When you sleep at night you go off to a dream world. You do not always remember what happens there but sometimes you do.
NiGHTS Into Dreams is about two children entering a dream world, where they are aided by a being known as Nights. Every night, all human dreams are played out in Nightopia and Nightmare, the two parts of the dream world. In Nightopia, distinct aspects of dreamers' personalities are represented by luminous colored spheres known as Ideya. However, the evil ruler of Nightmare, Wizeman the Wicked, is stealing this dream energy from sleeping visitors, in order to gather power to take control of Nightopia and eventually the real world. To achieve this, he creates numerous beings called Nightmaren. They are in all in different levels. Level one Nightmaren are two acrobatic jester-like, flight-capable beings called Nights and Reala. However, Nights rebels against Wizeman's plans, and is punished by being imprisoned inside an Ideya palace, a gazebo-like container for dreamers' Ideya.
One day, Elliot Edwards and Claris Sinclair, two children from the city of Twin Seeds, go through failures. Elliot likes to play basketball, but is challenged by kids from another grade and loses. Claris wants to sing in a play but is overcome by stage-fright in front of the judges. That night, they both suffer nightmares that replay the events. They escape into Nightopia and find that they both possess the rare Red Ideya of Courage, the only type Wizeman cannot steal. They release Nights, who tells them about dreams, and Wizeman and his plans, and the three begin a journey to stop Wizeman and restore peace to Nightopia...And that is the place in which the player (that being you) pick up and play the game so i will not ruin the story anymore for anyone who has not yet played it.
Now i am going to move onto the major characters of NiGHTS Into Dreams:
Claris Sinclair:
Is a 14 year old girl who is a talented singer. Her ambition is to perform on stage. She auditions for a part in the events commemorating the centenary of the city of Twin Seeds. However, upon standing in front of the judges, she is overcome by stage fright and does not perform well.
Claris loses all hope of getting the role, and when she falls asleep that night, the evil spirits of Nightmare seize upon that fear, placing Claris in a nightmare version of the audition. Fleeing from the stage, she suddenly finds herself in a lush spring valley, with Nights calling to her.
Elliot Edwards:
Is a 14 year old boy who is a budding basketball player, enjoying a game with his friends one day. A group of older high school students arrive and challenge them to a game, causing Elliot to suffer a humiliating defeat on the court. That night, a nightmare replays the events, and Elliot runs blindly into the world of Nightopia, where he discovers the imprisoned Nights.
Nights:
Nights is a Nightmaren created by Wizeman to steal Red Ideya. Nights wears a purple jester style hat and outfit, with a Red Ideya shard shaped like a diamond on his chest. Nights is genderless, as stated by Iizuka. NiGHTS does not speak in the game, although he does make noise when he is injured. In the story, Nights betrays Wizeman and is sealed in the Ideya Palace until Elliot or Claris Dualizes with him to get the Ideya back.
Reala:
Reala is Wizeman's most trusted servant. Unlike Nights, Reala is cruel, brutal, clever, and completely loyal to Wizeman. Reala was responsible for Nights' imprisonment in the Ideya Palace. At the start of the boss fight against him, the character delivers one of the only two spoken lines in the entire game. However this line was not translated to English upon release, therefore it was thought he said, "There is no Nights!" which caused a rash of specualtion among fans as to what that meant. Actually Reala is speaking in Japanese slang, translated he says, "Let's go, Nights!" Reala has appeared in Nights into Dreams... and Nights: Journey of Dreams.
Wizeman the Wicked:
Wizeman is the main antagonist of the game. He is the evil ruler of Nightmare, the dark half of the dreamworld. Wizeman is the creator of the Nightmaren: Nights, Reala, Jackle, Clawz, Gulpo, Gillwing and Puffy, as well as many minor maren seen in the levels. When Nights rebelled against Wizeman, Reala became Wizeman's henchman. Wizeman is the final boss of the game; appears as hollow clothing and 6 hands, each with an eye in the palm. He has an array of mystical powers and abilities. During the boss battle, he brings Nights, Elliot and Claris into different locations.
With the story and the characters of NiGHTS Into Dreams out of the way it is time to move onto the gameplay. The game is split into seven levels and each of these are split into four Mares and a boss battle. The levels are distributed equally between the two child characters; three are unique to Claris, three to Elliot, and each play through an identical final seventh level, Twin Seeds. At the start of the game only Claris' Spring Valley and Elliot's Splash Garden are available, and successful completion of one of these unlocks the next level in that child's path. Previously completed stages may be revisited to improve the player's high scores. To get the last level to unlock you must get a C rank on all the other levels first.
At the start of each level, Wizeman's minions steal all the character's Ideya except the rare red type representing courage. The other Ideya colors in the game are yellow for hope, green for growth, blue for intelligence and white for purity. The goal of each of the four Mares in each level is to recover the stolen Ideya by collecting 20 blue chips and delivering them to the Ideya capture, which will overload and release the orb it holds. It is possible to complete some of the levels' goals by wandering around the landscape of Nightopia as Claris or Elliot pursued by an egg-shaped alarm clock which will wake the children up and end the level if it catches them (which in a way is so much like real life dreams), but the majority of the gameplay centers on Nights' flying sequences, triggered by walking into the Ideya palace near the start of each level and merging with the imprisoned acrobat. The gameplay as Nights is not completely 3D: players can only fly in the 2D plane of the screen, with their actual motion through the level determined by the automatic camera angle at that point in the Mare. The player has only a limited period available before Nights falls to the ground and turns back into Claris or Elliot, and each collision with an enemy subtracts five seconds from the time remaining.
Various acrobatic maneuvers can be performed, including the Paraloop, whereby flying around in a complete circle causes any items within the loop to be attracted towards Nights. The game features a combo system known as Linking whereby actions such as collecting items and flying through rings are worth more points when performed in quick succession than they are individually.After completing the four Mares, the player is transported to Nightmare to confront one of Wizeman's Nightmarens. The player has two minutes to defeat the boss, with the time taken contributing to the player's total score for that Dream. So you had better put in a good time. After each boss is defeated, a player can play a level again, and choose via the menu which boss to fight.
NiGHTS Into Dreams came out for the Sega Saturn in japan on July 5, 1996 in north america on August 21, 1996 and in the PAL regions on October 7, 1996 it then came out on the PlayStation 2 in February 21, 2008.
This is another one of thoes games that time has not realy been fair to. Its had a remake and a few other things but all in all it is a very overlooked game. So if you see this game give it a go and have a nice Nights sleep.