Another Night, Another Dream

Well, after clumsily attempting to remove the Win XP partition from my PC and migrate everything over to Windows 7 completely and switching the Hard Drives over to native SATA mode from IDE (a move that forced me to reinstall Windows 7 a total of 5 times over 1 week), I think my PC has finally stabilised.

[PC owners, remember: this stuff never happens on consoles and that is why more people play games on them. Put your noses down and get over it.]

As I broke in my freshly formatted and re-partitioned PC, I came across a new project over at OverClocked Remix called Lucid Dreaming. It's a fan remix album of NiGHTS: Into Dreams...' stunning soundtrack.

Most people have not heard of, much less played, NiGHTS, but it is one of my favourite games of all time. It's difficult to explain what type of game it is, or even how to play it, and the best way to show its appeal still remains to let others grab a controller and just go for it. Seeing as how it was only released on the Sega Saturn (and re-released on the PS2 in Japan only), its audience was limited. I would argue, though, that it is also a game that not many people are going to 'get', and thus many would just dismiss it entirely. But it is, to me at least, one of the games that distills that 'Sega Factor' and shows the world how awesome they can be and what makes them different from other developers.

I never tried to play the Wii sequel NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams because I felt that NiGHTS: Into Dreams... was great as it was, and playing the sequel might just ruin the original for me (hmm... like Gundam Seed: Destiny I guess). I would definitely prefer the PS2 re-release given the choice of which to buy.

Of course, like most Sega games, NiGHTS has some of the best music around, and the OCRemix just further drives home the point that the soundtrack is absolutely perfect, and cannot possibly be improved upon.

Sadly, some of the OCRemixers saw fit to add lyrics to some of the tracks (including my favorite, Paternal Horn). Anyway, you can hit up the OCRemix site and Galbadia Hotel has the OST up as well so you can compare the originals with the remixes. At the very least, you can give a listen to the best boss battle music ever (NiGHTS & Reala: Theme of a Tragedic Revenge) before Snake Eater came along.