Game Discussion of the Week: NiGHTS into Dreams

Added and stickied. I posted this a day before apparently, this Corona virus situation has made me lose track of which day it is.

One nice thing that I took years to notice is the deepness of the A-Life system. Basically, the little dudes that you find in the levels can get happy or angry with you, and they also can mate and be combined with the enemies. Also, the music in the levels change according to their humour. It's basically a prototype of the Chao from Sonic Adventure. Here's a video of someone unlocking a King Nightopian and Pian Towers, which is a thing that demands a lot of patience and countless hours (I never had the patience to do it):



As for the game itself, it may be described as a score attack/racing game. You have to fly around the levels as fast as possible while also keeping a combo by constantly flying through rings, grabbing stuff and hitting enemies - more or less like a score-centered, flying version of a Sonic game. Although it uses 3d graphics, the gameplay is largely in 2d (or 2.5d), except for a few moments when Nights transforms into something and you get a behind-the-back view and gameplay. It's very confusing at first, but when you get it, it flows really well. The gameplay is solid, the graphics are very colorful and creative, and the 3d engine is one of the better looking on the Saturn, keeping generally a very solid performance. One of the things that I liked to do was just to explore the levels as the kids (for them, the gameplay is in full 3d), as the scenery is very detailed, has some secrets and is all around impressive. I actually wish Sega had developed the game a bit more to make use of the gameplay when you're one of the kids, with some actual 3d platforming to do.

The only real problem with the game is that it's very much an arcade game on console, so a full playthrough with both characters, even for a first time player, will only take a couple hours. The game certainly needed more levels or modes - they really could have used the gameplay of the kids to extend the game and appeal more to 3d platformer fans. In the 90s, even if I always thought the game was awesome, I wished it had more content.

For the Saturn release, the analog controller is recommended, although the d-pad will also work well enough.

If anyone wants to check it, the HD version is easily available (I have it on Steam, I think it's also on 360/PS3/PS4/Xone). It's exactly the original game with just upgraded visuals, and it even has a Saturn mode if you want to see the original graphics and textures.

As a curiosity: on the Saturn, Nights is one of the few games from that era that supported widescreen (Panzer Dragoon Zwei does it too). It also has a very barebones versus splitscreen mode. Another good addition is a bonus disc called "Christmas Nights", which is a Christmas themed demo of the game that has a lot of easter eggs (including a proto 3d Sonic gameplay) and that reads your save file from the main game to show data on each Nightopian - it's needed if you're trying to raise them.

I have this digitally on Xbox 360 and I also have it for the Sega Saturn. I've tried it and enjoyed it quite a bit. A shame that I never played more of it. Should get back to this title one day.

DonPachi
Layer Section
Mobile Suit Gundam
Nights Into Dreams
Real Bout Fatal Fury
Real Bout Fatal Fury Special
Saturn Bomberman
Street Fighter Collection
Street Fighter Zero
Strikers 1945
Soukyu Gurentai
X-Men vs Street Fighter

The Saturn is an incredible console. One of my favorite consoles definitely, but the greatest games for it are so expensive. It's been some time since I last played it though. It's the best console for schmups.

Spirit Bomb - I do like Nights' design. They weren't going for a realistic approach, but for a more abstract, dream-like one - after all, Nights inspiration comes from Jung's psychology, as most things in that game, and is a representation of the Jester archetype, so they draw something that resembles the general features that we expect from a jester, but very stylized (compare it to the awful approach from Pandemonium, which went for more human-like proportions). They were going for a design style based on striking silhouettes, something that Sonic Team had already a lot of experience from Sonic, and made character recognizable even in the simplest drawings thanks to its exaggerated features (again, like Sonic himself). Look at this stripped-down image and see how you can still immediatelly recognize the character:

I do find the design and especially the use of color great. A realistic character would not work in the vibrant, cartoony world that they were going for, and even the kids, albeit more realistic, still have anime-like eyes, colors and proportions in general. It's in the vein of what you find in some Pixar movies like Inside Out (except Nights was released more than 20 years earlier). But since you've stated in the past that you prefer realistic styles, I can see how you wouldn't like it at all. The design is certainly divisive even among people who like more cartoony, stylized designs.

I think the gameplay is "innovative" more in the sense that there are really no games like it. The flying mechanics aren't groundbreaking or anything (being in 2d and all), but I surely can't think of any other game that plays like Nights. I like the simplicity that they took, again, from Sonic: you only use the analog stick and two buttons for the entire game (boost + acrobatics), and yet you can spend years perfecting how you control the character to get the best times and combos.

Allow me to continue with my argument against the character design of NiGHTS the dream jester.

I know I have previously raved about the visual design of the characters in games like Mischief Makers and (coincidentally) Sonic 1-3, even though the characters Sonic the Hedgehog and Marina Liteyears feature a very similarly simplistic cartoony structure as NiGHTS. Yes, it's true that those two characters have the same basic head structure with similar levels of dimension, BUT they are also MUCH more expressive than NiGHTS is. In fact, NiGHTS barely visibly expresses at all. What's the fun of a cartoon that doesn't show expressions??? Also, on the subject of facial features,

-Sonic and Marina Liteyears both have noses, but NiGHTS doesn't! WTF why?? A creepy omission.

-Why are NiGHTS lips so deflated and crude looking?

-Why are the hands realistically rendered, but the head is just a simplistic cartoony sphere?

-And, its eyes...look scary to me. If Sonic Team had just slapped a mask over its eyes to conceal them, it would have looked MUCH less creepy IMO. I mean, why not? Face masks are a staple of dreaming and fantasy anyway. A good example is Darien from Sailor Moon:



That little detail would have helped a lot!

I also don't understand who NiGHTS is supposed to represent. Usually when people dream, they are themselves in their dream, so why didn't the game just use the kids as protagonists instead of using this weird, irrelevant jester character? Was that ever explained in game? IDK, since it's been far too long since I've played it for me to remember the plot details, if there were any.