NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams - hands on

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Plus mp3 of NiGHTS theme - new recording!

We saw some on-foot sections, which were a nice addition, but not as fun as flying around as the little jester. There are still some issues with the code we played. Firstly, although the frame-rate is mostly very good, it can drop, especially when paralooping large bunches of items. Also, the control is not as fluid as the old game - NiGHTS seems to only move in eight directions even with careful use of the analogue stick. If you've never played the original, you probably won't notice, but movement isn't quite the effortless joy it used to be.

But of course there's time to tidy things up - and assuming Sega optimises the code as well as it did with Sega Rally (which was a quite astonishing last-minute transformation), this could finally bring NiGHTS to the mass audience it always deserved. As a special treat, Sega has given us some mp3 clips of the game's music - the first of which is a new recording of the Dreams Dreams theme song. The singers in this version do a good job, although it's odd hearing different ad-libs at the end. Still, bound to make any NiGHTS fan tingle with joy.

DreamsDreams.mp3
Nights_Theme.mp3

Justin Towell
Justin Towell
Freelance Writer

Justin was a GamesRadar+ staffer for 10 years but is now a freelance writer, musician and videographer. He's big on retro, Sega and racing games (especially retro Sega racing games) and currently also writes for Play Magazine, Traxion.gg, PC Gamer and TopTenReviews, as well as running his own YouTube channel. Having learned to love all platforms equally after Sega left the hardware industry (sniff), his favourite games include Christmas NiGHTS into Dreams, Zelda BotW, Sea of Thieves, Sega Rally Championship and Treasure Island Dizzy.