• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Was NiGHTs really that good of a game

Bildi said:
Easy there hotrod - that's not helping the team.
Click to expand...

I dunno what team in particular you're talking about, but I'm not interested in helping it. I was being serious.

LevelNth said:
It's my favorite Saturn title, and my favorite Sega title. Yeah, I'd say it's that good. I really wish Sega would give us a remake or port or something. I hate having to hang onto my Saturn just for this game.
Click to expand...

Ah, well, you don't have to hold onto your Saturn for just one game. NiGHTS is awesome, this is true, but the Saturn has so many other cool and great games you should have plenty to keep for it.
 
Just want to add that the game rocks. One of my favorite games ever. People who call it 'overrated' just don't understand it. The game is pretty off-the-wall, so I can understand that.

I pray that one day there will be a perfect port of this on a new system so everybody can play it again without having to break out the old Saturn.
 
methane47 said:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=KKvLdIylY40

Hmmmm...after watching that video... I'm glad I got a playstation...

game doesn't seem to be free at all.. Looks like its the person is stuck on a loose rail system..... I think the commercial of this game was much better than actually watching the game being played...

:) :) just my opinion :D :D
Click to expand...

Wow, whoever's playing that is shit.
 
As I recall, it's the first game I ever played with an analog stick. I really, really hated it. I just don't see the appeal of flying through rings. As for the comment about racing games being just driving... well I generally hate those too but at least they have a competitive feel to them.
 
I really enjoyed it (although I haven't played it in years), but I can see how it's definitely not for everyone, it's one of the those games you have to enjoy replaying levels and linking/combos that kind of thing. I liked it in Nights, but I don't always love that style of game design in every game.
 
vitaflo said:
I popped it in my Saturn last week when I heard about the Wii rumors just to see how it lived up after all this time away from it.

It's a good game, but I think a lot of people are remembering it to be better than it really is. That, and it was obvious to me while playing it again, that Sega would totally screw this game up if they make a sequel. It would be way too easy for them to.
Click to expand...

Welcome to 95% of the older games GAF talks about. Any sequel to this game is automatically ruined thanks to absurdly high expectations, and nostalgia colored glasses. Plus, as you said, Sega would just **** it up.
 
I don't know what to say, I got a SEGA Saturn on e-bay a few years ago (2003 or 2004, I do not remember) and Nights was included in the auction and quite frankly it rocks. Enjoyable, fun, addicting, and challenging which is really nothing to downplay.
 
Mr. Mister said:
one of my all time favs.

it was tony hawk before tony hawk was out.
Click to expand...

That is exactly the comparison i always make to people who ask me what the fuss is all about.
T Hawk has that same 2 tiers of gameplay where the 1st is all about having fun trying to figure how things work and just doing enough to advance to the next level. After a while you start to gettin frustrated as you can't understand how you are expected to get some of the high scores/ranks but then after weeks/months of trying it all just clicks and thats where the next level of gameplay is unlocked.
Other games that i felt like this were SF2 (i remember the 1st time i managed to do a dragon punch) and Gunvalkyrie.

Gunvalkyrie had one overly tough control system (to this day no one seems to have come up with a definitive way of of controlling a character in a 3d space ala superman) and i would of thought the game completly broken if i had not watched the rolling demo that showed some truely inspiring expert play.
 
I remember buying this from local importer in York day he got it in with the pad on JPN. I used to spend a lot of money back then and I finished it "I thought" in about an hour or two. Thought is that it and took it back and bought something else (as he used to let me take the odd thing back if I didnt like it for a swap). I bought it again on PAL when it finally came out and played it to death for years. Its just one of those games for me what I didnt get at first look as it has a lot of hidden depth to it.

I ended up buying another Saturn about 4yrs ago (after a so called friend borrowed another one but nicked it) and it was one of the first games I rebought.
 
No, not really. Just like many other games that happened to appeal to vocal minorities such as Kid Ikarus and Valkylie Profile, it's getting attention thankings to those few people. There is nothing wrong with liking games, just not an objective representation of the games.
 
itsme said:
No, not really. Just like many other games that happened to appeal to vocal minorities such as Kid Ikarus and Valkylie Profile, it's getting attention thankings to those few people. There is nothing wrong with liking games, just not an objective representation of the games.
Click to expand...

Well, there really isn't an objective representation of any game. All you can do is find out if people of similar taste to yours enjoyed the game or try it yourself.

Oh, and for the time it came out, Kid Icarus was faaaaaaaar from low profile, anyone who was playing games at the time can confirm that. It was just as big in popularity as Metroid, Mega Man, Castlevania, or Legend of Zelda. It just wasn't refined in future versions like those other games.
 
Ah, I remember all the debates NiGHTS inspired. It was a pretty polarizing game back then, like Ico is now. People either "got" it, or they didn't. To me it was like a racing game, I played it over and over trying to perfect my chosen route through each course. I remember my high scores absolutely SHATTERED the score you needed to get S-rank. People complained that there weren't enough levels, but I think I spent 90% of my time playing Eliots and Claris's first stages.

There are a lot games I miss from the Saturn (I sold it a few years ago, once I sold Panzer Dragoon Saga for $180 I didn't see the point in keeping anything else), but I probably miss NiGHTS the most. I bet I could pick that game up today and do just as well as I did back in the day, I bet it would be like riding a bike.

That being said I have absolutely ZERO faith in Sega/Sonic Team to do a worthy sequel on Wii or any other platform. I'm convinced that NiGHTS genius was accidental, as everything Sonic Team has done since then has been shit (Max power Burning Rangers WOW!).

EDIT: Before I sold it I made sure to rip the audio tracks from the disc. I love the stage select music.
 
Do you remember the first time you saw Mario, Sonic, Final Fantasy, Resident Evil or Halo? Nights is one of those type games. You get those "OHHH SH!T I didn't know I could do that!" moments!
 
People who say that NiGHTS is getting the rose tinted specs treatment..... any single one of you like the game in the first place?

If you liked/loved it when it first came out, you will still like/love it now. Its so incredibly well crafted and beautifully controlled that it could come out today - with "better" graphics - exactly as it is and still be the best game of the year.

It is the best game ever created and the closest gaming has ever come to art in my opinion. Probobly because it is drenched in the stuff, from the orgasmic music to the wonderful art.

Just my two pennies worth.

NiGHTS into Dreams FTMFW.
 
Man these Youtube videos are painful. A big problem back then (and a big one now I guess) is that people didn't have a clue how to play the game properly. The biggest problem is most people just held down the boost button and didn't understand why they couldn't control worth a damn. You're supposed to let up on the boost when you need to make sharp turns.

Another thing people didn't seem to realize is that you can use the L and R buttons to make tighter maneuvers. Depending on which direction the analogue stick was pointing when you hit L/R NiGHTS would do a special move. So a good player would hold down boost, let up as they approached a circle of stars/spheres, then use the L/R buttons to do a tight circle around the stars/spheres, capturing them all, then zip on to the next area.

EDIT: Oh man, I totally forgot about those little dudes in the eggs and the dynamic music in the game.
 
Yusaku said:
EDIT: Oh man, I totally forgot about those little dudes in the eggs and the dynamic music in the game.
Click to expand...
How could you forget about the nightopians? Trying to create cross breeds of various mepians is so much fun. It's almost a whole other game on it's own.

I never was able to get a King Pian though, but I'm still trying, even after 10 years. :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sY5qBCxdaM
 
I always found that the difference between getting a C and a top rank was pretty obscure. The game was pretty for the time and made clever use of all the chips inside the Saturn but it really wasn't all that appealing or satisfying. You couldn't get away with making that game in todays market which is sad but also understandable.
 
Yeah, that whole "Dividing rank grades by unchanging score requirements" thing can be a real head trip.

I don't think Nights would have sold any worse today, provided it was the same game graphically brought up to par. It's not like it was a smash hit at the time. In fact, when it came out it got pretty much the same results we're getting here. Many liked it, and those who liked it, liked it a lot, but there were a lot of people the game didn't click for, and for them the game was shallow trash.

The game has a tremendous amount of heart, but if you aren't a score-attacker, very little meat to chew on. I don't know what switch in the brain is flipped in score-attackers, but I'm pretty glad to be one. I wouldn't enjoy games nearly as much if I weren't.
 
I hadn't been a get the high-score kinda person for years (and most of that I think was due to the arcades, and a large collection of gamer friends), but I got so good at that game, I didn't waste a single milisecond, knew all the shortcuts, used acrobatics to close loops/continue links..

It was comparable to playing Lumines and racking up huge-screen clearing combos, after a certain amount of practice you didn't even have to think about what you were doing.

Now I wanna bust out the Saturn and give it a few playthroughs again (FFVII killed my practice striek). Too bad my d-pad is severely worn out :(

I've got the OST+Christmas Nights on my PC too, just ripped it to my PS3 with The Black Mages, great listens, both.
 
It was a pretty good game at the time. Sometime about 2 years ago it became incredibly popular to praise old and not particularily popular games, example including: Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, FF8, <random Japanese RPG on PS1/2>, Starfox, and Nights.
 
This game was all about skill, playing it to finish it was not the goal, but achieving perfection made it so much fun.

I still play it from time to time, I got myself 2 spare "3D-pads" just to make sure I will alway be able to play it. Now I hope my Saturn never breaks...
 
Nights was a great game that was also incredibly overhyped by Sega fanboys. I guess I liked it more than Mario 64, but then I never cared for it much in the first place.

I'll take Jumping Flash! 1 and 2 over both of them any day.
 
meppi said:
Wow! It was mainly thanks to him that I got into Saturn gaming in the first place! :D

Glad there are other people out there like this.
I absolutely love CVG back then with Ed Lomas, Paul Davies, Tom Guise and the crew, as well as the Official Saturn Magazine.
Too bad it's so hard to find those magazines nowadays. I actually bought a couple of SSM a month or so ago. :)
Click to expand...

The golden days them were.

Last I checked in, Ed now writes for music mags back in London, Paul does stuff for Konami and writes for Yahoo UK too and Tom edits Penthouse in Australia. Yes, the porn mag.

CVG mag is dead by the way - Future Publishing killed it. Future Publishing = DEMON.
 
Ah, I heard Ed Lomas worked for the BBC on children's programs of some sort...

Too bad those days will never come back. :(
That was probably my most enjoyable time as a gamer, and a big reason why I'm still passionate about this hobby.

I read somewhere that CVG has seized to exist as a magazine, and I wasn't really surprised to be honest.
I kept buying the magazine for another year after the redesign in '99, hoping that it would get better again, but after coming to terms that it never would and the old crew was gone, I just gave up.
Like many others it would seem.

Been playing NiGHTS all week now, along with many other Saturn classics.
I've said it before, but anytime I feel like giving up on gaming or simply losing my interest, the retro stuff pulls me back in and relights the fire. :)

I'm actually glad that there are still so many classics out there that I've missed out on over the years.
This way I know I've got many, many years to before I have to worry about completing my collection and having nothing to look forward (or backward) to. ;)
 
Instigator said:
The soundtrack was amazing and innovative. I wish more games would follow suit and have tunes changing with each play.
Click to expand...

Well, other games have followed suit, but NO WHERE as good as NiGHTS. Again, one of the gaming soundtracks of all time. Also, the last truly good Sonic Team game. Okay, Samba was pretty decent...
 
Yes it was, it was the perfect example of Sega's style of game play back in their heyday. It was not about making long laborious games with obvious goals/carrot. They made games that were just fun to play and replay ability came from that.

I can't imagine playing nights with any other controller than the analog Saturn pad. If they come out a sequel/remake they need to include that pad.
 
Just played this for the first time after wanting it for what, 9 years now?

Right now I have no idea wtf is going on cause I just jumped in not knowing what to expect other than the taste of Nights I got from the PSO download to GBA. It's not bad. I had the impression it was a sort of free flying non-rail game though since it uses a '3d controller' and all.

So hows the story presentation wise? Are there any in-game cutscenes or text to help the plot unfold? Or is it pretty much all gameplay?
 
Shinoobi said:
Just played this for the first time after wanting it for what, 9 years now?

Right now I have no idea wtf is going on cause I just jumped in not knowing what to expect other than the taste of Nights I got from the PSO download to GBA. It's not bad. I had the impression it was a sort of free flying non-rail game though since it uses a '3d controller' and all.

So hows the story presentation wise? Are there any in-game cutscenes or text to help the plot unfold? Or is it pretty much all gameplay?
Click to expand...

There's a cinema at the beginning and end. The story is about as important and well-developed as Mario 64's. So enjoy the gameplay and the aesthetics, because that's what really earned the fans.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Apart from Expedition 33, the only game this year that really surprised me was Ender Magnolia
21
427
Cert.in.Death replied
The New Game+ showcase was a good first attempt at a gaming showcase, but ultimately it was brought down by nonstop talking and lack of big games.
Opinion 
12
122
xrnzaaas replied
What game you just recently found (finally installed) that you really fucking like?
0
89
Ainem Enamas replied
Jez corden says that ninja theory's project mara was only a concept and was never actually a game in development.
News  2 3
103
104
Giallo Corsa replied
forum game: List off every good PS2 game you can think of. No repeats
2 3 4
179
370
P.Jack replied
Top Bottom