Agent 9 is a character from the Spyro The Dragon game series, a space monkey that first appeared in Spyro: Year of the Dragon for the original Playstation. Sometimes in 2003 / 2004, Vivendi Universal wanted to use Agent 9 to be the protagonist of his own platform adventure game, out from the Spyro world.
Vivendi asked to Blue Tongue Entertainment to create the initial concept for this new project, in which Agent 9 became a James-Bond-alike spy, but after a series of focus group with kids, they had to redesign the character to make him more “cool” to appeal more to the right audience. Agent 9 became Prime 8, with a more “hip” look and a gameplay that should have been similar to the Ratchet & Clank series. Sadly, even after this redesign, something went wrong during the development and Prime 8 was never released.
The Blue Tongue project was not the only Agent 9 in development: another pitch was asked to Backbone Entertainment. Backbone created a series of concept designs more true to the original character (as seen in Spyro the Dragon). In the end there were at least 2 different “Agent 9” projects, but we can speculate that Vivendi Universal did not like any of them and these games were never finished.
Clarity Jones from Backbone Entertainment wrote:
Prime 8, which was a game we were developing as a spinoff of Spyro The Dragon, actually eventually became Death JR for the PSP. When Prime 8 was cancelled, we still kept messing around with the engine and eventually Death Jr was conceived.
Thanks a lot to Peter Overstreet for donating his artworks, created for “Agent9 Backbone”!
Images (Agent 9):
Images (Prime 8):
Images (Agent 9 Backbone Version):
Video (Agent 9):