Before I start Ill say that I was playing on an original PS1 and an official disk. I don't know if this is a glitch that can be triggered or if it was just luck but I was able to fly in Riptos arena without using cheat codes. I was practicing offline and recorded as soon as I could. I used the swimming in the air glitch to get into Ripto early. When I got in the stage Ripto started shooting fire right away while the text boxes were still up. When I re spawned I kept dying in one hit but it seemed that I had unlimited lives. My charging was a glitchy mess and to fly I just used to normal double jump trick but held down the buttons. I know this won't help at all with Ripto but if it could be triggered in other areas I'm sure it could be beneficial

Something similar to this has been seen before, but I'm not sure if it's the same thing. Did you already have permanent fireball before you entered ripto? Also did you enter the ripto "portal" from the front or back? Thirdly, what happened if you just jumped and then pressed x again to glide? Did that let you fly around normally?

For you to compare, here's the similar situation

I didn’t have permanent fireball at this point. When I entered the portal I went in a like a 45’ angle from the bottom. At the 1:00 mark I do a regular glide jump and instead of flying like in the comparison video, I glide super fast and far but not upward. In the second video it appears that Spyro glides like he’s in the last phase of the fight but with the boundaries of the first phase. I don’t even know how I’d explain what happened to me if I didn’t have a video. Oh, and one last thing to note is that it wouldn’t let me pause the game

My time has come,

I've done a hefty amount of messing around with this glitch. It's really peculiar in that it's the only glitch of the series (at least that I know of) which is hardware-dependent. That is, it only occurs when played on a PS1. I've heard of some people getting it on emulator, but I've never seen footage of it myself so until I get more details or see it for myself I'm chalking that up to just stories.

That said, here's what we know about this glitch:

• It's hardware dependant. There is no documentation of it occurring with any hardware that is not a PlayStation 1. Whether or not it would occur on a burned disk is a good question, and has yet to be tested;
• It can be triggered with either flame or fireball;
• If it's your first time entering Ripto's Arena, the glitch will not activate. That is, it seems the pre-boss cutscene cancels the activation of the glitch somehow;
• It's activated from entering the battle from behind the warp point. You mention that you approached it from the bottom, do you remember if you had to turn around a bit after entering? as if you'd missed the entrance and had to double back? I tried activating it from the bottom like you said and I couldn't do it;
• When the glitch activates, Ripto will start attacking you immediately, unlike the usual where any boss in this game waits for you to move first before doing anything;
• When the glitch activates, your charge becomes a strange mix of walking, charging and supercharging at the same time. It also cannot be cancelled by letting go of square. You have to bonk to stop charging;
• When the glitch activates, you gain the superfly in all three phases of the fight, and it's ridiculously fast, much faster than any other instance of superfly in the game. You move faster than your fireballs. Since this effect carries into the third phase, it makes beating the bird much harder than it normally is;
• When the glitch activates, you get that really weird charge/glide hybrid you pointed out in your video. This appears nowhere else in the game
• When the glitch activates, the game will sometimes remove your ability to pause. What causes this is unknown, and it is not consistent. However, once the ability to pause disappears, it does not seem to return. When you are still able to pause, the "Exit Level" option is replaced with a "Quit Game" option. This is not just a text glitch. Selecting that option spits you out to the main menu;
• When the glitch activates, any Sparx you had in the homeworld is now invisible, but the game will treat you as having no Sparx. That is, if you enter with gold Sparx, you will now be shown as having no Sparx, but you can still take 4 hits before dying. The game will give you sheep as if you had no Sparx, getting a sheep before dying will make Sparx come back in the colour he should be. This does not persist after dying. Once you die, you will always respawn without Sparx, will be unable to eat butteflies, and will die in one hit; EDIT: I just did a new test and now the game completely removed my (gold) Sparx when I entered, but I had to take 2 hits before sheep started dropping. When I got a sheep, a green Sparx appeared instead of the expected blue.
• Occasionally, the game will become extremely unstable, and will crash if you venture even remotely out of bounds. Other times, you have the entire world to explore. There isn't much there, but you can go really far (good luck finding your way back);
• Regardless, crashing the game here is like any other hard crash in this game, and you will begin hearing random lines of dialogue from throughout the game (and sometimes the CTR demo);

That's all I can recall at the moment, but I'm sure I'm forgetting one or two things. If you have any other quesitons, feel free to ask them here or reach out to me on Discord.