Hopefully sega won't mess this one up. Shame they don't use GOG, would love to pick this up on pc.
NiGHTS HD
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Agh, I just posted this in the General Gaming thread..
I'm pretty exited about this. It's about time it get's rereleased in the west; too bad it missed the 15th anniversary.
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Also crossing my fingers that it'll include the Christmas NiGHTS content.
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I'm guessing it'll be DLC like the DX content was for Sonic Adventure.
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Yes .
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Never played this game but it gets a lot of praise. Might check it out.
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Ohmygod.
One of the greatest SEGA games ever,
And I will get to own it again.YES.
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This'll be a great companion game to go next to Journey.
I wonder if my old skills are still intact, or if I'll have to actually work to get the best grades? Will Reala still be an annoying bastard? Will he still play subtly differently in Christmas Nights?
And possibly have multiple saves, in order to keep the different versions of the ending intact. (Just the singers in the credits, but still.)
Nights was a craaaazy memory hog on the Saturn for some reason. Even though it was just keeping track of scores, it took up a TON of memory space, most of the Saturn's default memory. More memory than RPGs or nearly anything else, for some reason. i had to constantly delete and replay the whole thing from scratch if I wanted to make room for anything else.
The "classic Saturn version" has me intrigued. Does that mean they finally have a decent Saturn emulator for the current console gen? Or just that enough time has passed its easy to emulate that particular game? If so, throw some Panzer Dragoon, Guardian Heroes, Dragon Force and Burning Rangers this way, please. And maybe Virtua On and Magic Knights Rayearth.
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Guardian Heroes was rereleased in October for XBLA. I believe you can play it in updated and original graphics. Here are all the blog entries: http://blogs.sega.com/category/guardian-heroes/
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@RobbyBevard:
Nights was a craaaazy memory hog on the Saturn for some reason. Even though it was just keeping track of scores, it took up a TON of memory space, most of the Saturn's default memory. More memory than RPGs or nearly anything else, for some reason. i had to constantly delete and replay the whole thing from scratch if I wanted to make room for anything else.
You needed the external memory card!
Although to be fair I was too lazy to buy one until the battery in my saturn died and wiped all my save data.
@RobbyBevard:
The "classic Saturn version" has me intrigued. Does that mean they finally have a decent Saturn emulator for the current console gen? Or just that enough time has passed its easy to emulate that particular game? If so, throw some Panzer Dragoon, Guardian Heroes, Dragon Force and Burning Rangers this way, please. And maybe Virtua On and Magic Knights Rayearth.
Well they had a saturn emulator that worked pretty well on the pc about 10-12 years ago called girigiri, which they used to sell saturn games - although I forget exactly how the distribution process worked. If they put real work into it, it should be possible to do on the PS3 & 360 (wii has no chance though).
…hopefully it doesn't just mean a manky looking graphics filter.
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You needed the external memory card!
Although to be fair I was too lazy to buy one until the battery in my saturn died and wiped all my save data.
Well yes, thats obvious NOW, especially after years of the PS1 and PS2 having memory cards, but at the time?
And yeah, the internal memory eventually dying out really sucked. Made any game of length unplayable. I guess that only had a 4 or 5 year lifespan on it for whatever reason?
And I realize the Saturn had weird hardware going on with its processors or something, and that Sega was TERRIBLE about holding onto the code for their games, but that its not easily emulated 17 years later boggles the mind.
I also miss the Saturn's music playing interface with the spaceship that could alter the pitch of cd's. Simple and a minor thing, but it was fun.
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Yep, really lookin' forward to this. Never got to play the original Nights into Dreams, but I did play Nights: Journey of Dreams, which was good, I guess, but had a lot of the typical Sega problems. But yeah, definitely gonna get this.
Maybe they could have Christmas Nights as DLC?
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Yes. Very yes .
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DEJA VU ROBBY
Saturn was designed STUPID and was so notoriously developer unfriendly that even Yu Suzuki and Yuji Naka hated it. It used a ridiculously complex and inconvenient multiple (8!!!) processor syncing process that consoles are only just now becoming able to emulate because the only way to compensate for this using only one CPU is to have one damn fast CPU. The Saturn had 2 CPUs (already making it pain to work with at that time), 2 VDPs, a sound processor to control its custom sound processor, a processor to control its disk drive and another processor to coordinate them all and, initially, its dev tools were so useless that developers had to code the game in assembly language instead of C. Now that there are multi-core processors they can split up the duties of the different Saturn processors and handle the process better without games hanging, not working or not starting.
My component cables and controllers and games all got destroyed from water damage while I was away at school, but after years of searching I finally found an emulator (SSF) that can play Saturn games and now have a computer powerful enough to handle it. And you couldn't imagine my joy~
Dragon Force, Clockwork Knight, Panzer Dragoon, ASTAL, Guardian Heroes, Virtua Cop, Die Hard Arcade, Virtual ON, just - just so many damned incredible games the likes of which you just don't see anymore.
So if SEGA is giving us ANY of these games on PSN and XBLA I'm all for it. But really, I'd be even happier if SEGA revisited some of these old franchises.
Shame a lot of the companies that made them don't exist anymore. -
@RobbyBevard:
Well yes, thats obvious NOW, especially after years of the PS1 and PS2 having memory cards, but at the time?
And yeah, the internal memory eventually dying out really sucked. Made any game of length unplayable. I guess that only had a 4 or 5 year lifespan on it for whatever reason?
It used the cr2032 watch style batteries - easily replaceable, but, relied on us knowing they were in there in the first place, and I, and I guess most people, didn't bother reading up on them until it'd died. When I realised what an incredibly stupid method sega had used by default to save games, I bought the external one and only used that - I'd lost Shining wisdom/ark/force data, which….hurt.
@RobbyBevard:
And I realize the Saturn had weird hardware going on with its processors or something, and that Sega was TERRIBLE about holding onto the code for their games, but that its not easily emulated 17 years later boggles the mind.
It's both hard(lots of processors meant that only in around 2006 were modern computers able to handle emulating it) and somewhat obscure. I think the thing that most hurts the emulation progress is that most of the best games never made it out of Japan, so there wasn't the same drive to emulate it as there was with the psx.
@RobbyBevard:
I also miss the Saturn's music playing interface with the spaceship that could alter the pitch of cd's. Simple and a minor thing, but it was fun.
Yes, still the best bios.
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Nights HD hits the PSN October 2… along with Sonic Adventure 2. They will each be 9.99.
Nights will by default include Christmas Nights, which is good. (Be really good if the bonus features in that game apply to the main game, like playing as Reala or Sonic…)
Okami HD hits sometime in October as well. The PS3 will shortly contain basically all my favorite games ever.
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October 2nd is the best day ever.
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Oh it's including Christmas Nights as well? That's sweet!
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I don't have enough time for all these games… Already getting RE6 Anthology on October 2. And Sonic Adventure 2 is so tempting if it looks good and is 16:9. Getting all 180 emblems was good freaking times.
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Gah, Nights turned out to be 2 gig and took like 6 hours to download. I didn't play it last night as a result, but DID play it this morning for about an hour.
The HD is nice, I played the Saturn version briefly just to compare. The updated graphics aren't amazing, but they are definitely a step or two up.
I'm doing adequately at it, I remember it well enough to get passing grade scores, (B's and C's, the ocassional A) but I didn't just pick it right back up and perfectly ace it instantly. (Back in the day I could do a from scratch run and get A's on every single course first try.) Only doing okay on the bosses, have to relearn their pattens. Gonna take some retries and relearning best paths and things to get straight A's… and the levels take a little longer than I remembered... about 12-15 minutes each if done correctly. (or in about 2 minutes if done badly. It's kind of the opposite of Sonic like that.) Yaye, replay value!
Couple locked things in the menu. One is obviously Christmas nights... no idea what the other will be.
Trophies are mostly easy, simply "beat the level" though there is a trophy for getting all A's. The only gold trophy is to encircle Gillwing's entire tail in one go... definitely not up par skill wise for that, not even sure how to do it.
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Cleared the game and Christmas Nights (not in and of itself a hard task to do) but still only B rank on about half the stages. Need to relearn the hotspots and shortcuts and get back into A ranks…
The fourth unlocked section shows all the residents you've hatched. Interesting, but kinda pointless... especially since the nightmare crossbreeds are in SUCH a minority... but it is neat that it keeps track.
Very dissapointed however that the Christmas Nights bonus features are not intact. Most of them were just picture galleries and things, but distinctly there was a mode to play Sonic for a stage (which kind of sucked really since the stages are air based) and to play as Reala... who played subtly different from Nights. I couldn't say how exactly he played differently now, but young me 20 years ago who played the game for a hundred hours could.
Maybe he'll be a DLC on April Fools.
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Neat. After beating Christmas Nights, I started up the main game… and it had activated a Halloween theme! Claris and Elliot wearing halloween costumes, and Nights is a grey color. I don't recall that being a variant in Christmas Nights, and it certainly didn't apply to the main game before (since there were different disks) which is pretty neat. Makes me wonder what other themes and varieties the game might have throughout the year. (Maybe they've retained Reala on April 1?)
NOT a feature they'd advertised at all, so its a neat little surprise.
