NiGHTS into Dreams...

Close your eyes and remember that feeling from a dream, where you float, glide through the air and the laws of gravity cease to apply. It was exactly this fleeting experience that Yuji Naka and Naoto Ōshima, the fathers of Sonic, decided to turn into a game. The result is NiGHTS into Dreams..., a visual poem and the flagship of the SEGA Saturn console.

You control NiGHTS, an androgynous clown-acrobat, and fly through the dream worlds of child heroes. Instead of just getting from point A to point B, the game rewards you for elegance and fluidity. You collect points for how smoothly you fly through chains of rings, how gracefully you link one maneuver to another and how long you sustain your flight without hesitation. It is a game about rhythm, the beauty of movement and the satisfaction of a perfectly executed route.

Sonic Team bet on something entirely new here. NiGHTS was also sold with an analog controller, the so-called 3D Control Pad, which allowed more sensitive and fluid control of flight than the classic digital d-pad permitted. It was one of the important steps on the road to how we control games in three-dimensional space today.

The atmosphere is utterly distinctive. The music, colors and dreamlike aesthetic merge into a soothing, almost meditative experience that resembles nothing else. It is not a game about combat and frustration, but about the joy of movement and the effort to surpass yourself, to beat your own record, to fly a route a little more elegantly.

To this day NiGHTS into Dreams... is revered as one of the defining games of the Saturn and as proof that Sonic Team could do much more than just a blue hedgehog. It is a title that demonstrates games can be an art that touches emotions as much as reflexes.

Why play: For the unmistakable feeling of flying in a dream and the dreamlike visual poem from Sonic's creators, one of the most distinctive and beautiful games the SEGA Saturn ever offered.