From: HarshReality@void.com (Harsh Reality) Newsgroups: rec.games.video.sega Subject: NiGHTS FAQ 1.1 Date: Sat, 24 Aug 1996 01:33:11 -0500 NiGHTS is Sega's best game out there. Its only available in the import version now, but the US version comes out August 20. Here is my Nights into Dreams help guide v1.1. Any help will be greatly appreciated. This guide was written by me, Bill Schimel, with heavy contributions from Dustin Cushman, Kaoru MAEDA and mostly Brian Gillman. All contributions should be sent to me, Bill Schimel, at sch19@webserve.net You can find the most up to date version of this guide at Daves Sega Saturn page. http://www.sega-saturn.com/nights.htm UPDATED July 16 4:01 PM Added info on A-life system from Kaoru MAEDA Added Debug Mode rumor Added Names for bosses Add music tricks Added Questions Section at bottom Added Emblems section Added select boss code Q.What are you supposed to do? The object of Nights is to get back your orbs that are stolen from you by the Nightmarians.To do this you must collect 20 blue spheres and take them to the large thing holding the orb. Then take the what you get back to the start. There are four colored orbs to bring back. So get 20 blue spheres, take them to the Orb holder, it blows up, then back to the start. Q.How come i keep getting F's and C's? The way to get a high mark is to get a high score. The higher your score, the better your grade. Q.How do i get a high score? Simple. First collect the 20 blue spheres as fast as possible and blow up the Orb holder to get the colored orb. Then your bonus time starts and points are sky high! Fly around the course and try to get as many links, tricks, and items (stars and spheres) as you can. When time is almost up, come back to the start and set the colored orb in. You should get a good mark. Q.What are links and tricks? Links are how many rings you fly through or items you get in a row. Tricks are when you use the L and R trigger buttons. The only ways to get points for tricks are to fly through a Blue and yellow ring and do as many as possible, or collect items while doing tricks. Try this: Circle around stars or spheres and while they are catching up pull off a trick. You get good points for that. Q.How many endings are there? Each character has 2 endings. The ending you get depends on whether you have played/beaten the game with both characters or just the one. Q.What does the blue and yellow balloon with the timer do? If you get that many links (the number on the balloon) before the timer runs out, it opens up and showers you with points. Q.How do you place pians, as mentioned by Kaoru MAEDA, in his translation of the web page? "Place" was a somewhat misleading word, sorry. When you get close to a pian, it will follow you or run away from you according its "friendliness" to you. In this way, you can lead it so that it will touch another pian. Normally, pians move along a course (in either direction). (answered by Kaoru MAEDA) Notes Always finish the course before the time is up! Turning back into one of the kids almost definetly gives you an F. The last levels can only be accessed by getting C's on all four of your charcters course. To play the two player mode, beat all 4 regular courses and you will fight Reala. Then you can access the two player mode in the options. In the 5 th level for both characters wait until the light hits you, then you will be flung to a platform. Jump off and then do all four courses as fast as you can. EMBLEM INFO From Kaoru MAEDA There are three emblems: o Help Pian Panel (round) A pian accompanies you. You can collect items by flying near them (instead of touching). o Power Dash Panel (square) Your drill dash meter is refilled. o Power Loop Panel (pentagon) Your loop powers up. You can cover larger area than usual. A LIFE SYSTEM INFO From Kaoru MAEDA A-Life is an environment. The memory holds information of inhabitants (nightopions or pians) in dreams. It is automatically saved/ loaded. Here are some tips about A-life. o Eggs will hatch if you touch them. Pians hatched by you will become friendly to you. o Dashing by a pian will make it surprise. It will become less friendly towards you . Eventually it starts running away when you come closer. o Take care making a loop when a pian is around you. You might throw it into a para-loop dimension. o Pians seem to sleep at midnight, funny enough. Why inhabitants of a DREAM sleep at night? :-P The music will gradually change game by game, as nightopians get more friendly to you. Someone says it involves a technology which selects a phrase out of a pre-programmed set of melodies in real time! o Each nightopian has two occupations (e.g. sing, whisle, fly upside-down, etc.). o Two pians can lay an egg. The child will inherit occupations from each of its parents. The Web page says if the two inherited occupations are identical, the child will get another one randomly. Placing pains who share an occupation will increase the chance of getting a new occupation. o If you touch-dash or drill-dash to a nightmaren, it will become a ball. Hitting a nightopian with that ball may cause a mutation. It is really hard to aim a pian with a ball, but keep trying. You'll find a new creature some games later. It's really fun finding new occupations or mutants! This comes from Dustin Cushman The Control The control of the game differs with the characters you are playing. Here is a list of the buttons do. Claris and Elliot The D-Pad or analog control controls their movement The X Y Z buttons do nothing The A B C buttons make them jump. To do a higher jump press A,B, or C before you hit the ground. You can do this twice. The second time is a flip. The Left and Right Shifts adjust the camera angles Nights The D-Pad or analog control controls his movements. The X Y Z buttons do nothing The A B C buttons make Nights speed up The Left and Right Shifts make Nights do acrobatics Also, by pressing the left and right shift buttons at the same time, Nights will come to a stop and then do flips. If you are in the overhead view at the time, then he will lower his altitude, allowing you to get hard to reach items. Nights Yellow Tail Moves From Brian Gilman Here is a complete list of moves of the tricks nights can do when his tail turns yellow. You can perform up to 10 of them for points. Small Loop Middle Loop Large Loop Giant Loop Cross Clover Twister Mixer Swing Parasol Dance Moon Roulette R Roulette L Cross Arrow L-Wing Rock'n'Roll Screw Basket Triangle Tornado Ballet Boomerang V-Fall T-Fall Spin Ax R Ax L Sling Typhoon Drill Sonic Wind Space Scorpion This is from Dustin Cushman A Little About the Screen In the far upper left corner is a idea meter. The number indicates how many Blue Balls you currently have on your character, and the colored meter below it shows how many Balls have been returned to the Snow Globe Deal, and indicates how many more Blue Balls you need to collect before the Idea Box can be unlocked. Time Limit You have a set time limit, playing as Nights, to go through the course, get the spheres and free the idea. Once your time is up, you fall to the ground and lose all of your points and have to play as Claris or Elliot. Codes and tricks Sound System From Brian Gilman You can access part of the sound system during the game by pressing L+R+Y , does anyone know what you can do with this? DSS?? Easy way to get the 20 spheres As Claris or Elliot walk around and collect 20 blue spheres, then go to where NiGHTS is and become him. Then take the 20 spheres to free the idea and all the rest of the time can be for bonus points! RUMORED DEBUG MODE! From Brian Gilman The game does have a debug mode, which lets you edit the A-LIFE data, and change replay settings,camera angles etc.. but I haven't figured out how to access it yet. Special Music To get different music, you can do various things such as hit the pians, beat the game, make mutants, become friends with the pians, or anything else that changes the A life system. Also beating the game with straight A's gives you a remixed version of the soundtrack. NiGHTS Bitmaps Put the NiGHTS cd in your disc drive and choose the extra folder. You have your choice between 16 million colors or 256. Select Bosses To select what bosses you fight, beat the game once and then in the options menu go to Nightmaren and choose Random or whatever boss you like most. You can also view your best times on the bosses. The Endings Each character has 2 endings. The ending you get depends on whether you have played/beaten the game with both characters or just the one. If you get all A's when at the end adults sing the theme song instead of kids. EMBLEMS Throughout the game there are several emlems, that can be uncovered by doing a para-loop in the spot where they are. I think that there is 1 emblem per course. If you have found any emblems, or what they do, please e mail me. The Bosses Taken from a post in Rec.Games.Video.Sega by Tony K. Jung PUFFY - A Large Female Rabbit Balloon - You have to grab her and let her go to knock out bars, or walls. Wait til you get her in the right angle then let her go. Probably the easiest Night Maren most people probably know what to do here. GULWING - A Tadpole looking creature with bat wings, and tail with spikes on it. - You have to either hit it on the top of the head or bottom. Best plan is to wait for it to come to you, be a little above it when it does and then speed up and hit it. Gulwing will lose it's head and another will grow in it's place. Just wait for the head to grow back, and hit it again. Place youself always a little above it so you can repeatedly hit it as a new head appears. Gulpo - A Giant fish with teeth, sorry I forgot its' name - You have to hit it by going into one of the small fishes that will shoot you across the cylinder. You have to find a fish that is aiming right at the giant fish. When it is hit it moves down if it was on top, and moves to the top if it was hit when it was at the bottom of the cylinder. So you will have to always go from using the shooting fish devices from top to bottom back to top and so on. Reala - The Opposite to Nights. - You have to do a 360 around Reala, 3 times to beat him or her. The best way to do this is to hit Reala, this will make him/her lose control for a bit. Then you can speed up and 360 him/her. Keep hitting Reala to through him/her off balance and do the 360. Clawz - This Night Maren likes to light up the mouses, jumping from one to another. - Best thing to do here is to hit the mouses the Night Maren lights. You can only explode the ones that are lite. By doing this, you will remove mouses for the Night Maren to jump to. When there is no other mouses the Night Maren can jump to, you can hit it yourself and win the match. Jackle - This Night Maren throws cards at you to slow you down. It looks like a bat with a cape. - To beat him you have to hit him about 10 times I think. To reach him you have to speed towards him. When he lets the cards go, stop speeding by letting go of the speeding button. By doing this, you will be able to avoid the cards much easier than when you are speeding. Just dodge up then down then up and then down again. When you reach him, hit him. You will push him out of his cape. He will float back to his cape, to start throwing cards at you again. Stand right in front of the cape and the Night Maren and hit it when it gets close to you or speed up to meet and hit it. Repeat the process and you will win the match easily. Wizeman - The last Night Maren and the largest one of them all. - He throws rocks at you first, just speed towards him low or high, you will be able to avoid the rocks this way. Reach him and the other Nights will help you break the barrier and hit him. - Next he throws rows of rocks, If the rocks are moving upward, go under it. If they are moving downwards go above it and you'll reach him fine. - The last thing he throws are two Twister. Go straight though the middle and between the two twisters. After this Wizeman will repeat the process again. QUESTIONS I have a couple of questions to ask all of you. Also, when you pause the game and press LR and Y. You get a DSS option menu. What is that? Thats it for now! The next installment of this guide will have the points needed to make the grades and how to do each of the trigger button tricks.