The original PlayStation version of Spyro: Year of the Dragon contains a well-known anti-piracy system in response to how effectively the preceding titles had been cracked upon their retail releases. If any of the game's executable code is modified to remove encrypted cracking detection/protection, a handful of anti-crack measures will start quietly affecting gameplay. One of these measures is a unique, dedicated message from the fairy Zoe while in Sunrise Spring, informing the player rather bluntly of the illegitimate copy being played, and to expect occurrences in gameplay which wouldn't occur otherwise.

For the Spyro Reignited Trilogy version of the game, Toys for Bob re-recorded Zoe's original statement verbatim and it can be found in the game's files, but there is no known method to trigger this voice clip during gameplay.

The four paintings in Spyro: Year of the Dragon's Midday Gardens are signed with the signature "Parvinder". This was the name of the deceased mother of Redditor TheChronoShadow, who was a Spyro fan, and was added in response to a campaign from Shadow asking for Activision to provide an early copy of the game to play with his mother before she passed away.

In order to faithfully recreate the levels from the original games, the team developed a tool called the “Spyroscope” that converts game details into an easily understandable and usable format.