Archive for the ‘News’ Category
Happy 16th Birthday NiGHTS
May all your dreams come true ~
Read the rest of the comic here: [ CLiCK ]
The Ideal… The Confusion… The Growth… The Affection… The Possibility… The Consciousness…
Discuss here in our forums! : [ CLiCK ]
Hi folks, TRiPPY here!
I've been hard at work drawing lots of fan comic art for you guys to enjoy. NiGHTS: Descent into Dreams is my personal project I'm doing for fun as a thank you to everyone who's stuck with us over the years. I'll be adding new pages every few days here at the .com, so be sure to check back for regular updates 
Today I've uploaded 3 new full color pages in English. Work has begun on the Japanese translation and other languages too, so be sure to share this with all the NiGHTS fans from around the world. I promise it will be a fun read.
You will now be able to find my comic under the 'Reading' section menu. I've also added a forum topic for you to ask questions and chat about the comic too.
Enjoy!
Firstly, Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a great holiday season and ate terrifying amounts of food.
I just wanted to take the time to write a little post about 2011 since it was a year of a lot of personal triumphs for our fanbase. As usual things were pretty quiet on the official front this year but as always it didn't stop us from making a noise. This year marked the 15th anniversary of NiGHTS into Dreams. For a good few of us that meant a bit more than others because it was around the age of 14/15 we first discovered the game ourselves. That would make the game half our lifetime old. Appreciating anything for that amount of time is pretty special, I know it was for me. It marked a milestone for this fanbase and I was able to look back at where we started from.
I started this website years ago on my Dreamcast browser before I ever owned a PC. The only way I could upload images was to go to a internet cafe in the city to use their scanner. I'd input html code with a control pad. Hotlink peoples seizure inducing images as backgrounds. Plaster rainbow colored text everywhere like it was the greatest discovery ever and oh BOY when I found the code to embed midi's I was an unstoppable force of INTERNETS. I created my site to be able to share my artwork and love for NiGHTS. Words can't express the happiness I felt when the first person NOT trying to sell me Viagra posted a comment in my guestbook. It was a fan, an actual person on the other side of the world who shared the same interests as me. Then over the weeks more and more people came to visit the site. The community grew and grew, the Guestbook was replaced by a forum. Over time the little personal webpage evolved into the hulking global beast of the site you see today… minus the midi's.
2011 started off with the sad news regarding Mr Kevin Eva stepping down from his position as Community Manager at SEGA. He had worked his butt off to help strengthen this community in an official capacity and in the capacity of actually giving a real damn for the franchise and the people who love it. His departure left me feeling a little worried as a fan but over time it just served to make me work harder and be more determined to represent you all in the respectful, polite and creative way from within SEGA that I know you all so well for. You'd be surprised at how many people love and remember NiGHTS. Proud even, because many of them remember or came from this website. As a fanbase we are stronger than ever.
Then came the long anticipated Summer of Sonic 2011. It was an event that really gave me a lot to think about on my journey home. Not only did we get to finaly meet creators Takashi Iizuka and Yuji Naka along with a whole host of Sonic related A-listers…. but I got to meet the next generation of NiGHTS fans. DiGi was supposed to have done a podcast about this but never did, so just let me say, when really young fans approached me because of being huge fans of Journey of Dreams, I was really overwhelmed with proudness. I spotted a lot of NiGHTS cosplayers who I'd never met before. Had kids come up to me and ask me who Jackle was! haha. It's like the whole Modern Vs Classic Sonic thing that happens with Sonic fans, except there was no animosity here at all. Both classic NiGHTS and Modern NiGHTS fans were just happy to be there talking to eachother. I remembered what it was like to be a new fan to NiGHTS into Dreams. I felt really happy to sit there at our NiGHTS booth and realise that this was living proof of keeping the love for NiGHTS alive. I hope that these guys reach their 30's and have fansites and fond memories too.
Meeting Yuji Naka and Takashi Iizuka was more than a huge honor for me. It felt like we were there to say 'Hey we're the NiGHTS fanbase, so many people still care about NiGHTS, here we are, look at the things we've achieved because of NiGHTS.' So it was pretty special. Handing them over a copy of Lucid Dreaming and seeing their faces light up was priceless. I wish every one of you could have been there. It was very surreal. What really shone through was how passionate they both still were for NiGHTS despite how many years had passed.
On the subject of NiGHTS: Lucid Dreaming, I still listen to the album on repeat on my way to work in the mornings. I still can't believe fans created something so perfect. OCR are genius and I feel downright blessed to have been involved with the project. It traveled all across the internet from Kotaku to even MTV! When the teaser trailer aired on the big screen on the stage at Summer of Sonic you could genuinely feel the buzz from the crowd. Hearing people clap and cheer for NiGHTS was the greatest feeling ever! Well done guys!
2011 was also a year of campaigns. Our NiD15 campaign garnered the attention of SEGA and several large online news sites. On the day of NiGHTS' birthday SEGA turned to Facebook to ask if fans would be interested in seeing a port of the original – to a scarily overpowering YES. That one post of theirs got more responses than many of the other announcements put together. In fact the post is STILL getting responses MONTHS later. I think it's fair to say SEGA know NiGHTS is wanted now. Thank you to all 6956 of you who have stood with us through our campaign site so far. Thanks also to the fans who may not be in any active NiGHTS community but who can still say positive things about the old game through various message boards, magazines and news portals. You've all helped us a lot, but we wont give up on a NiGHTS port until it becomes a reality! So lets keep supporting the cause: http://www.nid15.com
The other big event of the year was after SoS I was gifted a huge stack of NiGHTS into Dreams concept art from the original 90's game. Some of the images hadn't been seen before outside of Japan or in a high quality. So I was blissed out to be able to share those with everyone. It's one of those strange things were a franchise over a decade old still keeps giving. I was given a lot of positive feedback on my own artwork from the creators of the game which in turn inspired me to kickstart a new personal NiGHTS fan-comic project of my own:
This will be updated regularly this year in 2012 as a way of grabbing more fans back into the fandom. I'm really excited and motivated to work on this project of mine and I really hope you enjoy reading it in the future Things have been incredibly busy at work for me this year but I've always been thinking of NiGHTS or how to involve the fanbase in some way or another. I miss doing lots of fanart, it's how I got started afterall, so my new years resolution this year is to work really hard on giving you all something new to enjoy reading! Through this our website will have much more regular updates from now onwards. I'm also interested in featuring your own fan comics as updates. More on that later.
The end of the year was marked by an absolutely beautiful complete christmas duet by Cameron Strother, the original singer of DREAMS DREAMS back in 1996. Two dreamers reunited again. I can't think of a better more symbolic way to end the year.
It's 2012 now. I want to echo a sentiment from my fellow webmaster Dreadknux across at Sonic Stadium. As long as there are fans I will never give up on NiGHTS or this community. Even if there were NO fans I still wouldn't give up on NiGHTS. I'd sift through pages of spambots to just find that one single real fan from across the other side of the planet who loves NiGHTS too. Real life gets crazy, busy and very demanding… but I wouldn't be were I am today if it wasn't for NiGHTS, so for that I'm incredibly grateful and will always be here.
I hope you will too.
Happy New Year guys. I appreciate you sticking with us.
xx
TRiPPY
Taken from the original SEGA Facebook message:
"To our wonderful NiGHTS fans – we haven't forgotten that today is the 15th anniversary of NiGHTS, so happy 15th anniversary to NiGHTS and huge thank you! to everyone for supporting the character and game for all these years! How would you feel about seeing the original "NiGHTS into dreams…" being re-released? Also, if you think this is a good idea… which platform do you think NiGHTS should be released in? We'd love to hear your thoughts!"
Like I said. Nothing is impossible. SEGA themselves are now asking. And look at those numbers *lol* we hit over 6000 port votes today and Facebook is currently going crazy over NiGHTS.
Today is a good day to be a fan…
Get to it people : FACEBOOK. GO THERE. NOW
Happy birthday NiGHTS.
I've reopened the forums again. Welcome back guys!
–
EDiT: Let it be publicly known that Mr DexLaCabra is MAAAAD. MAD MAD MAD. But so very massively loved. He just paid for the entire forums to be upgraded so treat him like the royalty he is! *whipwhip*
Thank you so much ^_^ I'll do my best to get this all fixed!
*Ponders giving users on the forums who have largely helped the community special icons or something* There are quite a few of you lovely folk out there.
Just found out a new license will cost $149 for the forums. I'd pay for this myself but I don't get paid until later this month and I want the forums up and running properly for NiGHTS' anniversary on Tuesday. If we all chip in I can get us properly functioning fourms again, minus the spambots! All old topics and profiles will be moved over so we won't be losing anything.
If you'd like to help me out (and the community as a whole) then please send some moneygolds via Paypal to /// and mark it as being for the forum fund.
Any help massively appreciated.
The trailer for the OverClocked Remix album 'NiGHTS: Lucid Dreaming' went live today.
If you have not seen the trailer yet then press that play button and prepare yourself for lucid levels of awesomeness. Once again, Jose 'The Bronx' Rican knows exactly how to hype a project as this trailer is flawless.
Not long now until July 5th. Hang in there, we're almost with ya ~
Words fail me right now so I'll leave it to the MAN!LEGEND AAUK (forever our Owl!) to explain things in this open letter posted on his website:
Dear Visitors (NiGHTS fans),
Yes you. I’d like to talk to you for a minute so stop pulling funny faces at images of Will’s dad (hoot, terrible) and touching NiGHTS (if you like that sort of thing) and listen, as I want to tell you a quick little personal tale.
One of my best experiences when at SEGA was working on NiGHTS Journey Of Dreams because I got to interact with you guys. You’re perhaps one of the most loyal group of video game fans I’ve come across. I’ve always had a very good relationship with you lot and I’ve always been keen to try and help out NiGHTS where possible and keep NiGHTS alive. Be it a reference here, a nod there.
Which is why Summer Of Sonic will be paying tribute to NiGHTS’ own anniversary in a few very special ways. The merchandise cabinet will include NiGHTS stuff this year for a start, we will have a special community related reveal amongst other little flourishes here and there. SEGA may not be celebrating it (I’ve no idea why Puyo Puyo gets the anniversary treatment but NiGHTS does not) but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t.
What’s that? Have I heard about the NiD15 campaign? Why… yes, yes I have.
Of course that brings me neatly onto my next subject and the main point of this letter. No one, but NO ONE has helped keep NiGHTS going more and fought harder than TRiPPY and DiGi over at NiGHTSintoDreams.com have. In recent years they have become known perhaps for more campaigns such as “Don’t Forget NiGHTS” for Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing and the aforementioned NiD15 campaign, but people forget because of this just how long they’ve been in the community and how long they (and perhaps TRiPPY more specifically on this point) have been leading it. Celebrating a video game series that hasn’t had a game for a decade is HARD but they still kept things going.
They live NiGHTS, he is part of them. It has shaped them as people, inspiring both through art, music and their philosophy on life and they celebrate the fact it has done so. To dream, be free and be true to yourself. If you cut them they’d bleed purple – except on April 1st when it’d be Reala red of course.
Over the years they have become good friends of mine, but I’ve always wanted to do something a bit more for them then I was able to. I filed in for them in 2007 for an interview with Iizuka-san and hand-delivered a gift to him from them in 2010 which was great but they’ve never been able to meet him. Something they wanted to do so badly.
In fact I have made it something of a personal mission down the years to try and arrange it, the one thing I really wanted to do before I left SEGA, but met with failure every time. I may have left SEGA now, but we had in fact set the wheels in motion before I did. This year WILL be different.
You see, we may not have announced Iizuka-san and indeed Naka-san until quite recently but we had in fact had them lined up for some time. The first thing that was put down for them when they are here? NiGHTSintoDreams.com will be having a private sit down with Yuji Naka and Takashi Iizuka at Summer Of Sonic to discuss 15 years of NiGHTS history, NiGHTS going forward and more. Best get to thinking up what to say you guys.
Lynne, Niyazi, thank you for all your hard work over the years for the NiGHTS fans. I’m sorry your ultimate reward is a little late, but I do hope you enjoy it.
“A tree that reaches all the way up to the heavens must be a sign of your heart’s resolve.” – Owl, NiGHTS Journey Of Dreams
- ArchangelUK -
http://www.sonicwrecks.com/news/community/sos2011intodreams
*runs around in circles* If you guys have any sensible -questions- for the pair (read as questions and not suggestions) then drop them here and we'll see if we can ask them. Can't promise anything but I'll do my best. We'll also hopefully have a full written transcript of the meeting, audio and photographs!
This Saturday is going to be… surreal.
*Achievement Unlocked ~ Life Complete*
It's been a good few months since we've updated NiD15.com due to being so busy at work but the number of fans wanting a NiGHTS port has steadily been rising! Let's officialy kick this campaign back into gear. It's NiGHTS' 15th anniversary in a few months time and demand for Saturn titles is at an all time high after it was announced last week that the classic Saturn game 'Guardian Heroes' is being… PORTED. Yup you heard me right, SEGA is porting a Saturn game. This pretty much proves that nothing is impossible! So what's stopping us guys from having our favourite game being made available on modern consoles too? Afterall when it comes to being outspoken and having genuine passion for what we do, us NiGHTS fans are a force to be reckoned with. Lets make some noise and get our voices heard. We already managed to change the outcome of one SEGA game by having NiGHTS included as the flagman so we CAN get the Saturn game ported if we really make a show in numbers.
Reading through comments of support for the release of Guardian heroes and other Saturn titles I see constant requests for NiGHTS. But a lot of those people who want NiGHTS ported don't even know our campaign exists. It's your duty as a fan to make sure that word gets around and we get the support that we need to make this happen.
If this -did- happen and we got the original game ported imagine how many more new people would be introduced to NiGHTS into Dreams. The original game is remembered fondly for a reason. Don't let a great title go to waste. The PS2 port being Japan only was incredibly unfair, if more people had known the PS2 port even *existed* then the chances of it coming out over here would have been better. DO NOT LET what happened with the PS2 port happen again to a NiGHTS current console port. Help us before the chance dissapears. This is the best chance we've ever got, the timing of Guardian Heroes being ported has raised public awareness of the SEGA Saturn and we're very close to NiGHTS' 15th and Sonic's 20th. SEGA is having a rip-roaring year with great titles so make sure that this year is the year that NiGHTS returns. And heck, if you're sick and tired of us moaning/demanding/asking for NiGHTS stuff then this is the best chance you have to get us to shut up :p … (for a while)
We are close to 5000 votes now, which for a little campaign ran by two fans is pretty impressive, but we're going to need to see those numbers and the demand still coming in. Get us votes! You're a gamer, you know other gamers, tell your friends about the game and the campaign. Let people know this campaign exists and that we need their support if we're going to make this happen.
Trust me when I say this is a good year for SEGA and fans alike. Please let NiGHTS be a part of this. It's rare that big companies listen to fans but SEGA actually does care. So let's show SEGA we do too.
Here's the SEGA Announcement for Guardian Heroes:
http://blogs.sega.com/usa/2011/05/05/guardian-heroes-announced-for-xbox-live-arcade/
VOTE!
I always wondered how it would feel to write this journal one day and I always hoped it would never come, but I guess good things always have to come to an end. Today Kevin Eva (AAUK) has left the company to work on new things and other such life related stuff. Which I have to say i fullheartedly support as he deserves decades of nice things after all the -effort- he put into his time there. I feel really really sad though. Not a lot of you guys will ever get to understand just how much of a help this guy was to the Sonic and NiGHTS community. Specificaly the NiGHTS community. We were lucky enough to know him in person and he was (and still damnwell is!) a great great friend to us, and we love him to bits.
It feels like a part of our community has come to an end. Kevin did so much for you guys I don't even know where I could possibly start.
I remember back in Nov 28th 2007 we got a message from SEGA Europe ~
"We haven’t forgotten you… far, far from it."
That was all it takes to bring a little order to chaos and prove something massively important to both fan and company. That we can get along.
And it's the truth too. AAUK's involvement with the NiGHTS community kickstarted the return to fan passion for us and erased the high-and-mighty line between fan and company. At the end of the day most of us are fans. We love what we do. We care about the company, the games, the nostalgia, the employees, the history, the screw-ups and the lessons learnt. This guy though, he went 5 steps further. He really gave a solid hardworking damn about us all (even the annoying ones, lol). I imagine that 'promoting a brand to a target online audience' is part of the job description of being a community manager, but actually caring about the characters, fan reception and the fans themselves on a personal level is something that not everyone can stick on a C.V. I think only a real fan can understand that.
If it wasn't for AAUK this website would have died a long time ago. The fans will always be dotted around the internet but thanks to him our site became the main source of everything NiGHTS related. So much great P.R and fun we all had. I mean what other fanbase can say that a company traveled hundreds of miles to their HOUSE to showcase a game in person. That they ended up on national TV and all over gaming magazines because of one guy? That we were so totally FUELED with enthusiasm at being taken seriously in return we worked as hard as we could to get SEGA good P.R, even if it meant acting like idiots sometimes. It was all because we cared. The fans still care Kev, but we're going to be at a hell of a dissadvantage without you at the helm telling us to keep our noses clean and dry behind our ears, be polite and always say thankyou I'd like to think that the reason the NiGHTS fanbase developed so well into such a great bunch of people is because of his influence. Kev wasn't just some guy in a suit trying to make numbers. He had true SEGA spirit. Blue blood 
That's the kind of magic that more companies need. Well, that and funny impressions of Owl.
DiGi and I were lucky enough to see a side to Kev that wasn't just him running about at Sonic fan conventions. This is about the NiGHTS community. He made sure that NiGHTS wasn't overlooked at every chance he got. He always made sure our opinons and thoughts were heard by the people that matter, even if it made a difference or not, the real difference to us was that the company was showing a human side and even giving us that inch of a chance in the first place. And that's why all us guys care in the end – thanks for the chance and thanks for taking us seriously. Thanks for always including the NiGHTS lot.
I can only say so much thesedays, but I just wanted to say that after being admin of this place for well over a decade now that I'm not going to just nod quietly and say a brief 'be on your way'. AAUK, you're the man and I'm sure NiGHTS would be thankful too Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart and from all the thousands of NiGHTS fans reading this.
For the future I'm not entirely sure where this leaves us as a fanbase in terms of community/creator interaction. Those are some massive shoes to fill ( not saying you've got massive feet Kev XD ) but yeah… whichever way this all goes there are always people who care. I believe we all have a part to play and that Kev done his best till the end.
Dare to Dream and good luck for the future! You will be sorely missed.
PS) Cheesecake plz.