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Nights into Dreams

1996 video game

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ1855957
Source-derived summary

NiGHTS into Dreams is a 1996 action game developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega for the Sega Saturn. The story follows the teenagers Elliot Edwards and Claris Sinclair, who enter Nightopia, a dream world where all dreams take place. With the help of Nights (stylized as NiGHTS), an exiled "Nightmaren", they begin a journey to stop the evil ruler Wizeman from destroying Nightopia and consequently the real world. Players control Nights flying through Elliot and Claris's dreams to gather enough energy to defeat Wizeman and save Nightopia. The game is presented in 3D and imposes time limits on every level, in which the player must accumulate points to proceed.

Development began after the release of Sonic & Knuckles in 1994, although the concept originated in 1992, during the development of Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Development was led by Sonic Team veterans Yuji Naka, Naoto Ohshima, and Takashi Iizuka. Naka began the project with the idea of flight, and Ohshima designed Nights as an androgynous character that resembles an angel that could fly like a bird. The team conducted research on dreaming and REM sleep, and was influenced by the works and theories of psychoanalysts Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud. An analogue controller, the Saturn 3D controller, was designed alongside the game and included with some retail copies.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Nights into Dreams” is 1996 video game. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Nights, Dreams and video, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1996, 1994, 1992—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1996-07-05, 2012-12-17—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. For this dossier, Nights, Dreams and video is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “1996 video game” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1855957. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1996, 1994 and 1992.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Nights into Dreams” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.