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I remember a lot from Christmas 1996, the year when I got my Sega Saturn: my mum button-mashing her way to victory in Virtua Fighter 2, my granddad driving safely within the speed limit in Sega Rally. Then there was NiGHTS Into Dreams, Sonic Team's answer to Super Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot. And what an answer it was: flying through children's dreams as an androgynous purple jester, it was Sega at its most creative - and, perhaps, its most commercially suicidal.NiGHTS is almost impenetrable at first. You enter each dream as a child and walk around for all of five seconds before NiGHTS blasts out of its prison like a fizzing magenta firework. With the Saturn's dinner plate-sized 3D controller in hand, you've barely got time to enjoy the azure skies whizzing past. Rings explode in all dimensions as you pass through them, NiGHTS leaving a twinkling contrail in its wake, crumpling with the speed of the dash. Each stage is a different dream to be conquered before Claris or Elliot wakes up - the alarm clock's hands grow ever louder as the seconds tick away, chasing you across the level if you run out of time - and in these dreams, any semblance of physical realism gives way to enchanting, impossible fantasy. One minute you're steering a car across the forest, the next careening through a museum made of rubber. In a dream, anything is possible.
Our hero is bound to a two-dimensional plane and must collect 20 blue orbs scattered around each course to free a shinier orb from its squid-like 'Ideya Capture', then return to the start before time runs out. So far, so 90s. So you return to the start, are awarded a 'C' grade for your efforts, and you wonder what you did to deserve that.
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