@D_Tavs.exe  

 
Only under certain circumstances. Plus breathing fire that strong must have took much out of him back then.  
Spike’s evolution certainly gave him higher mastery of his flames.

Now that is some SERIOUS wildfire!!

@Background Pony Number 17  
You’re correct, that was rendered non-canon with Gauntlet of fire.

@TheAmazingPeanuts  
I think most folks have decided that the “Fillydelphia dragons” have been non-canonical since Gauntlet of Fire.

@Daneasaur  
If you look at the upper panel of this official comic, the blue dragon and the dragon with the white shirt seems to don’t have wings either.
 

@Daneasaur  
No one ever said that the princesses had to take the magic-disabling spell. They’re too pure to rig a game.

@Daneasaur  
Well, at least he has T H I C C N E S S.

@100SGX  
No. Spike was initially Wingless and thus unique. The “teen” dragons were all winged with the exception of a single one.
 

@Ferrotter  
I’m kinda curious now, is there a dragon that is like Spike or younger?

Reality check time:
 
There are dragons.  
There are lots of dragons.  
There’s a whole civilization of dragons.  
Most of them we’ve seen are past puberty/moult.
 
Therefore, while the moult stench canonically attracts predators AND ejects most of them from the safety of their protective family, being killed by those predators doesn’t seem to be an overwhelmingly common outcome for them. Dragons seem to fend them off well enough to survive to adulthood in significant numbers.
 
This is often seen when birds of prey attack weasels. With the element of surprise, the hawk usually wins before the weasel knew anything was coming. But if the weasel is alerted or the hawk misjudges its aim, the weasel may dodge and get away. Or it may only get some flesh wounds in exchange for a very large poultry meal. Going after a predator that normally kills food ten times its size is a risky strategy that takes a great deal of skill on the bird’s part. Going after one that breathes fire isn’t any safer.

@D_Tavs.exe  
The problem is that it takes a poo not just on spike but all the cast in being totally incompetent. I mean, there is the joke that the crystal ponies are rather stupid, but this episode implies everyone in equestria is a total dunce.

@Daneasaur  
>S4 Episode  
>Saying is one of the worst  
holdonwaitaminute.avi
 
But now talking seriously:
 
I think the episode was regular, it had some moments and everything, nothing much of a deal. Also I loved when Spike started to “sing” the Wonderbolts Anthem. I didn’t know at that moment if cringe or die of laughter.

@Daneasaur  
Aw come on, it wasn’t that bad, i really liked it.

@100SGX  
It’s… it’s probably one of the worst episodes ever.
 
Spike is berated and humiliated every time he tries to do something on behalf of the crystal empire, which licks his proverbial feet all the time so he feels some sort of debt to them. He tries to light the torch, oops cold feet so Twilight has to save him by lighting the torch for him when no one is looking.
 
Then, Spike finds out that the fliers contest is over and that the anthem for the winning team will be sung. Well shoot, Rainbow Dash was on Ponyville’s team and they totally had to have won. So he volunteers to sing and oops , turns out Ponyville’s team DIDN’T win, it was cloudsdale. So he’s got the spotlight on him and he doesn’t know the song so we get to sit through a minute or two of him basically singing “I don’t know the lyrics” in front of a stadium of ponies.
 
So Spike decides, to avoid further humiliation, he is going to sit in his room until the games are over. The CMC show up and basically pester him until he agrees to at least stay for the closing events and ceremony.
 
A note: All unicorns have had their magic locked to prevent them from tampering with the games, including the princesses.
 
So the final game is Ice archery. It’s basically archery, but the arrows are made of one of the deadliest known materials I’ve ever seen in about any fiction ever. One archer slips while taking a shot and fires the arrow skyward which somehow hits a cloud. The arrow then turns the cloud into a winnebago sized glacier that starts to fall towards the floor of the stadium. The pegasi try to help but they can’t stop it and all the unicorns are useless. So, since that winnebago sized spot of the floor of the stadium is apparently really important and moving the other ponies out of the way of the impact point is beyond anyone’s thought process, Spike hops across a bunch of ponies and blows the wrong color of flame breath to melt it before anyone is hurt and Spike is cheered as the hero of the crystal empire and the episode ends.
 
It’s 20 minutes of basically taking a massive poo on Spike and then a moment of “awesome” that is negated by the animators caring so little about spike they couldn’t even remember one of the few traits the character has.
 
This is the one good thing the episode gave us:
 

 
And even that was just due to enough things going wrong that something good happened to pop out.

@Daneasaur  
I haven’t watched old episode yet, but that’s what I thought at first.

@100SGX  
Spike has had green fire in every real moment he’s ever used it through the series. That moment in equestria games was an animation error.
 
 
@Background Pony Number 17  
He was pretty willing to light the storm king’s guards on fire, starting with the one that grabbed him.

@Background Pony Number 17  
Yep, our little Spike is really growing up.

Note that this is the first time (not counting the movie) that Spike’s had the courage to use his dragon breath on a living foe. Getting wings isn’t the only way our boy is growing up here.

@D_Tavs.exe  
Weird, Spike’s fire was orange like any type of fire while future episodes featured green fire only.

@Ryodraco
 
@Daneasaur  
I believe that this fire is mostly plot armor, since he has been show to have a very strong fire breath before  
 
the heat needed to melt that huge ice minimountain must be insane.

@Daneasaur  
An awesome display by Spike regardless, one wonders if he can more easily bring out a strong fire attack now than before (the way he rubbed his stomach first made it look like he may have just been taking advantage of lingering internal gases from the molt).

I love it

@Background Pony #5B59  
Yes, it did try to avoid her and did react to it being unpleasant, but it took Spike to make it actually give up and let go of Rarity and Zecora.
 
Maybe it finally felt that it was against two unpleasant rivals at the time and wasn’t going to get it’s puberty dragon snack anymore.

@Background Pony #5B59  
Also, to me it looked like Twilight was trying to avoid the scenario where a big attack caused the roc to haphazardly drop them, hence why she asked Spike to distract it, not attack it.

@100SGX  
Post-molt dragon fire might be some of the most OP stuff in this ‘verse. It was already something no one could defend against, and the only thing that could was the Tidus Shield, which allegedly couldn’t be broken.
 
There is probably a reason dragons are turned into incredibly benign creatures in other places.