Another day, another old SEGA game that only existed on SEGA consoles for a while. Nights Into Dreams is a game I only knew about because the Sonic Dreamcast games kept referencing it. Is it any good? Well…
In Nights into Dreams, you play as one of two kids who have some kinda of dream-related thing stolen from them. With the help of the jester-looking protagonist, you must fly around and recover the things in many colorful levels, then face a boss at the end of each one.
This being an early 3d game, I expected most of the focus to be on the flight. And it was… but it also was in 2.5d, which shocked me. The flight has no 3d movement. If you fail to recover the dream thingies in time, control switches over to the kids, who do have limited 3d movement, but that movement was clearly not the focus of the game. The flight was.
Once I got over the shock of limited movement, I came to appreciate what this game did at the time. There are sequences where the movement changes to top-down, where it curves around poles and switches, or where the jester ends up sledding or twirling down rails. For an old game at the beginning of the 3d era, these setpiece moments are innovative and neat.
But are they fun today? Eh. I didn’t hate these segments, but just felt kind of bored. The biggest challenge was finding the location of the dream thingy with the restrictive game camera.
The boss battles I played exhibited a lot of variety though, and reminded me of Sonic game bosses. Some had to be corralled, some I had to launch myself at, and there was at least one boss that I defeated without ever knowing how I did it.
Verdict: One hour played, 5/8 levels beaten.
Kyle Adams 