SHIRO! Shorts: NiGHTS 1996 E3 Beta

Today marks the 25^th anniversary of the launch of NiGHTS into Dreams in Japan. Created by the Sonic Team and showcasing the talents of Yuji Naka, Naoto Ohshima and Takashi Iizuka, the game’s pedigree in the annals of Saturn gaming is undisputed. On the road to the game’s completion, SEGA demonstrated an unfinished build at the 1996 E3 show, held on May 16-18 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

The special E3 demo of the game featured only two levels – Claris’s Spring Valley and Elliot’s Frozen Bell. Claris’s Spring Valley looks the more complete of the two levels, featuring minor differences in level layout. Some blue chips are in slightly tighter clusters, others are slightly moved from where they would end up in the retail game. In general, the changes made to the retail version seem to have been made to facilitate better flow – some links are not possible to make in the beta, due to item placement.

Aside from this, some sound effects are also different. The sound of picking up stars is very muted and doesn’t fit very well with the game’s otherwise enchanting mood. Pian eggs cannot be hatched by the kids – only NiGHTS can grab onto them, but then when he releases the egg, he gets shot off as if from an arrow bumper. This was likely changed in the final game as dashing off in such a manner often kills the Pian. Cages of blue chips exist in both levels, but when they are broken, the blue chips simply float instead of automatically being drawn into NiGHTS. Also, in both Claris and Elliot’s level, the stunts from the special ribbon aren’t all properly named yet, for the most part displaying placeholder labels only (although the stunts themselves work). ‘Dreamy’ scores are now labelled based on how many stunts were executed – such as ‘Dreamy Thirteen’. In the retail release, every stunt past 11 is simply called ‘Dreamy’.

Elliot’s Frozen Bell is in a less complete state and features more graphical glitching, and textures appearing in the incorrect order. Elliot begins in a different spot in the dream than in the retail game – he is somewhat to the right of where he’d be expected to spawn. When hopping around as the young lad, his voice is somewhat different – his cheerful jumping sound is now a disturbing semi-constipated old-man grunt. The stolen ideyas can be found through the level, floating where they should be but sans an Ideya Capture. The monkey-bar rungs are much more ‘clingy’ than in the retail release; it is easy to get stuck in them as NiGHTS will grab them each and every time and do a loop. The orange hoops, especially in Mare 2, are arranged in different places and patterns. The changes made for the retail release clear the screen up somewhat as it is very busy in the beta. The snowballs of Mare 3 are much more haphazardly placed, and there are far more enemies in a few sections. When exiting the toboggan slide, NiGHTS no longer shoots up with speed as with the retail release, instead simply stops, rather anti-climatically.

Completing either level leads to an encounter with Puffy, who has some extra colors on her… round pant thing. She also has a few extra lines of unintelligible speech at the start of the level,  all of which remain in the retail release in the sound test only. The level is mainly the same, with one of the destructible barriers spinning in place rather than being stationary as in the retail game. Once Puffy has been dispatched, the break of dawn is multicolored rather than being white as in the final version.

Final scores are displayed in a simplified table with no options to toggle as in the finished version, and the game doesn’t create a save file. A few FMV videos are shown if the game is left unattended, including one that seems to be mis-timed compared to the retail release – likely because Naka and Ohshima have inserted their names into the sequence. There is also a demonstration of the boss Gillwing, despite not being accessible in the beta – likely placed in there as his sequence is graphically excellent.

Overall, the E3 Demo is a neat piece of NiGHTS history which demonstrates how far the game came along on its journey towards completion; it is clear the gameplay was completed before the graphics and object placement were fully settled. When development began, the game was initially fully free-flying 3D, before Sonic Team decided that this didn’t produce very good gameplay. This beta has NiGHTS fly along the familiar pre-set paths, but the scoring system is clearly not well balanced. The final few months of development saw the scoring system polished to the excellent level we see in the finished product. All in all, this beta disc is a neat piece for NiGHTS fans to check out to see the game as it was, a mere few months away from completion.