I don’t know why, but back in the day I always found the NiGHTS mascot enchantingly alluring. Maybe it was the dream drop pose, violet shades, or humanoid/alien physique; or perhaps it was a combination of all three- form, colors, and character combined into a decidedly hypnotic image.

Whatever the case, it left a lasting impression on young me, and while this is admirable given the plethora of 90s mascots at the time, there’s a reason why this franchise never took off the way developer Sonic Team’s titular series did -- it was an arcade game in a console-ridden landscape. By the time the fourth generation rolled out, home consoles had cemented themselves as THE market leaders of the gaming stratosphere, meaning arcade cabinets and their assortment of featurettes were increasingly less appealing- why waste hour after hour competing for the highest score when you could get a funner, more diverse experience right there in your living room?

That’s not to say all arcade games were like that- certainly the myriad of successful ports/sequels/homages to the present prove they remain fertile. However, the ones you see tend to have something extra going for them: co-op (TMNT), challenge (Contra), story (Time Crisis), or some amalgamation of all three (Mortal Kombat). Though eSports will always exist to prop up the old model, the majority of gamers simply do not care to be stuck in a repetitive circle whose only yield is bragging rights, and that’s unfortunately the problem with Nights into Dreams- it has no other recourse for longevity, leaving you with 2-3 hours of okay yet ultimately forgettable fun.

The gist is there are 6-8 levels (more on that below), each revolving around the same schtick: you control a kid, head to a warp zone, and transform into NiGHTS to try and get all these tokens to unlock a boss. NiGHTS is on a timer which can only be replenished via acquiring said keys, providing a bit of an old-school platformer feel ala Super Mario Bros. The problem is, that’s about all the game does to evoke this genre as everything else is more akin to a rail game, which wouldn’t be bad were it not for the fact that it’s used in service of a collectathon -- NiGHTS is stuck on invisible tracks that only allow horizontal movement in a fixed circle, and so you’ll be spending most if not all of your time running (err flying) around this scape again and again and again until you acquire enough orbs to unlock the cages housing those aforementioned tokens. Strewn amidst these keys are generic collectibles whose sole purpose is to, you guessed it, boost your score. And given how they’re laid out in particular patterns, it’s clear the purpose of the game is to master your flight skills so as to be able to grab them all in singular, consecutive swoops.

It’s enjoyable at first, thanks to the purple demon controlling EXTREMELY well and the HD remaster incorporating modern controller support: floating, twirling, and soaring amidst these lands without hitting awkward resistances is a genuine testament to the skill of Sega’s engineers. No matter how often you switch directions, change velocities, or outright swap forms (a makeshift vehicle, a dolphin tale), not once will you notice a jarring transmogrification with the animation.

It’s sad, then, that they weren’t able to (or unwilling to) do more with the overall system- every action gets repetitive, and you’ll be looping about so much that even the stage layout will give you deja vu. It got to a point where, once I understood how things worked, I would actively speedblitz areas to avoid over-monotony.

Alas, those of you wanting to get your full bang for your buck will have to engage with this framework as unearthing the final world (levels 7-8) requires you to get a C grade on each of the preceding six, something I personally did not have the patience to do.

Graphically, this is a pretty gorgeous game. Sonic Team did a phenomenal job updating the Sega Saturn’s style without losing its essence, and while they weren’t quite able to iron out all the bumps typical of 5th gen polygons, the butter smooth animations and eye-popping hues more than atone for this. That said, I wish the devs had done more as far as making these planes surreal -- with the exception of one centered on a funhouse, every single mainland is something you wouldn’t deem out-of-place in Mario 64: grassy fields, snow-capped mountains, it’s literally been there, done that….save the boss stages. These babies are exactly what I was hoping the main game would be, dream realms full of nightmarish tones and eccentric constructs. It’s a shame you spend so little time in them as the fights are on a ~2 minute timer (a facet that also makes the game slightly aggravating since it’s rarely clear what strategy you’re supposed to be doing).

The sound, unfortunately, hearkens back to those arcadey dins with comically-exaggerated noises for character noises, item collection, enemy deaths, and damage-received. I’m not saying it’s bad or anything, it’s just a product of its time and, like the gameplay, gets repetitious to a fault. The score, attributed to three individuals, is good, though a bit too happy-go-lucky for my taste. It’s well-known the Sega Saturn sound chip was better equipped for music than the SNES, and these maestros have certainly taken advantage of it, albeit towards a tone that’s less befitting than the title would imply. Let me put it this way- I was hoping for more dream-inspired psychedelic melodies, and though you get some of those with tracks like “Growing Wings” and “After the Dreams,” the majority are tunes that wouldn’t be out-of-place in a Galaga remake.

In the end, I just don’t see Nights into Dreams providing any real value to contemporary gamers. It rides on nostalgia that was outdated even at the time of the original release, and if you’re that desperate for an arcade throwback, there are a ton of better titles out there. A competitive multiplayer mode exists that might provide some measure of fun with a buddy, but YMMV as far as how much.


NOTES
-Through a menu option, you are free to play the original version, though you’d definitely be doing yourself a disservice.

-You’re able to free roam on the lands as the Kids in any direction, making me wonder if it was an abandoned travel concept for Nights.

-The remaster includes a digital version of the vanilla game’s manual, which outlines the story and how to play the release.

NiGHTS Into Dreams makes quite possibly the worst first impression I’ve ever seen a video game make in my entire life. Right when you start the game you get…nothing. No explanation of the story, no explanation of mechanics, or controls, or objectives, or…anything really. You’re just sorta dropped into the level and expected to figure things out yourself. And even when you get to playing you’re just assaulted with so much visual clutter on screen, all these collectables, icons, different elements that you have no idea what they even do or what their purpose is. I wasn’t just confused, I was STARTLED at how this game first presented itself. Even when you look into the “how to play” section (which btw is basically the only story explanation you’re gonna get in this game, it’s not very well handled at all), it still didn’t properly explain a lot of the finer stuff you had to do in order to do well at the game. I legitimately had to look up an online guide to figure out what I was even supposed to be doing to progress and do well in the stages.

From what I can best surmise, you start out every level in NiGHTS by controlling the kid (either Claris or Elliot) in a 3D environment. Aside from nabbing some collectables at the start and being a backup failsafe if you run out of time as NiGHTS I don’t really see the point of this even being in the game, you only really have a basic jump and the levels themselves don’t take advantage of platforming elements. The real meat of the game is when you reach the lone altar in the stage and take control of NiGHTS, switching to a 2D perspective. The main gist basically amounts to…collecting stuff. Flying through hoops, getting collectables, you need a certain amount of blue orbs to break open the main objective of each “lap”, these giant containers. Repeat this process 4 times (though each lap is different in both course layout and the obstacles/gimmicks you encounter), fight the boss at the very end, and that’s really about it. At first, I didn’t hate what I was doing, but I wasn’t super invested in it either. Kinda just felt like collecting stuff for the sake of collecting stuff, again not bad but not really that interesting. It didn’t help that the visuals and the overall environment, while thematically super creative and imaginative, ended up making a lot of elements like items and ESPECIALLY enemies just sorta blend into the background. I didn’t even know wtf the stunt rings did until I looked it up. While the capsules are your main objective, the biggest other objective NiGHTS tasks you with is getting the highest score you can possibly get. Everything contributes to your score, items, enemies, the rings, the capsule. Generally though, the biggest point contributor in NiGHTS comes from getting chain combos, collecting stuff super fast back to back from each other in rapid succession. The more you do this, the higher the chain you get and the higher your score will be. It helped in getting better scores than I was getting but it still wasn’t enough I felt. I did eventually figure out that I could completely bypass the altar and repeat the lap as many times as I wanted to maximize the amount of points I receive per lap, which did end up boosting my scores significantly. Combine all of this and NiGHTS eventually started to “click” with me. It’s a very trial and error sort of affair, needing to memorize where any of the collectables are each lap (since the 2D planes tend to have a lot of vertical space and the camera only goes so far), and needing to deal with the inherent gimmick each level presents, but once I finally understood what I was supposed to be doing, the game finally started to become kinda enjoyable. It’s incredibly arcady in nature, and there’s a lot of fun risk and reward elements present with this kind of design: do you think you can risk it to go against the clock and go another lap to get some more points? Are you able to meticulously use your dash to chain items that would otherwise be somewhat out of reach? I did end up vibing with the general game flow in the end, but I must stress again, that’s AFTER I took the time to look up what the game wanted from me. if I have to look up an internet guide just to get a solid grasp on what I should even be doing or what any of the game’s mechanics even are? That is a major problem.

The bosses on the other hand don’t get any excuse, they SUUUUUUCK no matter what. It didn’t really matter if I knew how to fight them or not, they’re incredibly clunky, irritating to go against, and not really intuitive in the slightest. The only ones I didn’t really have a big problem with are the fat balloon lady (Puffy) and the final boss (Wizeman). The final boss is arguably way better than every other boss fight in this game and that’s only because it’s an obstacle dodging fest. Again, I really dig their creative designs and the idea of beating the boss as fast as possible to get a huge multiplier boost to score an even better rank at the end of the stage is a cool idea, it’s just…yknow…too bad they forgot to make any of them actually fun.

Every other aspect of NiGHTS is really well done. The dream world’s aesthetics are super creative and the visuals are top notch for the Saturn, even if the FMV cutscenes are…positively hideous to put it mildly. The music is really good too, I feel like I could drift off listening to the stage select theme all day. The arcady nature of the gameplay, when it eventually clicked with me, was a decent bit of fun! The game is also really short so it never felt like my time was wasted. However, the awful boss fights and the fact that the game doesn’t explain…anything really are pretty big negatives, especially for someone JUST getting into these games for the first time. Still though, I did end up appreciating my playthrough of NiGHTS Into Dreams in the end, and I guess that’s all I could really ask for.

Sorry to say but those sheep enemies in the first world still creep me tf out. They aren’t giant like they are in All Stars Racing Transformed but I still genuinely hate looking at them, kill them all in a massive fire immediately.

é difícil representar sonhos sem usar uma lógica de pessoa-acordada-tentando-fazer-sonhos-de-maneira-coerente-de-acordo-com-as-regras-da-narrativa e também difícil representá-los sem parecer só maluquinhos e psicodélicos e aleatórios, mas nights em todo o seu júbilo incessante alcança um equilíbrio muito além da demonstração onírica pré-estabelecida como ferramenta de enredo. feito para qualquer um que goste do sonho, da noite, ou que acredite em divinações para resolução de problemas de auto-estima mesmo depois de 33 d. C.

o único sonic possível em 1996