outside the Midday Gardens. To attack Spike at the start, charge into the giant magma balls that Sgt. James Byrd drops, making sure to aim them at Spike, be careful, though, the interval between Spike's initial and next volley of shots is rather short, giving Spyro only a small window of opportunity to deal damage against him, furthermore, he will occasionally destroy the magma balls.

After a while, Byrd will start to drop red crystals - Walk over to eat them, and Spyro can use a powered-up flame. Spike is able to grab red orbs with his blaster, if he does, he will shoot out a flaming wall towards you, but this is easy to avoid, just carefully jump over it.

After more damage, Sgt. Byrd will then drop blue crystals - After taking these, Spyro will shoot them out from his mouth which swirl around in the direction it is launched. Spike can gain this ammunition as well, and can create a double helix shot that will follow you, the best way to avoid this is by charging away from it. After the battle, Spike was fallen and defeated.

Trivia

 * Spike is the only boss in Year of the Dragon to not be killed by falling into the lava surrounding the arena. When he is defeated, he spins around a few times and falls onto the ground, defeated. The rest of the bosses in the game were all submerged in lava after being defeated.
 * Spike and the Sorceress are the only 'end of world' bosses to hold weapons. By coincidence, they also share the same music during their fights in some copies of the game (except for the Greatest Hits version).
 * Spike is considered by many to be the hardest boss in the game.
 * His appearance and battle method is similar to Ripto (Spike can use the powerup items against Spyro).
 * His flame wall attack is similar to a Blarg attack in Ratchet and Clank.