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.

– Alan Williamson, “Christmas NiGHTS Into Dreams retrospective“