NiGHTS into Dreams…

Have you ever wanted to spread your wings and fly? You can, with one of my favorite video games of all time: NiGHTS into Dreams… Originally made for the Sega Saturn by Naoto Ohshima and Yuji Naka, two of the principal driving forces behind Sonic the Hedgehog, NiGHTS is a game that is the textbook definition of “cult classic.” Ask around wherever geeks assemble and chances are that you will find someone who will rabidly lay out every minute detail of every mare of every dream in the game (there is a significant chance that that someone will be me).

What makes this game so spectacular? Well, the simple answer is that it is a game worth combing through in exacting detail because it is intelligent and uplifting. Unlike the ninety thousand first-person shooters and sandboxes drowning the video game market with little innovation and even less thought, NiGHTS is unique and deep. At first glance, the game is mechanically almost entirely an afterthought. You guide NiGHTS, a purple jester character, around different circuits in a stage, collecting blue chips and stars and flying through hoops, until you square off with a boss. NiGHTS can collect more blue chips and stars by circling around them. NiGHTS can also defeat the few enemies that are around in the same method. The enemies never kill NiGHTS; they merely chip away at the timer, which starts at 120 seconds for each circuit. If the timer hits 0, NiGHTS disappears and you automatically get an F rank for the circuit. If the timer reaches 0 during a boss battle, you fail the whole stage. Most bosses are defeated by getting in their faces and shoving them.

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Now, I know what you’re thinking: “That doesn’t sound deep at all!” On the surface, no, but very little is deep on the surface. To understand this game, we must dig deeper. NiGHTS is the story of two dreamers: Claris Sinclair and Elliot Edwards. Claris aspires to be a great singer but is crippled by paralyzing stage fright. Elliot is your normal young teen, but when some high school boys show him up in a game of basketball, he is stricken with doubt in his abilities. Both children escape to the world of dreams, Nightopia, and encounter the androgynous nightmare creature NiGHTS. A wicked wizard named Wizeman is contriving to conquer Nightopia and stamp dark nightmares into everyone’s mind using his nightmare creatures. Only NiGHTS has rebelled against Wizeman, for which the jester has been imprisoned. Both Claris and Elliot possess just enough courage to free NiGHTS and share a consciousness and body with the jester, whereupon NiGHTS sets out to liberate Nightopia. Even this is a superficial understanding of the game. Let us take a closer look.

Dreams and the subconscious mind are pivotal elements of the story of this game. Some dreams are reflective of things in our reality. Claris adores her father but has mixed feelings about his behavior and Elliot has a strained relationship with his mother. Both find solace in their ideal dreamscapes (Spring Valley and Splash Garden, respectively) and have to protect them from nightmare representations of their parents. Gillwing is a dragon representing Claris’s hostile father. Traditionally, Gillwing is defeated by pushing him away. Why? Females, like Claris, tend to fight more defensively, whereas Elliot fights the nightmare representation of his mother, Puffy, by shoving her into furniture in an aggressive manner as would be expected of a male. How many games do you know think things through that thoroughly?

Archetypes also form a core element of the game. Carl Jung, a student of Sigmund Freud, propounded several archetypal forms common in all parts of the world, and these archetypes are visible in NiGHTS.

• Jackle (trickster archetype): throws tarot cards and laughs hysterically when he hits NiGHTS, but is in fact nothing more than a face, hands, and feet hiding behind a cape. He is literally that insubstantial.
• Reala (shadow archetype): the Shadow is the darker side of one’s personality, usually held in the unconscious. Reala is a perfect foil to NiGHTS in every regard. Three guesses as to what Reala is supposed to represent in contrast to the dreamy world of NiGHTS (here’s a hint: look at the first four letters of his name). He is the only “shadow” that Sonic Team should proudly proclaim as its own.
• Wizeman (wise old man archetype): a cunning wizard, Wizeman is deceptive and powerful. He created all of the Nightmarens to invade Nightopia.

Claris and Elliot (who are the animus and anima archetypes, respectively) are pulled along in NiGHTS’s rebellion against Wizeman and grow in the process. Each stage, or dream, is divided into four circuits, or mares. Each mare represents the development of an Ideya, a spiritual ideal that has been imprisoned in egg-like containers that NiGHTS must break before time expires on the mare in order to proceed to the next mare. The dreamers enter Nightopia with the first Ideya: Courage. The other four are Intelligence, Growth, Purity, and Hope. It is with these five traits that Claris, Elliot, and NiGHTS can vanquish Wizeman. However, if Wizeman is destroyed, all his creations will be destroyed as well, including NiGHTS. Is that a risk that NiGHTS is willing to take for a world that NiGHTS does not even know? How do Claris and Elliot take what they learned in their dreams and apply it to their lives?

All of this is conveyed with virtually no dialogue at all. A common criticism among Steam reviewers is, “I don’t get it.” In an age where video games beat every obvious detail into your head while narrating a story, it is more than welcome to have a video game that has that rare trait: subtlety. Not all games have to be overt to be good. Perhaps it is time to open your mind and let it fly. It is also said that the game does not make the most of its 3D environment by limiting the core gameplay to a 2D plane. That is not a wrong assessment but it is also one that reflects a modern approach to 3D game design. When NiGHTS was released in 1996, it was revolutionary, being the first game to use the modern analogue control stick. This pioneering goes unheralded today because it is so commonplace now. The gameplay holds up well and its arcade style adds to its addictive quality. Other games with a full range of 3D motion are more forgettable because they are so mainstream. The colorful, vibrant, and dreamy atmosphere of NiGHTS sets it apart from anything else. Considering I did not play this game until its release on Steam a few years ago, this is not my opinion as filtered through childhood nostalgia. NiGHTS is the real deal.

Go grab yourself a copy of NiGHTS into Dreams… on Steam. This is the perfect opportunity to try this game out for yourself. Even if the story does not grab you (in which case check to see if you still have a pulse), the music is beautiful and the game is of the lost age of replayable arcade games. You play for score attack, seeing how to rack up more points by finessing your gameplay. Will you get the coveted 2.0X multiplier from every boss and A rank every dream? Will you paraloop all of Gillwing’s tail in one sweep? Will you find all of the hidden caches of blue chips in every dream? Do you want to experience the joy of flying high?

This game is the stuff dreams are made of.