3 replies to this topic

[supersonic25730]

I think the first time I saw anything NiGHTSy was either in SA2's Radical Highway, or through very early YouTube. For the longest time, I was scared off by the strange design, and at one point I was even told that she was definitely, unquestionably, a guy. Being raised in a very sheltered household, I was even more wary now, but I started to get more interested when watching the Sonic Show. At one point, (I'm pretty sure it's top 10 monsters), Tanner mentioned how similar Perfect Dark Gaia's HD fight is to NiGHTS into Dreams gameplay, and that's pretty much what kicked it off. I remember one morning waking up to my 2008 circa iPod playing an episode of Radio Redux, and the song Kevin was playing was the Lucid Dreaming version of Dreams Dreams by pretty much everyone in the community. It was so beautiful, I had to find out more. I remember going to Vintage Stock the same morning, and renting Journey of Dreams. I loved the ever living crap out of that game (I was only like 12 at the time, pretty much anything was great to me), and I was so happy when I came home the day that it was supposed to go back, to find that my mom had bought it for me. About a year later, I learned that the original game was on Steam, and I begged my parents to get it for me. I remember my mom being super conscious about her computer's space, and told me to either delete TF2 and get NiGHTS, or keep TF2, and not get it. I chose the obvious, and about 2 hours later, I had fallen in love all over again. The game completely blew my mind, shattered my soul, and caused me to steal my friend's third party X360 controller to avoid having to use a keyboard. I'm 16 at the time I'm writing this, and my SEGA Saturn is slated to arrive some time this week, along with the original NiD, not to mention that I already have Christmas NiGHTS. Thank you Yuji Naka. But also screw you because Sonic Xtreme using the NiGHTS engine could have been awesome.

[viperxmns]

Nice. I'm old and got NiD when it first came out, lol. I knew of it as Sonic Team's new game for the Saturn, and as a Sonic fan, was therefore interested. Before I played it for the first time at home I played it a little bit at Toys R Us, which gave me a little taste of the gameplay. When I loaded it at home I got to experience it in earnest, hearing the music and seeing how the game unfolded. Luckily we owned a relatively big screen tv for me to play it on too. It sorta blew me away and I loved it from the start.

[MiSHiKiS]

Hmm, might as well share my two cents if it's all the same. I was just a young kid who lived extremely close to an old Blockbuster Video over here. The guy who was there recognized us as regulars, and became friends. He offered my sister a SEGA Saturn apparently because no one wanted it and they instead wanted a Playstation 2. So he basically gave it to us and with it came a couple discs: Mega Man 8, Bug, Some X-Men game, Sonic Jam, and NiGHTS. Despite it being given to my sis, I ended up with it the most and basically remembered playing NiGHTS only. Maybe I put in MM8 a couple times, but really it was just NiGHTS. I also couldn't save the game, so I would end up replaying the same damn levels over again. I liked it, way too much. I didn't know what the hell was going on, simply because I only had the disc and I never checked anything else besides the level select, so little me would make up stupid different stories every time I had to inevitably reset the game. Most of the things I figured out in that game were by total accident, though. But it was a fond experience

 

Then I lost that SEGA Saturn and all of it's games at an airport. Sad me.

[anthro7]

Old fogey, chiming in! =P

 

I don't remember my age. But Toys R Us had recently introduced their Test Drive Arcade in the front of the store. Almost every TRU had one of these mini arcades, featuring between six and ten trial game machines to showcase new games. I don't remember precisely what the game of choice was that everyone wanted to play, but we were smart kids and knew to take turns. So while someone else was playing the top pick, I wandered and found this new game that had a font like Aladdin. (Which had also just recently come out.) The strange colors were very appealing and I stood there entranced, watching NiD's demo play and opening movies - which explained the story for Claris and Elliot. It seemed like a simple enough game to play, so I gave it a shot.

 

Before I knew it, I'd become the new regular on that machine. I got all the way up to Jackle, but then I couldn't beat him. At least not at first. And I didn't want to start Elliot's story until I'd beaten Claris's story. Eventually I got it, though, and my name was on the top five of a lot of the levels - at least until the TRU employees came through and deleted the save data. Oh well.

 

Christmas came that year and ALLLLLL I wanted was this game. It was so beautiful. And there weren't any new Sonic games that I wanted, so my parents got it. Score! I spent all winter break playing the hell out of that game. I couldn't understand why Reala was an end-boss on par with Jackle when I could beat Reala in a snap and Jackle took me a gazillion tries. It was clear that Reala was supposed to be story-important, but his actual gameplay disappointed me.

 

When I realized the endings changed based on who you beat first, I was entranced. My dad had old audio and video recording equipment from the 80s, and I recorded the endings so I could watch them whenever I wanted, and took the audio with me on tape in my walkman.

 

It didn't occur to me to actually DRAW NiGHTS until I saw an ad for it in a Knuckles comic. I'd been practicing drawing Sonic characters for a while, but the idea of drawing NiGHTS just opened a whole new world for me. Suddenly I was making OCs and writing episodic stories and finally became a true geek about something. My future husband introduced me to this wonderful thing called the INTERNET, where he scanned my NiGHTS Christmas comic and uploaded it onto a site called Arcana where there were TONS of NiGHTS fan fics. Then he printed almost all of them for me, and I kept them all in a binder to read when I wasn't at his house's computer. Two things were super awesome from this site. I was praised by one of the powers that be for my comic - which was a high like no other since no one had ever paid me any mind before, and I discovered False Nightopia - and it was glorious. No story I'd ever read could make me laugh as much as those ones, and to this day I've got the entire saga, and its follow up generations in my book room, in a binder all their own. (As well as almost everything else she wrote.)

 

Of course I got the other games featuring NiGHTS as they came out - the pinball party, the SA games, Sonic Shuffle, et al... And then for Christmas the year it came out, the husband got me Journey of Dreams. Somewhere along the line I'd gotten a NiGHTS pillow case and plush Claris and Elliot. And I made a stuffed, talking NiGHTS and Reala some years back - though I sold them off. There were comics in there somewhere along the line, back when I was still convinced that Ken Penders knew how to make the world go 'round. (At least Mobius.) Aaaaaaaaaand... Hm, I think that's it. I got a face painter to put NiGHTS on my cheek once, and I hand embroidered a pair of pants to have NiGHTS on the bottom of the leg - pics on my deviantart. I made NiGHTS cookies once, which received a compliment on par with the one received for my first Christmas NiGHTS comic because the Imagini team commented on it! Woot!

 

Wow, that turned into a short NiGHTS-life-story, didn't it? XP Sorry folks!