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Review by Rick Florey The talk of the video game industry, or at least the game players who make it an industry, is Sega's latest offering, Nights, and how it compares to Mario 64, despite the contention from numerous sources that Nights does not belong to the Mario, or any other, genre. Game Fan and Intelligent Gamer's Fusion have even devoted their covers to this challenge. However the comparison is impossible. You might as well compare Mario 64 to a hockey game Anyone can tell by merely playing it that Nights is definitely in a class by itself. Nights is the one of the most hyped games in Sega's history. Its advertising budget surpasses any of Sega's other games to date, including Sonic. It was developed by Sonic Team, with Yuji Naka, the creator of Sonic, at the helm. Nights owes its existence to Naka's musing on flight while on a plane trip, and his flight system is based on the one they used for Knuckles. With such a developer, how could it go wrong? Taking all of this into account when I went to my local Electronics Boutique. I had read all of the articles and heard all of the chatter, so I bought it with more than a little trepidation. Games hyped so much rarely live up to their rep. Deciding to accept the inevitable, I bought the pack with Sega's new 3D analog controller. Any review you read about Nights, good or bad, is going to talk about the absolutely stellar graphics. There is some clipping, but the missing polys are gone for a just a blink of an eye. You'll find more clipping than this in most PlayStation or Saturn titles anyway. Nights puts the lie to the PlayStation crowd's snickering, as it features 3D graphics, lush color, transparencies, light sourcing, and much more. Pretty much anything graphically the Saturn wasn't supposed to do, Nights does, and it does it totally in the hardware. Nights' storyline is as transcendental as everything else about the game. The setting is the land of dreams, where all humans go when they fall asleep. A powerful nightmare called Wizeman wishes to take over the land of dreams and takes portions of visiting humans' minds to do it. Among his army of Nightmarians are his powerful hench-dreams Nights and Reala. Nights rebels against Wizeman, and is imprisoned. Meanwhile, two children from the city of Twin Seeds, total strangers to each other, are brought into the adventure. Elliot, a boy who wishes to be a basketball player, is shown up by older, bigger kids. Claris, who wishes to be a singer, gets stage fright at an audition. Both relive these events in their dreams, and are brought into the Nightmarian dreamscape. In separate adventures they both manage to escape and find Nights, who they can combine with to free. Claris and Elliot not only have different adventures, but different levels to go through as well. Each is very distinctive. Nights' control is greatly enhanced with the new analog pad. It's about the size of a book and fits easily in your hands, and the analog 'stick' is in easy reach. The pad also has the standard digital mode, and is compatible with any Saturn game. With the proper equipment in hand, Nights is a joy to play. Control is tight and responsive. I was particularly suprised with the feeling of free flight you can have. A serious bone of contention about Nights was its Panzer Dragoon-ish flight, but with lots of multiple routes, the ability to fly the other way, and constant change of direction, not to mention over 50 aerobatic maneuvers, Nights seems to offer a freedom you just can't get with a true flight sim. Nights can loop around his enemies or attack them head-on, and he can also morph into different shapes to travel, such as a toboggan to sled down the mountains, or a merman (maid?) to go through the sea, but playing as Nights is only half the game. When Nights' clock runs out he has to go back to his little prison, and leaves Claris or Elliot high and dry. When returned to human form, Claris and Elliot can walk around in full 3D. Unfortunately they cannot attack anyone or do most of the things Nights can, but they can fully explore the areas, even finding places inaccessable by Nights. Upon either Nights or the kids getting 20 of the blue orbs scattered throughout the levels, they can retrieve part of the kids' stolen mentality, or "Ideyas". When the kids retrieve them, they can recombine with Nights. Upon retrieval of all 4 Ideyas, Nights goes off to face a level boss, chosen by the computer based on your performance. Of these, the most impressive is Reala, a sort of Anti-Nights. Upon defeating Reala, you and another player can dogfight each other using Nights and Reala. Nights also sports an advanced feature called Artificial Life. This centers around the happy little Nightopians; good dreams who can and do help you, based on whether or not you kill and/or hatch them, but who mostly just hang out, blissfully whistling, sleeping fishing, or doing various other things. If two Nightopians stay around each other long enough, an egg appears (don't ask me how). Either Nights or the kids can touch it, and it'll hatch. Based on the parents respective 'jobs' the kid adopts a mixture of the two parents' tasks. If the parents are different enough, a mutant Nightopian will hatch, looking totally different and new each time. Nightopians can be very useful. They can follow Nights to help him grab power-ups, and point the way to goals, and many other tasks. However if you kill Nightopians, they'll help you less, and eventually run from you. Another feature of Artificial Life is that the music changes depending on how you're treating the Nightopians. Though innovative and interesting, the Artificial Life feature is memory-intensive, requiring over 90 blocks of the Saturn's memory. A memory card is reccomended. As an added feature, Nights Windows wallpaper for PCs is included on the disc. Bottom Line: Nights is a must-buy. This is one of those games you never forget. If you have a Saturn this is the game to get for it, and if you don't, this is the game to get it for. If you'd like to play a game like NOTHING you've ever played before, but with a feel reminiscent of the best in action games, color and graphics beyond what you've seen in arcades, and truly innovative and trendsetting advancements in nearly every category, then you'll find Nights to be your dream game.
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