The real meaning behind Spyro's secret dev message

[Etem]

I just saw the Spyro video on the DYKG YouTube channel, and when the thing about the developer message saying 'I always get the Shemp' came up, and then Caddicarus said that it wasn't known what it meant, I just had to get on here and post the true story.

Basically, during the development of the first Spyro game, if something didn't go as planned, or if someone messed up, they 'got the Shemp'. Oliver Wade, animator and character designer of the the original 3 Spyro games confirmed this in an email to someone on Spyro Forums back in 2008 (about halfway down, halfway through the massive post, just CTRL+F 'Shemp'):
www.spyroforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=78918

The message was also hidden in the code of an extremely rare beta build of Spyro 1, owned by LXShadow, who showed the message in his playthrough of the beta (3:34 in the video, make sure you have annotations on):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru3Yqm8nO58&feature=player_detailpage&t=214

If anyone else has anything else that supports or disproves this, I'd love to hear it.

[gamemaster1991]

Good job. This is what we like to see (or at lest I do). VGFacts and DYKG try to find the facts about everything. Like the FAQ says "we don't know everything about every game" so there will be some spots that we will have to fill in. Having the programer/developer/whatever's word is actually the best that we do to back it up. Again, great job finding the info.

[DidYouKnowGaming]

Thanks for this. I've added it as an annotation in the video.

[Etem]

Thanks for this. I've added it as an annotation in the video.

Wow, didn't expect that, thanks! :D