Spyro: Reignited Trilogy has cheat codes - so you can make a big-headed yellow 2D dragon

Is it the product of a horrible mistake at the Lego factory? No, this dragon is in fact a screenshot from Spyro: Reignited Trilogy, and the product of several rounds of experimentation conducted by me. But how on earth did this... wonder... happen?

In what may well be the ultimate throwback to '90s gaming, players have discovered that Spyro: Reignited Trilogy includes the cheat codes from the original Spyro titles in its remastered version of the game. Although not all the cheats are usable, you can play around with Spyro's colours and shapes to your heart's content. Oh - and one cheat will definitely help if you're bad at the game. A glimmer of hope for me, at least.

Using button combinations from the classic Spyro titles (which requires going all the way back to GameFAQs), it's possible to paint your dragon any shade you want - be it bright green, blue or even pink. If you happen to be Welsh, I recommend picking the red colour to feel patriotic.

After defeating plenty of Gnorcs, Spyro's ego gets pretty inflated - and you can literally give him a big head to match. The combination on this for PlayStation, once in the pause menu, is "Up, Up, Up, Up, R1, R1, R1, R1, Circle". You can then take him down a peg or two by flattening him into 2D style - which requires "left, right, left, right, L2, R2, L2, R2".

Yet the cheats aren't purely cosmetic, as the classic 99 lives code will certainly help you glide to victory. This can be triggered with "R2, L2, R2, L2, Up, Up, Up, Up, Circle".

For now, it seems like the only working codes are the ones without the inclusion of "Circle" earlier in the combination, as this is effectively a back button which takes you out of the pause screen. I've yet to experiment with the codes on an Xbox, but it's easy to assume they are the same (with the equivalent Xbox controls). The changes made in the codes also transfer across the games - meaning you can enter the code in Ripto's Rage, and it will also appear when you next boot up Year of the Dragon. Perhaps the best thing about the codes is that you can stack them to create combination abominations, such as my yellow flattened thing.

One thing I haven't quite discovered yet, however, is how to get rid of the codes once they're there. Guess I'm stuck with this yellow-bellied Spyro forever.