Despite numerous cameos and references throughout the years, NiGHTS did not receive a sequel until 2008, with NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams on the Wii. While many fans eagerly anticipated the release, 12 years is a long time in the video game world, and the evolution in game design over that time span resulted in a game that many weren't quite expecting. Takashi Iizuka, the lead designer of the original, returned as the director, though the game was actually developed by Sonic Team USA, the same team who worked on Shadow the Hedgehog.

The concept of Journey of Dreams is essentially the same as the original - two children, a boy and a girl named William Taylor and Helen Cartwright respectively - are faced with issues in their real life, but find escape by dreaming of Nightopia. Again, each has three unique stages (Pure Valley, Lost Park, and Delight City for Will, Aqua Garden, Crystal Castle and Memory Forest for Helen) and a shared final stage (Bellbridge), making for seven levels total. But now each stage is divided up into five sections, in an attempt to expand the content of the game.

The first section is similar to the gameplay of the original NiGHTS - the eponymous jester has been captured in a cage, and your chosen child is set to free him/her. When you take to the skies, however, the goal isn't to collect orbs, but instead to chase a fleeing bird, which holds a key. There are still chips and loops, of course, but they are only there for scoring and dash regeneration purposes. Once you get the key, you can return to the Ideaya Palace and begin the next Mare.

The changes here are fairly significant. The Ideya Cage is gone, of course, but once you have the key, you cannot continue to replay the Mare - you'll automatically move to the next track. Although you can continue to replay it if you fail to capture the bird, there's no real advantage to this, since you are judged on time as well as links, and most items do not regenerate with repeated plays. On that note, Bonus Time is completely gone, removing one of the most important elements of the original game. You're still judged on performance, but there's less of an incentive to memorize and consistently replay each stage.

While the acrobatic feel of NiGHTS is faithful to its predecessor, there are still numerous other changes. The Mares are longer, since they're no longer meant to be traveled over and over. The camera is zoomed out more, and the camera is more consistent, so it's no longer nearly as confusing for first time players. It's certainly more friendly to beginner players, at least.

After conquering all of the Mares, you have to fight a boss battle. These are largely the same as before, and despite some creative enemies, they're still clumsy and confusing. At least you're given a few hints on how to beat each foe, which is better than nothing, but it still may take a few botched attempts before you really figure them out.

The second section of the stage depends on the level, but they're usually a shorter mini-game of some type. In one level, you need to push around bubbles into one larger bubble at the center of the arena. In another, you need to explore the city section of one stage to find and kill a certain number of enemies. Some of these are fun, but others are tedious.

The third section is one of the most fun parts of the game, where you spend the first Mare of the stage while chasing a creature called an Octopaw. Unlike the key-carrying bird, the Octopaw can never be caught, but instead it creates a steady stream of rings to fly through. The goal is to keep your link going as long as possible, as the level loops infinitely until you loose too many links. It's one of the few areas that maintains the score attack sense of the original, but they're also far too easy, and far too short.

The fourth section takes place entirely on foot as one of the kids. These sections are incredibly simplistic platformers where you simply walk forward, jump on platforms, avoid enemies and occasionally hit switches. Here, you can throw chips to stun and kill enemies. You're also under a time limit, though there are so many time regeneration items that it's hardly an issue. These segments aren't unplayable, but they are incredibly boring, and it would've been wise if they'd been cut entirely.

The fifth section is simply a replay of the boss battle. You have a longer time limit and there are some minor changes, but ultimately it's not that much different than the first time you fought them.

As with before, once you beat three stages, you're off to the final area, which is mostly a revamped version of the penultimate stage in the original NiGHTS. You're still allowed to finish the game without high scores, but you are required to get a C grade on all sections in all levels before you can get the true ending. Getting high ranks will also unlock a number of goodies, including the ability to play as Claris and Elliot, as well as the entire soundtrack to the first game. The A-Life mode has been expanded and renamed "My Dream", and using the Nintendo online connection, you can even visit friends' gardens. Additional online functionality includes a two player mode (both racing and battle, the latter similar to the original game) and leaderboards. There are, again, slight changes in the levels depending on the time of year, and it even checks out the Nintendo Weather Channel to see the weather in your area and adjust the in-game levels accordingly.

Also new are Persona Masks. In the original NiGHTS, you transformed automatically into mermaids, sleds and other forms automatically, depending on the section of the game. In Journey of Dreams, once you obtain the masks, you can change into a rocket, a dolphin and a dragon. These alter the speed of the dashes, along with other abilities - the rocket lets you fly faster but won't let you change direction, the dolphin lets you fly underwater, and the dragon lets you resist oncoming wind. Functionally, they don't really add much, although they're put to use in the final battle against Wizeman, which is very similar to the first game otherwise.

The controls are decent, altough hampered by the input devices themselves. There are several control methods, though none of them match the perfect control of the Saturn analog pad. You can control Nights with the Wiimore by pointing a red orb called Mindsight, but it's practically impossible to use effectively, and is best left ignored. You can use the nunchuck or Classic Controller, but the analog pads on both just aren't as smooth for the type of 360 degrees manuevers Nights is supposed to be able to make. The best method is the Nintendo Gamecube controller, whose analog pad is a bit tighter and isn't hampered by the octagonal gates on the Wii devices, but it's still somewhat slippery.

It's obvious that Sonic Team was attempting to address many of the issues that the mainstream audience had with the original NiGHTS. The tutorial at the beginning is actually quite needed and welcome. But while some of it works in its favor, most of it doesn't. It certainly has a lot more content than the original, but whether that content is any good is debateable. It seems to have fallen into the same trap as the post-Genesis Sonic games - that is, the reuse of levels and other assets in other contents in order to expand the game. Just as most of the Sonic games are generally only good if you're playing as Sonic (and lousy if you're playing as any of the other characters), Journey of Dreams is pretty great as long as you're in the flying stages - that is, the areas most similar to the original game - and mediocre-to-awful in the other areas.

The developers also attempted to greatly flesh out the plot, which made sense considering how bare-bones the storytelling was the original. But Sonic Team has historically been awful when it comes to this, and Journey of Dreams is no different. Helen and Will are introduced to Nightopia by an owl named Owl, who acts as a pompous stick-in-the-mud until they're joined by the carefree Nights. They spend a lot of time discussing the game's halfway incomprehensible lingo, discussing things like courage and whatnot, and generally being fairly aimless. The English voice acting is mostly done with British accents. Nights also speaks for the first time here, with his/her voice run through a filter in an attempt to mask its gender, though the actor is clearly female. Most of it is grating.

This normally wouldn't be an issue - after all, NiGHTS is still technically aimed at kids, who may potentially have more patience for the kind of gobbldegook the game spouts out. But you can't skip these cutscenes on the first playthrough, and given how long they last, they become almost painful to sit through. At least you can pass over them on recurrent playthroughs.

The visuals are also incredibly uneven. During gameplay, Journey of Dreams is beautiful. Absolutely gorgeous. The original game was held back by early 3D hardware, but still had fantastic artwork. Now imagine that artwork, unconstrained by low-res textures and low count polygons. The landscapes, beautiful seashores and fantastic amusement parks, musical forests and neon-lit cities, are at least as inspired as the levels of the original game, and they're just as much fun to experience as before. But in contrast, the cutscenes look terrible. While Nights looks decent, the children's character models look terrible, the animation is sketchy, and the shimmering textures are overtly ugly. It seems that when the camera is zoomed out, as it is when playing as Nights, the game looks gorgeous, easily one of the best looking games on the Wii (up until Super Mario Galaxy came out, anyway). But when viewed up close, the visuals just totally fall apart.

At least the music is incredible, with an assortment of joyful, inspiring pieces. The sound team is the same as the original, with a few extra contributors, and the music benefits from the improved instrumentation as well. However, the music no longer changes depending on the Nightopians modes, and instead the multiple arrangements of level themes used in the different sections.

So there's a lot to like about Journey of Dreams, but there are lot of problems too. The fanbase was largely unforgiving of the issues, alienating the hardcore base, and it failed to attract the fabled Wii casual audience, resulting in game that's generally regarded as disappointing. There's at least 75% of a pretty decent game (the Nights stages, the Octopaw levels) it just involves suffering through the other 25% (the on-foot stages, the cutscenes). Even at its best moments, though it never quite captures the intensity and skill required of the original game - it's easier to play, but not as fun to master.

Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing

Nights makes a small cameo in the original Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing as the flagman, to signal the start and end of races. Nights' role is greatly expanded in the sequel, Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed, where he/she and Reala have been upgraded to playable characters. You don't just play as Nights or Reala themselves though - instead, they shift into cars, boats and planes (as seen in some of the non-flying stages in Journey of Dreams), and are actually piloted by a Nightopian. The whole effect is rather disappointing.

But it's made up for by the new stage, also based off NiGHTS. The majority of the stage is based off Spring Valley, filled with rings that trigger small boosts. About halfway through the stage, you're warped into one of three sub-areas, depending on your lap, based off boss battles from the original game. The first is Gillwing's stage, the second is Puffy's, and the third is from Wizeman's battle. It's an excellent level, and one of the only stages to not include any car racing at all, focusing solely on sky and water terrain.

Sonic Pinball Party

There is a table based on NiGHTS in this Game Boy Advance pinball title.

NiGHTS Score Attack

Nintendo attempted to push its Gamecube-to-Game Boy Advance link cable by allowing you to download mini-games to the portable system, which stay running as long as the system is kept on. Both Phantasy Star Online and Billy Hatcher include NiGHTS Score Attack, which reimagines NiGHTS as a 2D game. However, its gameplay is stripped down significantly from the real game - the goal is just to obtain 20 orbs as quickly as possible, then go to the Ideya Palace to reach the next Mare. While there are rings to fly through, there are no combo links, nor any Bonus Time. The Mares are short and largely bereft of enemies or even terrain. It actually looks and plays relatively decent on the small screen, and there are some cool effects to shift the background and make it seem like the stages are three-dimensional, despite relying totally on 3D graphics. But ultimately it just feels like a tech demo for a product that was never released.

Sonic Adventure

In the Casinopolis zone in Sonic Adventure, there are brief mini-games where you can play a bit of pinball. One of the tables is based on NiGHTS, where you bounce Sonic around and collect cards of various characters. There are two different tables, a normal one and a darker one, featuring Wizeman. After completing these, Sonic is tossed through some kind of portal and ends up whirling around a room designed to look like the Spring Valley level of NiGHTS, offering a view of what a new installment might have looked like, had one been developed for the Dreamcast. Back in 1999 this looked amazing, but in retrospect it doesn't look that great, with the textures somehow looking worse despite the higher resolution, and the character models looking somewhat off. Anyway, you can't control Sonic here, so it's more of a quick cameo tour, before being shuttled back into the main game.

Sega Superstars Tennis

Nights and Reala are both playable characters in Sega Superstars Tennis. (Nights is available at the outset, while Reala needs to be unlocked.) For their Superstar powers, they cause tennis balls to whirl around randomly, and for the opponent to be teleported around the court after hitting the ball back. There is also a court based on the Sweeping Seashore level from NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams.

Sega Superstars

This PlayStation 2 Eyetoy title contains twelve mini-games for Sony's digital camera accessory, each based off assorted Sega titles. The game based off NiGHTS is unique because, unlike the games themselves, you get to control Nights in a fully 3D world. The goal is to collect 20 blue chips, then deliver them to the Ideya Palace in the shortest amount of times. Flying through rings will add a bit of extra time to the clock. Piloting Nights is done via arm motions - hold both arms up to fly upwards, both arms down to fly downwards, and hold one arm up with the other down in order to turn left and right.

It's really cool in theory, and while the visuals aren't fantastic, it is nice to see the world of NiGHTS running at 60 FPS. (The actual games never run above 30 FPS.) Unfortunately, it's completely done in by the Eyetoy controls. When it works, it's beautiful, but it almost never works. It's all too easy to move your arms outside of its detection range, causing you to turn slower than you want, or just not turn at all. And Nights moves too quickly to control properly - while you can spin dash to move faster, there's no way to move slower. The end result is just a bunch of haphazard flailing in hopes to get on the right track.

Other cameos:

Nights is an unlockable character in both Sonic Riders and Sonic Riders Zero Gravity, which are a series of hoverboard racing games. both Nights and Reala makes a brief appearance in the Dreamcast board game Sonic Shuffle, who replace the guide character Lumina Flowlight. Their appearance is based on the system clock - Dec 24th will trigger Nights and April 1st will trigger Reala. Nights is also an unlockable support character in Billy Hatcher. Additionally, Elliot and Claris make small cameos in Sonic Team's Burning Rangers as quest givers.

NiGHTS Into Dreams comics

In 1996, Archie Comics, the publisher of the long-running Sonic the Hedgehog comic book series, released six issues based on NiGHTS Into Dreams. These are divided into two separate series, with three issues each. Since they were written independently from the Japanese storyline, the events are not considered canon, though some of the events fit in well with the game world. The first half of the first issue delves into the backstory of the Twin Seeds, and of the two Dreamers who were predecessors of Claris and Elliot, which gives a nice bit of background. There is also a new character named Roger, who antagonizies the main duo and ends up teaming with Reala, which ties the dream world closer to the real world. There are also two Nightopians named Napp and Snuze, who act as both expostionary devices and comic relief.

The first three issue mini-series roughly follows the events of the game, as Nights and the kids must defeat both Reala and Wizeman. The second three issue mini-series gets significantly weirder - Nights ends up in the real world, where he's significantly weakened, while the assorted denizens of Nightopia fight over control of the realm due to the defeat of Wizeman. In addition to Reala, the kids also have to face off against a terrorist group, who seek something in the Twin Seeds tower for reasons unknown.

The biggest problem is that the series spends way too much time on the kids and not enough time on Nights. In fact, Nights spends the entire fifth issue unconscious in Roger's basement. While this is perhaps necessarily in order to build the story, it feels strangely divorced from the game itself, especially since much of the story takes place in the real world. This affects the second series more than the first, which at least had appearances from assorted bad guys from the game. It doesn't help that the personality given to Nights is really, really weird. He's somewhat sassy, making him feel more like Archie's rendition of Sonic the Hedgehog. He's also explicitly references to as a "he", confirming his gender for this comic.

Some of the events are just plain weird. We learn that whenever the kids enter the dream world, they actually switch bodies with Nights, leaving him in the real world. Naturally, he attempts to live the life of a normal kid, which leads to some comical misunderstandings. This is amusing, but in the seconds series, there's a scene where Nights foils a a group of terrorist by sucking up the bullets of the robbers and burping them back. It also gets a bit bizarre when Claris and Elliot are set up to be boyfriend and girlfriend.

The quality of the artwork is inconsistent, striking a line between Japanese anime-style, with bright hair and wide eyes, and a slightly more American style. The first series is generally pretty decent, despite some awful covers, but the second volume has some absolutely terrible parts, with ugly shading and proportions that are incredibly wrong. At the end of the sixth issue, the editor confesses that the series had been put on hiatus due to lack of sales. They were planning to set up a continuing plotline, with Nights acting as a "dream cop" protecting the real world from whatever evil beings came from Nightopia. Needless to say, given both the shoddy art and the underwhelming story, the comic series is not particularly well liked by most fans, so this may have been for the better.

You can read the entire series here.

Soundtracks

There are two soundtrack album releases for the original NiGHTS. The first, known as NiGHTS Original Soundtrack, was released in 1996. Since it's only a single disc, it's missing a subtantial amount of content, most noticeably the alternate versions of all of the in-game songs. In 2008, the NiGHTS into Dreams... Perfect Album was released, to coincide with the PlayStation 2 version. This three CD set includes every piece of music in the original game, including all of the jingles and cutscene track missing from the first album, as well as "complete" versions of the in-game music, where all four pieces are played as a single medley. It also includes all of the music from Christmas NiGHTS. This album is available on Amazon MP3 and iTunes worldwide, however, you need to purchase the "CDs" separately, at $10 US each. Also in 2008, the Nights Journey of Dreams Soundtrack was released, which is also three CDs in length and has all the music from the Wii game.

Also worth checking out is NiGHTS: Lucid Dreaming, a 2 CD tribute album released by Overclock Remix. There are 25 tracks in total, with arrangements of the OST to the original game in a variety of styles. Being an unofficial release, it is free to download.

Storybook

Initially published in 1996, Nights: Tsubasa Kara Nakutemo Sora wa Toberu ("Flying Through the Sky Without Wings") is a wide format color storybook, written by Kyoko Inukai with illustrations by Takumi Miyake. It tells the story of how Nights is captured by Reala, how Elliot saves Nights, and how the duo face off against Wizeman. The illustrations are absolutely gorgeous. You can read the whole book (with English translations) here.