=============================================================================== NIGHTS INTO DREAMS for the SEGA SATURN GLITCH FAQ (Version 1.00) Copyright 2005 Lance Way =============================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- COPYRIGHT INFORMATION ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [N.B. the standard spiel, sorry it sounds horribly formal!] This document is the copyright property of Lance Way. It may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, under any circumstances except for personal, private use. No part of it may be placed on any web site, or otherwise distributed publicly, without advance written permission from the author. Such use or distribution is strictly prohibited, and is a violation of copyright. The only web site currently permitted to display this FAQ is: http://www.gamefaqs.com/ If you are interested in hosting this FAQ on your own web site, the author can be contacted at: lance_waySTOP@SPAMyahoo.co.uk All trademarks and copyrights contained in this document are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SECTION A: INTRODUCTION SECTION B: HOW TO PERFORM THE STICK CANYON GLITCH SECTION C: MORE INFO ON THE STICK CANYON GLITCH =============================================================================== SECTION A: INTRODUCTION =============================================================================== NiGHTS into Dreams is a classic score-based game; the object of the game is to improve your scores and better your skills as you attempt to master the various levels. As most NiGHTS fans will undoubtedly know, Sonic Team did not include any cheats or helpful debug options in the final version of this game, and it also appears to be surprisingly glitch-free. Ever since the game's release, high scores have generally been confined to the sort of sizes that they were meant to be. Recently though, (on 17/01/05, to be exact,) I discovered a glitch that allows a player to achieve over 4,000,000 points on the Stick Canyon level of NiGHTS. Not only is this a much higher score than could normally be achieved for Stick Canyon - my personal best to date is a "mere" 552,000 points - but to my knowledge this is the highest score that can be achieved on any NiGHTS level without the aid of an Action Replay or a similar gameplay-altering device. I stumbled across this glitch entirely by accident, and as far as I can tell I'm the first person to actually discover it - or at least, the first person to publicly document it. It took me some time to work out how to recreate the glitch and how to use it to an advantage, but the final effect seems to have been worth it. Although the glitch is easy enough to perform, it does requires a bit of explanation, so I thought this short document would be the best way to do that. If you have any input or comments on this document, or if you've discovered any other glitches in NiGHTS that you'd like to see included here in the future, you can email me at lance_waySTOP@SPAMyahoo.co.uk (without the added letters, of course). =============================================================================== SECTION B: HOW TO PERFORM THE STICK CANYON GLITCH =============================================================================== This glitch has only been confirmed as existing in the PAL / European version of NiGHTS, but due to the nature of it, I'd be surprised if it doesn't exist in all versions of the game. As executing this glitch is a slightly long process, you may want to run through this explanation step by step while playing the game itself, as you'll likely get a better idea of what's going on if you do. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- STEP 1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Play through Stick Canyon until you reach Course 3. You can rush through these courses as quickly as you like, because for the purposes of this glitch, your scores here will have no effect on your final total. About halfway through Course 3 you'll pass through a beam of blue light that "magnetises" you (so that items will be attracted towards you); also note that when you're magnatised, the trail of stars that normally follows you is no longer there, and you'll consequently be unable to perform paraloops. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- STEP 2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- While you're in this magnetised state, use the soft reset feature (hold A, B and C and press Start) so that you return to the game's title screen. Note that if your Saturn exits out to the CD player menu, (which is something that can occasionally happen when you use this feature,) you'll need to start over. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- STEP 3 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From the title screen, go through the menus as normal and start a new run on Stick Canyon. When you become NiGHTS, you'll notice that your trail of stars hasn't actually returned, and that you still can't do paraloops. What has happened is that you're still in a partially "magnetised" state from your last run, where you quit during Stick Canyon Course 3; evidently the game doesn't actually reset NiGHTS' state if you exit the level while magnetised. This is the loophole that will allow the main part of the glitch to work. You should now play through Course 1 and Course 2 of Stick Canyon as normal, achieving as high a score as possible. Although items won't gravitate towards you while you're in this strange state, (because it seems that feature was only programmed in for that specific part of Course 3,) certain enemies will indeed float towards you as if you were "magnetic", though they'll now disappear when they touch you. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GLITCH EXPLANATION ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- At this stage, an explanation of what the main part of the glitch does will probably help. You'll recall that at the end of the "magnetic section" of Course 3, you'd normally pass through a machine with a large pink number- counter on the side of it, which "de-magnetises" you and gives you a score bonus based on how many items you collected since you became magnetic. Normally this bonus would only be a few thousand points at most, as there are only a small number of items between the blue magnetising beam and this machine, but as you have now been magnetised and collecting items *since the beginning of Stick Canyon itself*, your points bonus should hopefully be in the millions. However, you still have to collect twenty blue chips, recover the Ideya, enter this machine and finish the course safely in order for your score to matter, and this is more awkward than normal due to some side effects of the glitch. Your first objective on Course 3 should be to collect twenty blue chips and free the Ideya, because the bonus from the de-magnetising machine will be doubled while you're in Bonus Time, like most other score bonuses. Unfortunately, the fact that you'll be magnetised outside of the area where you should be magnetised on this course is going to create problems for you. If you try to head off to the right from the start (in order to collect the blue chips that you need), you'll find that you can't pass through the blue beam of light, because you'll be constantly pushed to the left. (Under normal circumstances, this would make sense; you'd normally only be able to enter it from the *right* while magnatised, in which case you'd logically be "pushed out" to the left.) Basically this means that you can't pass the blue beam of light while it's turned on, so the first thing you should do is turn it off so that you can get to the blue chips beyond it. Fortunately, you can do this via yet another gameplay loophole. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- STEP 4 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What you should actually do when you start Course 3 is fly to the left until you reach the de-magnetising machine itself, because flying into this machine will deactivate the blue beam of light. (Again, this would happen normally as you flew through the level; the machines are basically set up to stop you getting out of the "intended" section of the level while magnetised.) You don't want the de-magnetising machine to drain away too much of your score yet though, so just touch the edge of it briefly, and push out to the right as soon as the bonuses start popping up. Note that you'll almost get "stuck" while the machine processes your score, and you'll only be able to move and turn very slowly. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- STEP 5 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The blue beam of light will now be deactivated, so fly back around to the right and into the area beyond it, where you'll be able to pick up as many blue chips as you need. Note that you shouldn't try and enter the de-magnetising machine from this direction (the left) under any circumstances; even going near it will cause the game to crash at this point, as you're apparently doing too many things that weren't planned for. When you have twenty chips, rush back around to the left and break the Ideya out of its prison, then enter the de-magnetising machine from this direction (from the right) to rack up your final score. You'll again get slightly "stuck" in the machine while it works out your score, so I'd recommend that you don't move too far into it and that you start trying to leave it with about fifteen seconds left in order to get back to the end of the course safely. Note that your score counter will still be going up after you leave the machine, as it apparently wasn't designed to keep up with these sorts of scores. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RESULT ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You should now have a ridiculously large score for Stick Canyon Course 3; for example, I ended up with over 2,000,000 points on my first attempt to exploit this glitch. You can now finish the dream as normal, beat the boss and check out your final score, but be warned: your insanely large score will not display correctly on all of the game's scoreboards and score-related screens. For example, a score of 4,672,570 will be shown fully on your dream selection screen, but it will only appear as 672,570 on your Stick Canyon "dream data" screen. Basically some of the score counters only show the last six digits, as Sonic Team evidently didn't expect people to get over a million points in any one dream (let alone in a single course). It seems that the game still keeps track of all the scores correctly, though, it's just that they're not displayed correctly in some places. The in-game score counters seem to only show the last six digits of your score too, so don't be worried if you Stick Canyon Course 3 score seems a little "low" while you're performing the glitch. =============================================================================== SECTION C: MORE INFO ON THE STICK CANYON GLITCH =============================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ALTERNATIVE "STEP 2" FOR PERFORMING THE GLITCH ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There's actually a way to get NiGHTS magnetised outside of the magnetic area in Stick Canyon Course 3 without soft-reseting the game; in fact, this "alternative" is the first method I discovered when I started experimenting with the glitch. If you simply mess around and fly in and out of the blue light on Course 3, going back and forth through the beam and skimming down the left- hand side of it, it's possible to magnetise yourself and then just fly away to the left without getting sucked through. All you need to do then is finish the course and the rest of the dream as normal, restart Stick Canyon afterwards, and you can perform the rest of the glitch as you would otherwise. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NIGHTS WITHOUT PARALOOPS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No matter which method you used for Step 2 though, you don't have to just restart Stick Canyon when you get back to the dream select screen. You can technically go to any level as "magnetised NiGHTS" at this point; strangely enough, it seems that NiGHTS' state won't be reset unless you go and play through Stick Canyon Course 3 "properly", or turn the power off on your console, of course. While in this state, NiGHTS even loses his star-trail in the game's rolling demos. Whether or not this glitch can be exploited on any other levels has yet to be established, but if you think you've found any other ways to use it I'd be happy to hear from you, and you can find my contact details below. =============================================================================== SECTION D: CONTACT THE AUTHOR =============================================================================== If you've noticed any errors in this FAQ, or if you've found any other interesting gameplay glitchs in NiGHTS, I'd be pleased to hear from you; if any info submitted to me is included in future versions of this FAQ, full credit will of course be given to the person who sent it. So, if you think there's something that I should know, please email me at: lance_waySTOP@SPAMyahoo.co.uk ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- COPYRIGHT INFORMATION ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This document is the copyright property of Lance Way. It may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, under any circumstances except for personal, private use. No part of it may be placed on any web site, or otherwise distributed publicly, without advance written permission from the author. Such use or distribution is strictly prohibited, and is a violation of copyright. The only web site currently permitted to display this FAQ is: http://www.gamefaqs.com/ If you are interested in hosting this FAQ on your own web site, the author can be contacted at: lance_waySTOP@SPAMyahoo.co.uk All trademarks and copyrights contained in this document are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders. ===============================================================================