Nights Into Dreams/journey Of Dreams

[wazzal]

Nights into Dreams for the Sega Saturn has become somewhat of a classic. I still find myself playing it from time to time. XD

So last year I was extremely hyped about the sequel on the Wii! I reserved it and ended up paying a good $70 for it. I put it in

my Wii and was AMAZED!!! Two weeks later, it got boring :/ I still have yet to complete it, and I would rather play the original.

So, what are your opinions on either of these two games? Which have you played the most, which do you still play, were you dissapointed with the sequel?

(You can also mention the awesomeness that is Christmas NID)

[E-Day]

I didn't play the original, and the Wii version is one of the many backlogged games I have yet to play for the Wii.

[meppi]

Without a doubt one of my favourite games ever.

I still remember the first evening I played the original.

Me and a friend had gone to this little shop which sold lots of import games, but also regular ones.

They only had one copy of NiGHTS left since they were expecting a new pack to come out in 2-3 weeks where the game along with the 3D controller would be sold for only €50. (the regular price of games ware then still €60-70 over here)

He decided to get the regular game and I would wait for the new pack with the controller.

We came home and popped in the game, without knowing what to expect.

He started flying around aimlessly trying to figure out what he should be doing.

After a half an hour or so of going back and forth, I picked up the instruction booklet and read more or less how the game should be played.

Things started going much smoother after that.

Once the game clicked with me (and him as well), I remember saying that this game was either made by a genius or by a madman.

I just instantly fell in love with it.

After getting my own copy I started noticing the various ways you could tackle the game and all the various hidden details.

Endless links, Score multipliers, hidden bonuses, the NiGHTopians, Nightmarens and Mepians and how they all were connected together.

There might not be such a thing as a perfect game, but for me this is indeed one of those.

I love everything about it, simple as that.

A while later I got Christmas NiGHTS as a gift from the same shopkeeper.

Can't believe Sega gave this away as a Christmas freebie.

They days I spent on Frozen Bell trying to beat my Link Attack score...

I was so happy when the rumors finally became reality and Sega announced the sequel for Wii.

The only problem is that they had now way of ever competing with the marvel they had created 10 years ago.

Is Journey into Dreams a good game? Sure. Better than the original? Not even close.

The biggest problem I found with the Wii game is that they felt the need to add so much content to the game that in fact it takes away from the purity of the game.

Half of those new objectives could have easily been dropped from the game as well as the extended story elements, and I believe we would have gotten a much more balanced end result.

Also I don't like the way they changed the score based gameplay.

They way you are forced to play every lap just once and then move onto the next one.

I know you can avoid catching the bird, but it doesn't help your score or anything. And since the blue spheres don't reappear for the next lap, you have to make sure you need to get it perfect on your first run instead of being able to link several laps together before moving on to the next course.

This is actually the thing that bothers me the most about Journey of Dreams.

I may seem very harsh on the sequel, but that's because I love the original so much and Sega messed around to much with the basics of the game for my taste.

It certainly is a great game, and would it be the first NiGHTS, I'm sure I would have much less critique on it.

But like I said, that's because I simply adore the original.

Thinking about it, I never got around to finishing it so I could start playing all the good stages when I wanted.

I think I'm of to Nightopia again.

[meppi]

Back once again.

Started playing Journey of Dreams and got a couple levels further in Will's story before I remembered I still had the Nightopia Dream Pack for the Japanese PS2, which I still hadn't unpacked.

JoD is fun and all, but it's just not the same, and the levels feel much slower than the original probably due to them being quite a bit larger and mostly by having the spheres and rings too much spread out.

But NiGHTS is a game that gets better the more you repeat it, so it might still get better once I know the levels like the back of my hand.

Moving onto the Japanese PS2 port/remake of NiGHST into Dreams.

There's both a Saturn port as well as a full blown remake in there which keeps the original gameplay and levels and all in tact, but used lovely high-res graphics.

The thing that excited me the most about this port+remake was the thought of having a slowdown free NiD.

As you might know, NiGHTS on Saturn runs very smoothly and without any noticeable slowdown whatsoever.

That is until you start breeding families of Pians.

And should these Pians gather up in packs larger than 10 you will start to see some slowdown.

You can always eliminate a couple of Pians, but I never had the stomach for that.

Well, the god news is that in the PS2 version there doesn't seem to be any immediate slowdown.

But, and there's a big but, at least for me.

There seems to be something that feels "off" about the game.

I couldn't put my finger on it first. I thought it looked like it was running a tiny bit too fast, even during the loading screens.

And this is using unmodified Japanese PS2 hardware along with a genuine Japanese version of the game.

So I popped in my Japanese Saturn copy to see if this was in fact the case or if I was simply losing my mind.

Lo and behold, the game does indeed seem to run a tiny bit too fast, but what's more problematic is that it controls very twitchy compared to the Saturn original with the 3D pad.

At first I thought it might be due to the difference in controllers, but that's not it.

There seems to be something has gone wrong with the port, even though a casual NiGHTS fan might think it's pretty much spot on.

Sadly it's not.

Don't get me wrong, it's an incredible port, and possible as close to the original as we're ever going to see without having a 100% perfect working Saturn emulator.

Like I said, a casual NiGHTS fan might not even notice it and might think I'm full of it.

But someone who has been routinely playing NiGHTS for more than 10 years now, will start noticing things which don't work the way they used to. Enemies behaving a slight it differently and Nightopians acting differently as well.

To give an example, in the second course of Spring Valley where the wind blows you up the mountain.

on 2'20" here:

Normally if you don't fight the wind you will be blown almost straight into the rings at the top of the mountain.

Well now in the remake as well as the Saturn port on the PS2 the wind doesn't carry you far enough up the mountain to throw you into the rings. Instead you get thrown just beneath them if you don't compensate for the lack of wind.

I know this seems like nitpicking but it's just an example of how highlevel play is changed in the PS2 version, which probably will annoy longtime fans.

Now the worst part is this. Due to the twitchy feel of NiGHTS on PS2, not even the silky smooth framerate can help me from getting motion sick just like I sometimes get from an FPS in the wrong circumstances.

On Saturn, you get the feeling of actually gliding on the air beneath you when you come out of a paraloop and boost away horizontally.

In the PS2 versions you instantly change direction, making the camera twitch along with the action ever so slightly and therefor making it seem like the screen is constantly jolting up and down, left and right when you're performing acrobatic moves.

And so my head starts to spin as well and my stomach starts to feel queazy.

So if there's a hardcore NiGHTS fan reading this and wondering if he should hunt down the PS2 version to get the ultimate NiGHTS experience, I would say, simply stick with your Saturn and a copy of the game. You can't go wrong with the original, or with Christmas NiGHTS either, which is even a bit smoother.

The PS2 one is a great port, but it does have it's flaws sadly enough.

[zh666]

I got a Saturn either the year or the year before the original Nights came out, and I can't say I ever bought into all the hype for it. It just never appealed to me, the new Wii game isn't winning me over either.

[natinh0]

Just got mine this month and i´m really really enjoing the game, just finished the girl drem last weekend and reached the boy´s one today!

But i watched some gameplay footage on youtube of the wii one and i really have to say that it looks like it lost the magic, and the walking stages then?

ow gosh!

[B coma]

I've been a long time fan of Nights, probably ever since I played the hell out of it in the store kiosks while other folks were too busy waiting in line to play Super Mario 64 to bother with the Saturn stuff.

Come to think of it, it was kind of funny, since the kiosk was running the full version of the Nights while PSX and N64 stations either contained demos or periodic resets. Anyhow, I wasn't able to play Nights again until I was an adult with a full time job, as I purchased my Saturn from ebay not too long ago.

Shame to hear about Journey of Dreams - I was quite weary of it after my experience with Sonic and the Secret Rings. Not that it was bad game per se, infact, it was quite good compared to other recent Sonic titles. It's just that, as another poster here mentioned about JoD, Sega was content to divert it attention by cramming a bunch of junk into the game. Not many people developing Sega games these days seems to realize that the pure joy of movement was rewarding in and of itself in the classic iterations of their major franchises... I mean content is okay, but I'd rather play through a well designed Genesis Sonic game 8 times than to be forced through a bunch of arbitrary missions in Secret Rings just to see all of the levels.

So I will probably pick up JoD at some point, probably because of this thread even, but I'll probably wait for a bargain.

Edited September 11, 2008 by B coma

[lisalover1]

I'm a big NiGHTS fan, and both games were very fun to play. I like how its gameplay puts it in a genre entirely its own.

[scorpiove]

When I bought my Sega saturn for like $30 funcoland gave me Christmas Nights and Virtua Cop as well as Daytona usa. Also because they didn't know what to do with it thye gave me knuckles chaotics for the 32x it was pretty cool. I loved playing Christmas Nights. As of recently I bought Nights into Dreams off of ebay. Never been opened! I also have Nights on the wii which the quality could have been a bit higher I believe it was an awesome game still.

[ocelot]

Is it out on PSN yet, I heard it was being refreshed for the PSN downloadable games catalogue.