I have many fond memories with NiGHTS into Dreams. Many of them involve spending the entire day playing and begging for just ten more minutes each time my parents harassed me about it. My Sega Saturn collection was short-lived, but one game I am happy I had the opportunity to enjoy was NiGHTS. The excellent soundtrack composed by Naofumi Hataya, Tomoko Sasaki, and Fumie Kumatani would go on to be one of my favorite soundtracks I would later add to my iTunes collection.
The thing that made NiGHTs so much fun was that it was a carefree game. You could dive right in and play. You didn’t need detailed instructions or have to worry too much about the storyline. It could all be inferred and that is one of the beautiful things about older games. Sega games, mostly arcade ports, never relied on a heavy storyline to be enjoyable and rewarding.
The controls were different than any game I played before. You could more or less fly around on a designated path. It invoked the feeling of a dream world where you can do things you wouldn’t expect to do in a game during that era. You could pick from two characters: Claris or Elliot and explore their dreams. They combine forces with Nights to save the dream world, Nightopia, from monsters.
NiGHTS was one of Sonic Team’s best games and it’s hard to believe that this game is now 15 years old! To celebrate the occasion, there is a new OverClocked Remix released for free today. Grab it at: http://lucid.ocremix.org/ In addition, fans of NiGHTS are campaigning for Sega to port NiGHTS. You can help their campaign by giving a free pledge at http://www.nid15.com/
I just dusted off my Sega Saturn. Time to play some NiGHTs.
Checkout the NiGHTS birthday buzz on Twitter: #NiGHTS15 and NiGHTS into Dreams
Follow me on Twitter: @CarlosPlays
Carlos Plays 
3 responses to “Happy 15th Birthday NiGHTS!”
Words cannot express how much I freakin’ love this game. It even in a way made my old 5th grade buddy and I become better friends after beating it together, thus many other games were conquered after.
I’m sad to say that the Saturn is still a “missing link” in my Sega collection. It’ll Probably be my next “retro catch-up” purchase.
But wow, fifteen years… seems like yesterday the Saturn was a new craze.
You should def. get one if you can find one. There were quite a few great games on the system before Sega pulled the plug.