The Gamer's Quarter

[dessgeega]

so i've put it off long enough. i want to play nights!

from what i've gathered, i don't want to play the game without the analog pad - which i would also have to locate. i am trying to assess my options:

are saturn controllers (specifically the analog pad) region-free? can i buy an analog pad in america and use it to play a japanese copy of nights in my japanese saturn? that would probably be the most convenient option right now.

give me the straight dope, internet spacebrain.
_________________

[JasonMoses]

[Lestrade]

Dess, it is my wish to do this as well. Let's combo-photo-blog Nights!

[dessgeega]

my friend,

you

are

on.
_________________

[Crazy Bacon Lips]

Very few controllers are actually region-encoded, except for the PCE Avenue pad, which does not work in US Duos. I don't know why. NEC really hated America.

[ryan]

Can anyone get in on this Nights action?

I have the original and Christmas version ready to go. Ready ... seeeeettttt ...
_________________
Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[elvis.shrugged]

I'll join in. I've been itching to play some Nights lately. I also have both games. ^_^

[Cycle]

I replaced the battery in my saturn, so i can actually save my games now. so count me in.
_________________

[JasonMoses]

I've owned the game and an analog controller for years without really thinking much of it. Count me in!

[B coma]

Coincidentally, I just topped a couple of my high scores this weekend (I don't "fix" the bosses on any dreams - I keep them default). Uh. I'll be sticking around this thread.

(also, I played on the widescreen TV in the living room. Nights has widescreen!)

[dessgeega]

okay, i just ordered a copy of jp-nights and an analog controller.

gamer's quarter game club: nights commence!
_________________

[Shapermc]

I've had nights and Xmas nights for a while now. I need an analog controller though, and I'll get in on this.
_________________
“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[helicopterp]

You guys are making me really jealous. Mostly of the group fun.
_________________
Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[Lestrade]

Shit, I guess I have to step up now and get the game and controller! :-p

[dessgeega]

_________________

[B coma]

wow, your controller came in the box! controllers don't even come in boxes anymore.

at least mine was in mint shape so the analogue stick will last a while.

[chompers po pable]

dess, nights is awesome. i've got an extra copy around here; wish i'd known you hadn't played it.

that controller...it's so nice and shiny.

[FortNinety]

I still have a 3D control pad, still in the box, unopened. Just in case... I'm also in the process of acquiring an extra Xbox 1 and extra GameCube pad. It funny purple was everywhere and you couldn't find a stand-alone silver pad for the life of you. Now... things have changed.

[Lestrade]

I will hopefully be all hooked up in time to join in the fun.

[dessgeega]

_________________

[Lestrade]

Nooo!

I'm never going to get mine on time. Don't wait for me to live-blog; you folks go ahead.

[dessgeega]

so, nights. i really like that there's so little text in the game, particularly when it comes to narrative (and especially in light of sonic team's more recent efforts): kid appears in magical dreamland with glowy dream stones, monsters steal stones and scatter them across the dreamland, kid stands up and walks toward nights who is now dancing and beckoning in the background.

the game itself seems like the natural step between the 2d sonic games and the 3d ones: there are fewer rails than in sonic adventure, but the pace of adventure's stages seems to borrow a lot from nights. i really love the way perspective will suddenly shift during a stage into an overhead view or a from-behind bobsled run. i also like how the stages function simultaneously as 2d and 3d environments.

i've played through the first four "dreams" (two from each character). i got Ds until, in the last stage, i realized that getting a good score seems to depend on maximizing use of bonus time, and of maximizing bonus time by completing stages quickly. i was able to get a C, and will probably replay the other three dreams next to try and get a better score. the bosses are gorgeous, incidentally.

the analog pad is an elegant thing; i'm not sure how it was transformed into the dreamcast controller. it's as though sega's directions were to take the analog pad, stiffen the d-pad, stick and buttons, and make everything else pointier. the analog pad feels a lot more comfortable in my hands then the unwieldy dreamcast pad, even though they seem to be about the same size.
_________________

[Lestrade]

Mine is shipping soon! Yargggh!

How easy is it to just intuitively pick up and have fun with?

[JamesE]

I think I wasted an awful lot of time on NiGHTs.

Now. There's some good stuff. Xmas Nights contains most of the structurally sound levels and boss fights (save Twin Seeds, which could be considered to be game redeeming). It just feels like a lot of the levels were thrown together with a surfeit of joy. There are nice ideas (like the Katamari magnet bit) but no great implementation. The Pad is poorly designed and hard to hold - hard to move with your thumb. All in all I wanted to like it quite badly, fooled myself into thinking it was good, and finally came around. I still love XMAS NiGHTs.

Maybe the Wii game won't let me down?
_________________

[Cycle]

Yeah, XMAS Nights is da bomb. I think I've played it more than the actual Nights. It's the best christmas themed thing ever. It's like, all of best childhood christmas memories, jammed into one disk. It's really quite magical.
_________________

[dessgeega]

so i've managed a C in each character's first two stages. i earned a B in soft museum, but i got killed by the boss. twice. stick canyon is nuts and i've only managed a D.

so what's up with the little cherub folks? i remember hearing there was some way to interact with them.
_________________

[JamesE]

You can bounce enemies into them and they produce mutants that are horrible to look at or you can kill them or they just breed a lot.
_________________

[B coma]

[dessgeega]

finished the game with both characters. Cs in all stages, except soft museum, where i managed a B, and the final stage(s), where i got an A. that final stage is so perfect: the culmunation of the game is every possible respect, and an amazing example of the wordless storytelling i mentioned earlier in the thread.

i dread nights wii, because it's going to have ten-minute cutscenes where nights talks about how the nega-nightmarens are using the power of the nega-whatever to whatever whatever. nights is a game about the transformative power of courage but it has the sense not to pontificate or lecture.
_________________

[Harveyjames]

[JamesE]

[Lestrade]

Hey, got me Nights!





Played it for a few minutes and I'm having real difficulty grasping the game. So far I'm actually pretty disappointed, but that might because I'm having such a hard time. Beat one stage and one boss with E scores in both. :-( Who knows if I'll be interested enough to see it through? I really don't have much of a clue as to what I'm doing, and it all feels pretty random to me.

[vf10a]

[enjoy all monsters]

[Winged Assassins (1984)]

[dessgeega]

yeah, it's not immediately obvious how to play and i'm still a little vague on what an ideal play would look like. but here are the basic rules i've managed to work out:

each stage is divided into four courses, starting and finishing at the gazebo where the kid finds nights. each course has a big bubble thing which contains one of the four magic sparklies stolen at the beginning. to break the bubble thing, you need to collect twenty of the blue globes that dot the course and fly into it (globes reappear when you loop the course, so do a couple laps if you need to). everything else is for points: rings, loops, stars.

once you've rescued the magic sparkly, you can take it to the gazebo to begin the next course. but you can also keep flying around and accumulating points. all the blue globes turn into gold globes, which are worth points. you can accumulate as many points as you like as long as you reach the gazebo before your time runs out. if it does, you'll turn back into the kid and your points will scatter. recover as many as you can and trek to the gazebo - if you're caught by the sinister flying alarm clock, game over.

you get a grade, from F to A (S?) when you bring a magic sparkly to the gazebo, based (i imagine) on your score. you'll want to earn at least a C overall in each stage. when you've gotten all four magic sparklies, it's time to fight a boss. bosses can be vicious and the game will end if you run out of time before destroying them. be prepared to have this happen a few times.
_________________

[Lestrade]

Okay, good! That's pretty much what I figured. But one really stupid question: the game is on rails, right? I mean, when I'm seeing canyons below me that look like obvious paths, I can rest knowing that there's no way I'll get to them unless the game wants me to—correct?

[dessgeega]

well, the stages are fully 3d so the different courses criss-cross. what looks like an obvious path might be a path you'll be travelling later in the stage, once the rails have moved. the stages are designed to be explored on foot, too - though ideally you won't - so what looks like a footpath might just be a footpath.
_________________

[Lestrade]

Gotcha. I'm going to pick the game up again soon.

[Cycle]

It's pretty much essential to score the big points AFTER breaking the sparkly free. That's how you get the better grades.

Also, it's really satisfying pulling off huge chains in this game. I love it when I find a way to never stop a chain in a course.
_________________

[fish]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npv3JbbIkeQ

fly plaything, fly, you're not ready.
_________________
you cant spell selfish without fish

[Cycle]

I totally remember seeing that commercial on TV when I lived in Canada.
_________________

[fish]

it totally convinced me NiGHTS was awesome.

man, i miss the sega scream.
_________________
you cant spell selfish without fish

[Crazy Bacon Lips]

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5911&Itemid=51&limit=1&limitstart=1

[FortNinety]

Last weekend I was at dmauro's place and both myself and Isfet (does he post here?) explained to him how the game works. Which is always fun!