Year released: 1996 (SEGA Saturn)

Number of Players: 1 (2 players can battle)

Sonic Team has a weird idea: some NiGHTS thing calls upon Claris and Elliot in their dreams, awakening their bravery. They will need to help NiGHTS in order to stop Wizeman from escaping the dream world, Nightopia.

Graphics: Everything is so lush, like Sonic the Hedgehog (the first one). Even though many things are in 2D, they still come out graphically beautiful. The only thing that bugs me is when you drop out of NiGHTS form and you zoom right in close to the ground. That brings out how ugly the textures can get. Things don't get extremely blocky.
Oh, yeah, there are several 3D cutscenes that have beautiful, flowing animation and Toy Story-quality graphics.

Play control: WHEE-HAW! This game was boxed with Saturn's 3D controller. If you're going to play this game, it would be a great benefit to use a 3D analog controller.
NiGHTS, the thing you'll be playing as most of the time, can fly all around. However, it only does this in 2D. Well... the game keeps track of a 3D environment, but only allows NiGHTS to travel in 2D. Think of Kirby 64, if you can.
Because it only flies in 2D, NiGHTS can move up, down, left, right, and all around with the analog pad alone. The analog pad is so precise in NiGHTS into Dreams that when you fly, every one of your movements on the pad will make NiGHTs move along with it. This is crucial for getting high scores.
Pressing A, B, or C makes NiGHTs go into a drill attack. Unless you take action to fill it back up (going through loops), you will use up your drilling power. This meter doesn't drain too quickly, so you won't find yourself in a rough spot where you need drill power and have none.

Sound: AWESOME! Up to now, most of the stuff on Saturn I had heard was Nintendo 64 caliber. However, many instruments (especially boss fights) are on par with Dreamcast. Other than that, music is arranged in an elegant way, except for boss fights, where Sonic Team is inches away from overdoing the guitar, and ends up making some really catchy tracks.

Challenge: Not hard at all to beat the game. I beat it in three days. As you play, you are forced to become more in tune with NiGHTS--that is, you have to be able to go faster while staying in control and hitting all the places where you can get more points.

Gameplay: Fly through a stage while collecting blue orbs. Once you collect enough (20), you can go to a flying machine and destroy it with the blue orbs (done automatically; all you need to do is fly into it). You only have a limited time to do this, and once you run out of time, you have to complete the stage as an utterly useless gravity-bound character. He or she can move in full 3D, but can't fly. However, it doesn't take too long to get to the point where you are good enough that you don't run out of time.
You can drill into something to attack it, or make a loop around it to do the same thing. In 2 player battles (the only 2 player mode in the game), you must defeat the other player by forming loops in the air around them.
The courses lay floating rings to fly through and little floating chips to collect along a flowing landscape. The courses are so big and free that a lot of the time you won't even notice the landscape, and the layout of rings and chips becomes the landscape. It's what you could do if you could fly around in the sky... the great, big, open sky.

Bottom line: While it takes a bit of getting used to, it doesn't take extremely long. If you are a fan of Sonic 2 and the Sonic stages in Sonic Adventure 2 (especially the latter), NiGHTS will really please you. It stinks that there are only 7 stages in all (however, they are more than decent length). A lot of replay value comes in when going for the best score.

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