Can you hear the lambs Clarice?

Another game has been struck down from my Hall of Shame. Clean out your desk Nights Into Dreams - you're outta here!

Original image located here. Accessed 27th September 2017

And thus ends a journey that has been twenty-one years in the making. I still remember seeing the trailer for this game in a store and being really excited about it, what with me being a Sega fanboy sympathizer. But it is only now, when Sega's heyday as a hardware manufacturer is long gone that I'm able to play Nights Into Dreams - on the XBLA. Irony eh?
Of course, I'm not playing the Saturn version: I'm playing the HD enhanced version. I could play the original version by why would I want to do that?

Okay, sarcasm aside, this game would still have to rank as one of the most beautiful games I've ever played. And the HD Enhancement does just that: Enhances the graphics into one of the most brightest and most colorful games around. Indeed it certainly shows up a lot of modern games - and this was a game released in a the middle of a decade people tend to look back on as being full of grittiness and edginess.
I remember one of the first reviews I saw of this game the reviewer noted that the game looked like it been made by a graphics department who'd had too much red cordial - can't say I disagree.
The music is also a treat too.

Now that we have the aesthetics out of the way, how does the gameplay come across?
I like what this game was trying to do, with it's flight mechanic but the prospect of flying is hindered by the knowledge that what the player is ultimately doing is flying along a fixed path. Sure there are alternate paths but they don't seem that different. And there's no denying that the game is short - but the difficulty makes up for it. For therein lies the challenge of reaching the 'A' rating - a challenge that, naturally, seems difficult in getting. And I will admit that i was putting a lot of hard effort in only to get anything but an 'A' - to a point where I was starting to take it personally.

One interesting observation is that, given how there is a loud call for more female representation in gaming, I actually found Claris' dream easier than Elliot's dream. True: I breezed through Clari's levels and got some high scores but Elliot's dreams were more tricky and more demanding to get higher scores - so much so, I was baffled that i did really well only to get hit with  a lowly 'C' grade.
So what, playing the female character means an easier time? Clearly this game was thinking way ahead of it's time.

But at the end of the day, this game had a lot of charm and I liked it a lot. It has great ideas, great art direction and the HD enhancement really help the game. It may have been a diamond in the rough when it was first released but, when compared to a lot of it's Saturn stablemates, Nights Into Dreams is a game that truly comes across like it was made with heart and a passion to be the best game the makers could produce.
And HD enhancement gives Nights Into Dreams the greatness originally worthy of it.