Christmas Nights into Dreams, Retro Buddy System 006 Options

[Jakeway]

What Is Retro Buddy System
Retro Buddy System is like book club for classic games. Each month a game is selected and members of the forum play or replay over these games and discuss and reminisce them.

Previous Buddy System:
1. Rainbow Islands
2. StarFox & StarFox64
3. Yoshi's Island
4. Crazy Taxi
5. GoldenEye

Retro Buddy System, Est May 2005 Accept No Imitations!

NiGHTS into Dreams (1996)
NiGHTS into Dreams centres around a boy (Elliot Edwards) and a girl (Claris Sinclair). Both of them have low self-esteem. Elliot is having trouble playing basketball against some older kids and Claris’s faith in entering an audition for a play is dwindling. That night the children sleep with a heavy sense of failure on their minds.
Meanwhile in Nightopia (an alternative world of dreams) an evil being called Wizeman is stealing dream energy from humans. Once he has enough energy he can use it to leave the subconscious world of Nightopia, and enter the human world. NiGHTS, a Nightmaren (nightmare-dweller) who rebelled against Wizeman escapes from the dream world and begs the sleeping Elliot and Claris to save Nightopia. Claris and Elliot for the first time feel courage growing within them and team up with NiGHTS.

In Nightopia, distinct aspects of characters' personalities are represented by glowing coloured spheres known as "Ideya". The goal of each level is to recover the stolen Ideya by collecting 20 blue chips and delivering them to the Ideya capture, which will overload and release the orb it holds. Once you cash in at the Ideya Palace, your score is tallied up and you receive a letter grade of A-E with A being the best.After playing through four routes ("Mares"), NiGHTS is transported to the nightmare realm for a boss fight against one of Wizeman's Nightmaren.

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About Nights
NiGHTS into Dreams was the brainchild of Yuji Naka. After the completion of Sonic 2, Yuji Naka was headed back to Japan. As his plane took off, he was struck with the idea of a game about flying, but this idea took the back burner for a few years as he had other work to attend to. When Sega's Saturn was finally out and about, the idea was revived and work began on Sonic Team's first original project since Sonic The Hedgehog.

The original concept was of a young bird too weak to fly, but who gained the ability as he grew and strengthened. The bird idea was later scrapped for fear it would draw direct comparisons to Sonic. When a dream theme was finally decided upon, Naoto Ohshima and Takashi Iizuka (the games directors) studied various books on psychology, including writings by Carl Gustav Jung.


Christmas NiGHTs (1996)
Christmas NiGHTS was a two level stand-alone "expansion pack" of NiGHTS that was released in December 1996. In Japan, it was part of a Christmas Saturn bundle. It was elsewhere given away with the purchase of select Saturn games such as Daytona Championship Circuit Edition, and was later bundled in with an issue of Sega Saturn Magazine. The CDs given away on the front cover of Sega Saturn Magazine were missing the card slip case in which to keep the disc, and were instead supplied with a transparent plastic one. The game was also available for rent at Blockbuster Video locations in America. In the UK, Christmas NiGHTS was not included with the official Sega Saturn Magazine until December 1997.

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The Christmas NiGHTS disc contained a playable demo of a slightly modified version of the game's Spring Valley level, but with Christmas-themed graphics, music, and other features. Game environments have been redesigned from lush gardens to landscapes of snow, glittering lights and gumdrops. Each world features a totally different look and feel from the original game, with bells replacing stars, rings becoming wreaths, and Ideya Captures are now giant decorated Christmas trees.

The game used the Saturn's internal date clock to change elements of the game according to the season, adjusting it for Other annual holidays including New Year's and April Fool's Day, with different graphics and music. There were several other unlockable extras, allowing the player to experiment with the game's music mixer or its A-Life system, or even to play the demo stage as Sega's mascot Sonic the Hedgehog.


Controls
NiGHTS into Dreams came in a special box set bundled with Sega’s newly designed “3D Controller Pad”.

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This new controller was Sega’s response to the Nintendo 64's revolutionary analog controller. In addition to a ball like analog thumb stick the pad features one of Sega's own innovations, analog triggers. This pad can be seen as the predecessor to the Dreamcast pad. Both of the pads have a very similar design, although the Dreamcast pad features only 7 buttons while the Saturn pad features 9.

A sequel to NiGHTS was planned, and supposedly was intended to use a tilt sensor in the analogue pad. Development of this was discontinued (apparently due to quality issues). Another sequel for the Sega Dreamcast was discussed, using a motion-sensing wand as a controller, but this was also discontinued. Rumour had it that this tilt controller was also going to be used for Sega’s Super Monkey Ball, another title that was discontinued for the Dreamcast.



However, it has been suggested that the technology for this title (which had the working title Air NiGHTS) would have been similar to that of Samba De Amigo, and Air NiGHTS may even have been a extremely early version of that game. It is said that Yuji Naka refuses to release a sequel because he cannot improve the game any further other than a graphical update. This is supported by a February 2005 interview, in which he expressed that a NiGHTS sequel would have to be of perfect quality, so it would take a long time to, in his words, "Get it right".


Special Times and Dates
Christmas NiGHTS changes its appearance based on the date and time. Here are a few special dates to try throughout the year:

Date Effect
25/12/xxxx = Santa Claus cameo
01/01/xxxx = Happy New Year message
14/02/xxxx = Valentine's hearts
01/04/xxxx = Play as Reala

Here are a few special times to try during the winter months (November thru February):

Time Effect
3:00 am = Lunar eclipse
6:00 am = Northern Lights
7:00 am = Bright sun
9:00 am = Crescent moons
12:00 pm = Rainbows, clouds & confetti
3:00 pm = Candy
6:00 pm = Strange stars
9:00 pm = Bright stars
12:00 am = Hearts

Facts
Shigeru Miyamoto once stated in a magazine interview: “If there is one game that I wished I had made, it would have been Nights”

Fan Sites
Secrets of Sonic Team With Mag Scans.
Nights into Dreams with Music, Videos and more

[Electric Boogalo...]

Loved this game! \o/ Good choice sir.

I'd never played the original Nights, and still haven't All I've experienced is Christmas Nights, and it's absolutely AWESOME! It's blatant that the music from Sonic Adventure 1 was made by the same team; it's so cheesy, but so happy! I love it

As for the game itself, I never really understood what you had to do. I got to the boss, and never managed to beat it. I didn't have an analogue pad either. :\ Nevermind, I don't care, it rates up there just because it's so HAPPY!

[Smegaman]

the boss u basically grabbed his head an then mashed the button again to bounce off making him shorter... if I remember properly, tho I never really "got" NiGHTS, I love it as a game as it's so jolly but really wish I understood how to play it properly lol, maybe I shud jus read the manual :$

[E. Randy Dupre]

Okay, basics:

There's little point in running around as the kids if you're playing for score, apart from on one of the levels in the full game, so run straight to NiGHTS at the beginning of a level and free him from the temple he's held within.

When playing as NiGHTS, the 3D-ness of the levels is reduced to fancy spinning camera effects and backgrounds. You always move on a 2D plane, with control being very similar to Ecco the Dolphin.

Each level is split into four 'zones' and one boss battle. Each zone is split into two phases.

The first phase is the simplest. As NiGHTS, you just need to collect twenty of the blue balls that are dotted around the level and take them to the Ideya Palace - the large, translucent (well, it's a standard Saturn mesh effect, rather than a true transparency) blue sphere that you'll bump into on the course. If you have less than twenty when you get to it, don't bother - entering it will simply waste time that you'll need later.

Once you've filled the Ideya Palace up with twenty blue balls, the second phase of the zone kicks in - Bonus Time. Despite the name, it's actually the main phase, the bit where all the points are earned, which is why you want to get to it as quickly as possible. In Bonus Time, all Ideya turn from blue to gold and points values increase. You've got until the countdown runs out to earn as many points as you can.

BUT. Run out of time and you'll lose all those points. You have to return NiGHTS to the temple he was originally trapped in before the countdown reaches zero - it's the risk/reward balance, deciding whether or nopt you've time for another lap of the course or not.

Higher scores rely on you getting used to the link multiplier. When you collect an Ideya or a star, or go through one of the rings (or dash into or loop a Nightmaren, iirc) you'll see '1 Link' appear on the screen. Manage to collect another one before those words disappear completely and you'll get '2 Link'. The objective is to try and keep the link going for as long as you can.

Now, that might seem difficult when there's a massive gap of space between linkable items, but that's where paraloops come in. When NiGHTS moves, he leaves a trail behind himself. Spin him round in a circle and connect the two ends of the trail and you'll perform a paraloop - the circle you've created is filled with a rainbow of colour. What happens when you trap a number of items within a paraloop is they home in towards you. This is how you bridge gaps in the courses - if there's a large collection of linkable items just before a link-breaking gap in the course, you paraloop them and then dash through the gap as quickly as you can. The items follow behind you and keep the link topped up as they're collected.

Boss stages only really serve one purpose. Depending on how quiakly you finish the boss off, you get a total score multiplier (of between score x 1.1 and score x 2.0, I think). It's the only shit bit of the game design - some bosses are far easier to finish off quickly than others. You can manually select which boss appears at the end of which level once you've seen the credits, which goes some way to making that less frustrating.

And that's about it for basics, I think. There's a lot more to go into - how the AI and music are linked, playing a part in the evolution of the levels, breeding Nightopians (and freaky Nightopian/Nightmaren hybrids), an easy way to get an A rank on one of the levels, the alternate endings, and so on. Think that'll do for now, though.

A bit pissed off, myself. Just fired it up for the first time in too long (I've lost my analogue pad and it simply cannot be played properly with digital controls) to discover that, for some unknown reason, it's refusing to load the old score data from my official memory cartridge. Years of play and some fucking impressive scores, wiped

Quite possibly my favourite game of all time, incidentally. That Naka's not prepared to provide the world with a next gen remake just proves what a bunch of idiots Sonic Team and Sega have become - one of the few minor points against both NiGHTS and Christmas NiGHTS is that the Saturn just isn't powerful enough to do the design and ideas justice. I'd be absolutely made up with a simple graphical update that kept everything else intact.

This post has been edited by E. Randy Dupre: Dec 20 2005, 11:20 PM

[Jakeway]

That is annoying Randy. Is this because the official memory cartridge also has a battery?

I never owned an official memory cartridge, I myself have of them Action Replay 4M plus cartages, and I couldn’t recommend it enough.

[E. Randy Dupre]

Nah, the official memory cart uses flash memory, not a battery. I checked it out in the system screen and both the saved scores and the saved AI state were still showing up on the cart contents list. Absolutely no idea why the game decided that it couldn't see them - never had that problem before and it doesn't seem to be affecting any other saved games.

I suppose the one vaguely positive thing I can take from it is that I'd previously managed to wipe out all but one of the Nightopians on Frozen Bell, meaning that there was no way for me to breed new ones or get different music on the level for that saved game, so at least I won't have that annoying me now.

That's one of the places where the game design falls down a little, actually - when you're banging through a course trying to keep an unbroken link going, you can't afford to pay any attention to whether you're damaging the ecosystem or not.

[GViper]

If anyone wants a copy, i'm offering my scratched but fully working PAL copy up for grabs, via a quid on paypal for postage. Dealtime, non?

The reason? This game simply MUST be played. I recently had another go, and it's harder than I remember, and I tried it for the first time with the 3D pad, how awesome. it really enhances the gameplay.

I remember SSM pimping this back in the day, always having high score contests and such. It was a great laugh! Xmas nights also comes reccomended though, the special music and presents rule. Play as Sonic FTW!

[E. Randy Dupre]

Made a mistake in the large post above - the blue and gold balls that you collect are 'chips', not Ideya.

Boog, you destroy the Christmas NiGHTS boss, Gillwing, by grabbing his chin and spin dashing it. Rach time you do that, he loses a section of his tail. C+VG reckoned that they'd managed to fluke a super-fast time on him the once by performing an enormous paraloop in front of him which he then flew into. No matter how many times I've tried to do the same, I've never pulled it off. When he's already lost a few of his tail sections, yeah, but never when he's been at full size.

Playing it again now, I've suddenly realised that there *is* another type of game that it feels very similar to - bemani stuff. That idea of flowing movement and keeping links going - it's that same sort of feeling that I get when I'm playing Cool Cool Toon, Gitaroo Man or Ouendan. That and maybe some of the more recent platformers - Sands of Time and Ninja Gaiden both allow you to move effortlessly with a real sense of style.

It's only now that I'm forced into using digital controls that I realise just how important the analogue pad is to the game. The areas that offer continuous, unbroken links are proving far more troublesome than they ever have before and trying to control the kids when exploring the levels is a bloody nightmare. Seriously, Boog, you need to source an analogue pad for this, even if you've only got Christmas NiGHTS.

Opening up the presents in Christmas NiGHTS again, I'd forgotten what a good trainer it is for the full game. The Time Attack and Link Attack modes teach the principles of the scoring system really well.

Funny - in a lot of ways, it's a game that shares a lot with the Sonic Adventure titles. One of the things that pisses me off about gamers is how big a bunch of hypocrites they are. Loads of people are more than happy to slag off SA without even recognising that the gameplay in NiGHTS is just as reliant on memorisation and precognition. SA's levels - when playing as Sonic or Shadow, at any rate - are supposed to be played as time attacks, just as NiGHTS is supposed to be played as a score attack. You can only play them that way once you already know how the camera's going to shift around at certain points, when and where you're going to have to jump or attack in order to meet the challenge of a suddenly-appearing set of platforms or enemies.

NiGHTS is no different. You can only hit the 'A' ranks that are needed to get the true ending by getting suitabley high-scoring links. You can only hit those links when you already know whereabouts on the screen linkable items are going to be placed (something made even more memory-dependent by the restrictive viewpoint in the 4:3 screen ratio and the frame rate that's just that bit too jerky).

The whole game's a triumph of ambition over ability. So many great ideas, all put together in a slightly shabby manner. I think that's why I love it so much - something like Mario 64 is almost *too* polished, *too* successful. Everything it tries to do, it does perfectly. With NiGHTS, the blemishes in the presentation make me appreciate the ambition even more. The same applies to Burning Rangers, although that's a game with far more damaging technical issues.

Other things I love:

- The music being tied into the AI, so that the melody and instrumentation changes as you alter the ecosystem of the levels (doesn't happen in Christmas NiGHTS, though )
- The flower clock on Splash Garden being tied to the Saturn's system clock, so that it shows the actual time
- The car that you can guide back to its garage for a points bonus on Mystic Forest
- Hidden routes through a couple of the courses
- Being able to help create mutant Nightopian/Nightmaren hybrids by spin dashing into Nightmaren, sending them to the ground dazed and having any particularly, er, 'friendly' Nightopians bumping into them while they're down there
- The alternate version of the ending music for getting all 'A' ranks, sung (out of tune) by a couple of kids instead of the bland, over-polished session musos who sing on the standard ending
- The fact that Elliot and Claris' real-world troubles are so mundane
- The sled ride on Frozen Bell
- Getting magnetised on Stick Canyon and having all the level elements join onto your body, then having to carefully wend you way through the level to the item counter that gives you a points bonus depending on how much crap is still stuck to you
- NiGHTS actually being genderless
- The gigantic final boss

<edit> Oh, wait. The standard end credits music is the out of tune kids version - the all 'A's is the posh one. Whoops.

This post has been edited by E. Randy Dupre: Dec 22 2005, 11:23 PM

[GViper]

Whaaat? I didn't know you could punch him on the chin!

I've paralooped him for MANY years! trick is to fly towards him, next to the floor, then circle upwards and backwars, hit the floor again and you'r away.

I used to be able to loop him and fly under him, and dash round to do it again for a great 2.0 multiplier, but I seem to get hit every time now.., wtf!

[E. Randy Dupre]

Yeah, that's the problem I've always had - I end up smacking straight into him when trying to finish off the loop. Drill dashing him is ridiculously easy, but it takes far too long to be useful where score's concerned - I think the best multiplier I've ever ended up getting with him as the boss was x1.5.

The bosses are all really imaginative, but a few of them are a bit too random. Jackal, for example - getting repeated hits on him after you've knocked his cape off and before he can pick it back up it often seems more luck than judgement. The cat, too (I forget them name) - he seems to set the rocket mice off at random and there doesn't appear to be any reason why he'll sometimes sit on one of them for ages, letting you defeat him easily. It's a shame - they all look fantastic, but the most enjoyable boss fight is one of the very first ones you come acorss (Puffy, the weeble opera singer you throw through walls).

I remember reading an interview with Naka some time back where he claimed that they originally had the player controlling NiGHTS with complete freedom, letting them fly him anywhere in the levels in proper 3D. Can't imagine how that could ever be true - the game's all about forming those continuous links and that simply wouldn't be something that three-dimensional movement would be suitable for.

[Singho]

Another pic

[Pacman]

WHAAAAAAAAAAAT?!

I want one :/

[qazimod]

NiGHTS is very enjoyable even today. The music is superb, the graphics adorable, and the fluidity of control is great (even if it is only a 2.5D game.) It was one of those games that rarely got annoying and always kept me eager to see what's next (and the final level, Twin Seeds, was an incredible end to the game, even if the boss turned out to be a bit annoying.) The boss I disliked the most was probably that mad laughing jester(?) thing in Soft Museum who threw various cards at you: last-minute dodges had to be made, and being hit by one sent you flying miles away from the guy.

Never played Chrimbo NiGHTS though. I looked into it a while ago though, and I came across this great chaining video...

[Bangai Joe]

A sequel to NiGHTS was planned, and supposedly was intended to use a tilt sensor in the analogue pad. Development of this was discontinued (apparently due to quality issues). Another sequel for the Sega Dreamcast was discussed, using a motion-sensing wand as a controller, but this was also discontinued. Rumour had it that this tilt controller was also going to be used for Sega’s Super Monkey Ball, another title that was discontinued for the Dreamcast.



However, it has been suggested that the technology for this title (which had the working title Air NiGHTS) would have been similar to that of Samba De Amigo, and Air NiGHTS may even have been a extremely early version of that game. It is said that Yuji Naka refuses to release a sequel because he cannot improve the game any further other than a graphical update. This is supported by a February 2005 interview, in which he expressed that a NiGHTS sequel would have to be of perfect quality, so it would take a long time to, in his words, "Get it right".

Wow! That was a great read and I had no idea about a sequel or about a special controller. NiGHTS is one of my favourite games on the Saturn.

This must of inspired Shigeru Miyamoto into designing the current Wii controller, its like the missing link controller evolution. Top post fella!

[Bangai Joe]

http://gamevideos.com/video/id/7125

Make it happen one day SEGA...please!