Those are some pretty serious scores. You seem to have 10 000 or so on all of mine. I assume for the first mare you are either doing it backwards and getting more than a 28 link (possible but ninja hard) and the 3rd one you are getting dreamy scores for the stunt rings? But your scores for the second and 4th mares just blew mine away. Did you find a way to continue the link through the whole level or something? I have only been playing for about a month and I am working my way up through the score ranking site I found but looks like I am missing something fairly important…
I am really hoping to get good at this game so any advice at all would be much appreciated.
Going backwards it possible, its ninja hard though, I have done it three or four times out of a hundred maybe? I have the photo to prove it too. You can practice on the time attack mode on xmas nights over and over.
My scores generally are not too bad. Most are over the 350 000 to 400 000 mark except for stick canyon which I absolutely suck at.
I’ll try it; at the moment I’m bewildered by the number of sheepy Nightopians in Spring Valley. Wonder who will win the contest? Not me, anyway. :anjou_embarassed:
Hey, I thought your previous avatar was quite cool, in an abstract kinda way.
Whoops, yeah, that’s the one. They’re multiplying at a crazy rate, too!
The other day I did manage to “breed” a Mepian based on the purple bird Nightmaren (can’t remember the name for it) but I think it died or something.
Incidentally, do the Mepians in anyone else’s game have a habit of self-destructing?! I was flying past one yesterday in the game when it just dwindled into nowhere like it would have done if I’d paralooped it.
Also, I have seen that Nightmaren actually seem to kill Mepians. The purple bird guy is especially evil for doing that. All this in a game which seems so syrupy and sweet!
Although I’d heard that it’s possible to get higher than 28 links on the first mare, it’s not something I’ve done myself; as odd as it may seem, my only real “trick” for the first mare is collecting blue chips with Claris before going to NiGHTS. If you quickly grab enough blue chips while walking and jumping around so that you can destroy the idea prison on your very first lap, you’ll ultimately be able to get a higher score; you’ll lose a few points on the time bonus for destroying the thing (because that bonus starts decreasing as soon as the level begins), but you can gain a lot more points in the extra flying time you’ll have; the real clock doesn’t start until you bond with NiGHTS. Apart from that, I really just went for 28 links on every lap and went around very fast to do the maximum number of laps possible within the time limit.
As for the third mare, it really is about maxing out on those stunt ribbons; I rushed through everything else in the course to hit the stunt ribbons as many times as possible, and averaged a pretty high number of tricks (I generally get eight to ten, but rarely eleven). You should focus on the stunt ribbons during the first lap too, as you’ll gain more points for messing around with them than you’ll lose from your prison-destroying time bonus.
For those other two mares, I think it’s technically possible to link the whole of the second mare, but very difficult; normally I’d try to link all of the items up to where the idea prison is in that mare, then link all of the items after that point up to the end of the lap (which is still pretty hard). I can’t remember anything particularly helpful for the fourth mare though, I’m afraid; that one’s really just a case of going round extremely fast and linking as many things together as possible. You can link most of the items up to the foot of the mountain if I remember correctly, and most of the items that are up in the mountains themselves.
Oh, and welcome to the forums.
I’ve no idea what actually triggers it, but that’s happened to me too. Maybe that’s how the game keeps their population down, to avoid you getting lots of slowdown?
[quote=“Arcie”]Right now, Lance’s score of 502,000 still stands to be the winner. Mainly because I’ve been too tired to play.
And we need a prize to get some competition going.
The winner of the NiGHTS score challenge will receive one (1) Games Workshop miniature of his/her choice, painted by me, to the value of ?10 or equivalent. If the winner does not enjoy top quality sci-fi/fantasy miniatures, then I shall convert a game character of their choice instead.[/quote]
Oh, I’m not sure if I should be getting a prize for this one; as I said, I’ve not actually touched NiGHTS this festive season, I’m just posting my old high scores from last year. My 500,000 score was with the much easier Clawz instead of Gillwing, too; it’s unlikely that I’d be able to achieve it without that specific boss. If I’d be the one who would win with that score, I’d happily have the prize go to the next highest scorer instead; someone who’s seen this thread and who’s been playing NiGHTS recently trying to improve their scores, I mean.
Thanks very much for your help and the welcome. it seems like you have more or less identical strategies to me, just you are alot better at them. I have worked out the getting the chips with the kids first, or as many as you need to get before you hit the idea capture. Also it seems like your links break in the same places as mine, just after the idea capture on the second mare and on the way up and down the mountain on the 4th one.
One problem I do have though, I would be interested to know if you have a decent method for getting the 8 to 10 stunts, I am very inconsistent here I normally get 5 to 7 and over 8 on occasion but I am ashamed to say my “strategy” is a bit mashy if you know what I mean.
Well, mine seriously is too. It’s not much of a “method”, but I usually start off by making sure I’m not too near the ground or the ceiling, and then I rotate the thumbpad in one direction repeatedly while alternately pressing L and R. A small paraloop and a medium-sized paraloop both count as stunts, and I seem to pull them off automatically whilst pressing the buttons like this; sooner or later I always trigger one of the random “shoot off in a straight line doing an acrobatic drill”-style stunts though, so then I hold the thumbad in a different direction to where I’m moving so that when I stop that stunt I’ll definitely do a different one; each specific stunt only counts towards your score once, although it took me a while to notice that.
A lot of guides recommend that you hug the ground or the ceiling while doing stunts, as that makes each stunt cut out quicker which lets you fit more in within the time limit. I’ve had success with that up to a point, but it seems very hard to keep doing different stunts while hugging a surface, as you need to keep pressing the directions that keep you in contact with it (which often makes you waste time doing stunts you’ve already done).
Sorry this is all a bit vague by the way, as it’s been about six months since I really played the game; if someone had posted this topic last summer, I’d probably be able to be much more specific.
Thats ok, Any information is good information. Theres virtually no in depth help on this game available on the net. Acctually I will revise that at say there isnt any. The FAQ on gamefaqs doens treally have anything other than basic gameplay mechanics.
I have been thinking of doing some 2.0 boss movies but my digital camera only records for 30 seconds and thats with no sound. No capture card you see. I did do Gillwing in 9 seconds though.
I think the fastest time I’ve got was 20 seconds. I do remember getting a 13 Link on Gillwing the other day, but I think that was a different battle and a bit of a fluke, to be honest.
As I think I wrote earlier, I fly towards Gillwing from the top, then loop down just as I get to his head, and then try to fly back over him and complete the loop. Which generally results in me colliding with him and getting a -5…
Yeah, I noticed the same thing when I was searching for NiGHTS info; I guess it’s because most players would just be concerned with finishing the game with all “A” grades, at which point you’ve seen the final ending sequence and arguably “done everything” as far as normal gameplay is concerned. In fact when I first got the game myself (back when it was released), I only played it to that extent, stopping when I’d got all "A"s; it a pity that Sonic Team didn’t put the scoring thresholds a bit higher. It was only when I came back to the game earlier this year that I really tried to master it…
I actually thought about writing a boss FAQ at one point, something that would explain in detail how to get a 2.0 grade against each boss; when I looked around online I couldn’t find a single (English) page that told you how to do this for every boss, and for ones like Gillwing, Gulpo and Clawz the tricks you need to use aren’t very obvious at all. Maybe I’ll get around to writing it one day, although I’m fairly busy with other projects at the moment…
Great stuff; that’s almost totally different to how I’ve been getting 2.0s against Gillwing, too. My method is to go left at the start instead of right, then dive down above Gillwing and do an anticlockwise paraloop above his tail, rather than below it. (I’ve managed to do this approach with a clockwise paraloop too, but that seemed considerably harder to line up.)
Actually Gulpo I havent mastered yet. My Jackle, reala and clawz need a little work but Its just a second or two improvment needed. Gulpo seems to be about hitting the top right dash fish then following a set sequence of holding down/left - dash, up/left - dash the something else. If you have it down pat I would love to know how.
The problem with Gulpo (well, the main problem) is that he’s always moving around slightly, and depending on exactly which part of him you smash into, he’ll reel away stunned in a different direction. I only found one “route” through the pink fish-cannons that would kill him fast enough for the 2.0, but unfortunately a fraction of a second can make the difference between him falling away stunned in the right place or a place where you can’t hit him again fast enough.
(I’m not sure how much of this you already know, but Gulpo essentially has five hit points; if you hit him when he’s just floating around (like at the start) he loses one hit point, but if you hit him while he’s lying down stunned from your previous attack he loses two. This means that if you keep attacking him very quickly (before he has a chance to recover from your first or second attacks), you’ll kill him in only three hits. You have to do this to get the 2.0, as you need to have 105 seconds or more left on the clock.)
But yeah, according to some random notes I made, the sequence would be pretty much what you said yourself:
When the battle starts, quickly move round to the right until you’re near Gulpo’s head, then enter the fish-cannon that appears closest to his face.
When you come out of the dash, enter the fish that’s down and to your left.
When you come out of that one, enter the fish that’s up and to your left.
But of course, a split second can make all the difference between him ending up in the right place and the wrong place.
EDIT: I’ve finally got around to setting my Saturn up again, and with that method I’ve just managed to beat Gulpo with a 2.0 and 107 seconds left.
Thats really good information, I am going to have a go at that now. I didnt know about the 5 hit points thing but I knew the number of hits seemed very inconsistent.
is there anything special about claws or is her just a kind of “do it really fast” type boss? hit all the candles withough making any mistakes and game over?
If you are interested, there is a giant nights message board at
One of the forums there is theoretically dedicated to gameplay. There is(again, in theory) going to be score ranking thread/page at some point but the admins are all busy getting their new site ready.
Yeah, I noticed that a site at nightintodreams.com has been in the works for quite a while now; I actually looked around the previous incarnation of that forum a couple of times (I think it was an EZboard), but I didn’t sign up… if the site draws in enough interest in NiGHTS gameplay / score challenges and things though, I may very well start posting there…
Unfortunately Clawz is a very fiddly boss too, and there’s a fairly important trick to getting the 2.0 against him. The battle is really about destroying the pink bomb-mice, because the boss always keeps away from you by jumping from mouse to mouse; once you’ve destroyed enough mice to strand him on one with no others in range, you can grab and drill-dash him to win. You can destroy the lit, sparking mice by drill-dashing them, but if you just focus on them you won’t strand Clawz fast enough for the 2.0. To narrow down his jumping options more quickly you’ve got to destroy several of the unlit mice as you go along, which you can do by paralooping them. As far as I can tell, the optimum way to do the battle goes like this:
When the battle starts, dash to the right, then move down a little and drill-dash through the first mouse that Clawz lights.
Staying in line with the mice, move to the right (without dashing) and destroy the next mouse with a paraloop. The mice on this bottom row will always be moving to the left (towards you), so if you do an anticlockwise paraloop just in front of a mouse it’ll move forward into the loop, and be destroyed.
Drill-dash the next mouse to the right, which Clawz will have lit.
Paraloop the next mouse to the right, which will be unlit.
Drill-dash the next mouse to the right, which will be lit. After you’ve done that, you’ll notice that Clawz has jumped up to the mice going around on the ceiling.
Move up-left to the ceiling and drill-dash the first mouse that Clawz lights. After this you’re basically doing what you did before, but upside-down.
Paraloop the next mouse to the left, which will be unlit.
Drill-dash the next mouse to the left, which will be lit.
Paraloop the next mouse to the left, which will be unlit.
Drill-dash through the next mouse to the left, which will be lit, then grab and drill-dash Clawz, as he shouldn’t have anywhere else to go by this stage.
You need 100 seconds or more remaining for the 2.0, and this method should leave you with 102 max. It seems hideously awkward at first, but after some practice I could get a 2.0 against Clawz more consistently than any other boss; essentially a 2.0 every time. When I was trying for high scores, I just left him set as the boss.
Thats another really helpful bit of info with claws. Gillwing is by FAR the easiest boss for me to get a 2.0 on. I can get it about 9 times out of ten. I linked the vid up there somewhere but I am going to have a go at clawz too.
As for the forum I am hoping it will kick of now the site is live. I am just duying to pick nights apart there are Japanese scores for night floating around that are more than double my best efforts so I must be missing something. I want to get into infinite loops on later levels and playing the different levels backwards and things.
It’s not much of a “method”, but I usually start off by making sure I’m not too near the ground or the ceiling, and then I rotate the thumbpad in one direction repeatedly while alternately pressing L and R. A small paraloop and a medium-sized paraloop both count as stunts, and I seem to pull them off automatically whilst pressing the buttons like this; sooner or later I always trigger one of the random “shoot off in a straight line doing an acrobatic drill”-style stunts though, so then I hold the thumbad in a different direction to where I’m moving so that when I stop that stunt I’ll definitely do a different one; each specific stunt only counts towards your score once, although it took me a while to notice that.