After finishing NiGHTS on Saturn I thought I’d check out the latest version of the game.
I’ve gotten A ranks on everything except Elliot’s canyon level…one day…but yeah, it’s been interesting to say the least. What stood out for me is how different it feels playing the game with analogue controls on something other than the Saturn’s 3D controller. At first I thought the flying physics were broken, but it’s just that the turning circle of modern sticks - optimised for fine-tuned reticule aiming - are much smaller, so it’s faster to do a sweeping motion around the outside moving your thumb at the same speed.
The Saturn’s 3D controller’s analogue stick is more like a giant 3DS Slide pad in many ways, and that way of doing analogue suits NiGHTS’s emphasis on performing sweeping and tight arcs and loops in mid-air much more than modern analogue sticks, whose design has clearly been influenced by the right stick’s importance in fine-tune camera control and aiming. It makes me wish a 3DS NiGHTS conversion with the original Saturn graphics happened to be honest!
Otherwise it’s a surprisingly faithful port even if the visuals have clearly had to be redone. The Saturn mode just loads in the old assets but the lighting and effectswork is still all new. I had no idea that this is a port of the PS2 version which might explain the resources thrown at it (see above - that’s a lot of artists for a port!) even if they outsourced it to Sega Shanghai probably to reduce costs. The same team ported it to more recent systems.
Not a fan of them scrubbing the original credits from the game though - including in the main menu credits which have the PC/XBLA/PSN port credits and publishing staff…