Jackle, Reala and Puffy are generally considered the easiest to get a 2.0 on. Gillwing is a pain in the ass for most, Clawz is fairly easy to get the idea of but he’s a pain in the butt to get right, and Gulpo will nearly ALWAYS get up a second before you get that third attack in.
I would have beat Abadd’s score today if I hadn’t ran out of time on Mare 4 -_-.
I must say thanks to Lance for posting all this information! I think my playing will benefit from this advice, although Gillwing will probably remain a problem…
So who do we think the easiest boss is (tactics-wise)? I would probably say that it would be Puffy, since there’s no real “fiddly bits” required in defeating her. I actually find Jackal quite easy, at least since I learnt how to dodge his flying cards. but he’s really annoying if you don’t know the pattern! 
Well for gillwing, this was worked out jointly by me and another poster on the nights boards.
dash up on gillwing from behind
fly under his tail.
fly parallel to his tail up to his head.
loop downwards and dash back out under his tail
thats it really you should make a paraloop shaped like a teardrop with the pointy end facing left.
Here is a vid
Wow, I never knew there was so much strategy involved in scoring high in Nights.
When I fight Gillwing, I normally fly straight towards him, then duck under him and paraloop. If I get it right, he pretty much dies instantly (or is left with about two hits) if I don’t, I fly off in the opposite direction from him to try again. Unfortunatly, the only time I managed to completely kill him with this, first try, I had only scored about 120000 on the actual level, so my score wasn’t great even with the 2.0.
My high score is now about 290000, which I’m really pleased with, although it’s not nearly good enough to compete with some of the scores here. I’m hoping to break 300000 before this is over.
Well my current high score is about 400 000 but I havent done any work on spring valley for a while, been busy with mystic forest and trying to get used to the analoge pad after using the digital one for so long. But if anyone is interested theres a score ranking page here
Its pretty much dormant other than me. I started at the bottom and am working my way up through the ranks. I am about 40 000 points shy of the lead in total score and total dreams. So i would take it as a kindness if nobody beat me till I get to spend an hour of two at the top 
I’m not sure how helpful this might be, but here’s a digital camera recording of my different approach to beating Gillwing; you can grab the video if you right-click here and “save target as”. (And of course, sorry for the low-ish quality.) I end up with 112 seconds remaining in the video, but my best score with this method is 113; I did the paraloop a little slowly in this case.
Incidentally, could anyone recommend any good (free) places where I could host videos online? This file’s currently up on Angelfire, but I understand they don’t like your free site to essentially just house downloads. If I can find anywhere good to put them up, I could probably bash out some videos for the other hard NiGHTS bosses, too; they wouldn’t exactly be super-high quality recordings, but I expect they could still be helpful to people…
I have tried playing that file in winamp, bs player and media player but it doesnt seem to work for some reason. I keep getting an invalid file format message.
I am really interested to see it though. Unfortunately cant help with the hosting.
I am doing a whole series of all the bosses with a 2.0 filmed with my digital camera. I am working gulpo using the upright,downleft,upleft strat but for the last up left he seems to be hovering between two boost fish in the middle layer, am I just not doing it fast enough do you think?
Hmm, that’s not a good sign, as it should work fine with those players; I’ll stick an alternate copy of the file up on my Geocities space temporarily, so if anyone’s having problems with the other link, have a go at downloading it from there:
It’s hard to say, as the timing needs to be quite specific; I suspect that if you enter the first fish too fast, you might ultimately knock Gulpo into the wrong place for the final attack, too. After my last post I recorded a clip of Gulpo with a 2.0 myself though, so if you’d be interested in taking a look I could probably just email it to you or something; free Geocities sites have an extremely low data transfer limit, so I probably shouldn’t put it up for download as well…
He is the hardest boss for me, sometimes i can’t even beat him. I didn’t even know there was a pattern.
Uh, as far as I remember there is one; you really have to start flying towards him at a certain time though, and you have to remember the way the cards fly through the air, although there might be more than one repeating pattern.
I will try it out later on one of my Saturns (just bought a Model 2 yesterday so now I have a Model 1 with some dodgy cuts on the circuit board and an unopened Model 2!) and let you know what I find.
I think you basically have to weave your way through his cards until you get near him, but that’s the easy part! After that it’s fairly easy to just grab him and touch-dash (or whatever it’s called) him, then grab him before he puts on his cloak and dash him again.
Good luck!
Edit:
tabithaboof, thanks for that video - what a performance! 
I’m just off to try that out now.
Wow, I am really happy so many people are getting into the hi score thing!
Cheers for the gillwing video lance, I finally got it working. Its interesting, you have a totally different approach to me. I think I will christen your approach the sausage method due to the shape of that paraloop and mine shall be the anticlockwise teardrop! Seeing as wyldflowa on the nights board came up with the same idea at the same time but a clockwise loop.
Well I since yahoo went up to those gigantic mail boxes if you could sent the file to my mail address at
dpurdu at yahoo.co.uk
I would be most greatful.
With regards to Jackle, I beat him by dashing almost directly at him immediately knocking him out of his cloak. Then its a case of staying between him and his cloak so you can hit him 5 more times.
One trick is after you hit him out of his cloak, dont chase him, let him come to you or you will push him to far and he will turn and run the opposite direction back to his cloak.
Thanks tabithaboof, that Gillwing video is a sweet guide! 2.0 for me, once I’ve got the hang of it!
I though you only have to hit Jackal once after knocking off his cloak?! :anjou_embarassed:
Lance, I’ll check out your video. I feel so embarrassed that I never figured out any of these tactics myself!
No, I could be wrong about this but I belive Jackle you have to knock him out of his cloak then 5 times, plus 1 more time for each time he gets his cloak back.
But Lance seems to know alot about the bosses so he may well be able to offer clarification.
His version of the Gilwing 2.0 is a totally valid and slightly quicker also, although to my mind slightly more difficult. With gillwing to the best of my knowledge the object of the exercise is to paraloop the tip of his tail and either method gets the job done.
Yeah, I’m fairly sure that it’s five times you need to hit Jackle after you’ve de-cloaked him. If anyone’s having trouble with getting him out of the cloak in the first place, I’d say the best way to avoid his attacks is to fly almost straight at him, but weave over the first playing card he throws, under the second, and over the third; you should then be close enough to touch him, as he slows down while throwing the cards.
I wouldn’t say that was something to be worried about; some of the necessary tactics are totally random and obscure, and I only know them myself because I worked them out through dull trial and error. If an FAQ had been available, I’d gladly have turned to it instead.
OK, that clip should be in your inbox now…
Thanks very vmuch for that. A super helpful clip. You seem to be doing almost exactly the same as me, just with a little more style and fluidity. I would always dash towards the first fish like a mad thing which I think resulted in me needing to circle round a couple of times before accually getting into it which may have been the problem.
I think the other bosses I can pretty much get a 2.0 on all the other bosses, my strats seem pretty damn close already. The claws information was totally new to me mind you.
I wouldnt want you to think I am stealing your thunder in any way but I started doing a kind of video walk through for a 2.0 on the bosses on the nights forum about a week ago (mind you nobody really seems that interested in the game play, more into the fanfiction side of it). While you seem to have the tecniques and methods perfected I am going to continue with making my own videos. Im not ungreatful at all its just a project I would like to do for the community. Also where ever I have used/been influence by one of your strategies (eg, claws) I will post links to this thread and give you full credit. I hope you dont mind?
I eventually plan to do a full video walk through for the whole game. I have found some TV capture cards and I am just researching which one to get. Its such a deep game and there is so much in it but there is basically no documentation available on the internet about it. The Gamefaqs page has some good information but it really seems a bit sparse.
I want to demonstrate all the easy infinite loops on the early levels, how to get 20 chips as fast as possible on each level. Hard links like getting up to 45 or so in the 4th mare of frozen bell as well as (much) harder infinites like the ones I have theorised on frozen bell 2, stick canyon 2, im sure there are more. Also I remain convinced theres a lot of stuff you can do in the game by doing the loops backwards like spring valley 1 and 2.
I just wish there was more interest in the game. I think everyone should post their scores at
I just managed to sneak up to the top of the rankings but the site seems more or less dormant apart from me and I want somone to beat me so I have more competition!
[size=150]433200[/size] 
Wow, I feel like I’ve really surpassed myself here! Thanks, of course, to tabithaboof and Lance Way’s very helpful videos!
Must go and post that on that Versus Mode page.
Incidentally, can someone elaborate on the reason for me being made to battle Clawz every time I play Splash Garden? If I’m not truly, completely crazy, Puffy is the boss for that stage, right?
Anyway, thanks for the help. I never thought that I, of all people, would get such a good score. :anjou_embarassed:
That sounds cool; I’d be very interested to see it.
[quote=“tabithaboof”]I just wish there was more interest in the game. I think everyone should post their scores at
http://www.versusmode.com/nights.php[/quote]
I’ve always thought that NiGHTS is a fantastic game. Although I have a really high regard for the Saturn in general. But I think it was let down by game publishers, and it really got left aside in favour of the Playstation. Mind you, I’m not exactly a hardcore Saturn fan, but I would be if I had the money spare!
This topic is great. It got me playing NiGHTS again, which can only be a good thing! Good luck to everyone else.
Glad to see you registered to post scores! I just wish more people would. The site is nothing to do with me but if enough people get interested in the game I want to see if I can help establish something like the www.mariokart64.com page with regular updates and news and things for Nights score movers and shakers.
[quote=“Ancient Weapon”]
Incidentally, can someone elaborate on the reason for me being made to battle Clawz every time I play Splash Garden? [/quote]
Well, No in a word. Thats one thing I have never worked out I generally always got Gilwing for spring valley and generally puffy for splash garden but there seems to be enough randomness in there for it not to be counted as a rule. I have no idea what acctually decides it.
[quote=“Ancient Weapon”]
Mind you, I’m not exactly a hardcore Saturn fan, but I would be if I had the money spare![/quote]
Well you would be surprised, I know theres a lot of stuff on saturn which you need to sell a limb for like Guardian Heros and Radiant silver gun and PDS etc etc but theres a huge amount of totally shamefully under rated classics available on ebay for almost nothing. Enemy Zero, Last Bronx, Fighter Megamix, Astal, Nights, all great and probably wont cost you more than ten bucks, Plus untold wierd ass Japanese games. However this subject its probably big enough for a separate topic titled Saturn on a budget if it hasnt been done already.
No probs! I’ve never heard of that site before, although it doesn’t look that big. I’ll post any progress that I make there, though.
So do you think that’s a good score? I guess Lance’s one still counts, even though he didn’t use Gillwing as the boss. (bows)
I actually didn’t realise it was random sometimes, but then it had been ages since I previously played. Could it be because I’ve played Spring Valley about 30 times, but only really played Splash Garden 4 or 5 times and Frozen Bell once apart from that? I’m clutching at straws for an explanation here, if you didn’t already notice. :anjou_embarassed:
Good plan, just the kind of topic I need to start…
433,000 ish is a very respectable high score for spring valley. Mine is about 400 000 although I am pretty sure I could easily improve it. I think spring valley is the most straight forward course by far in terms of high scores until you get into stupid stuff like backwards infinite loops you can do pretty well just by going through quickly without making any mistakes and doing well on the stunt rings on the third mare.
To the best of my knowlege the highest Japanese score that I have seen is about 580,000 for Spring velley. I have only seen one set of jp scores though.
If you start a topic for budget saturn I will definitely contribute anything I can come up with.
See, it’s not so hard.
As I said above, I’d rather Arcie didn’t count my score on this one, what with me using a different boss (and it also being an old score that I’m just reeling off my memory card, rather than something I’ve done for this challenge). I think that means you’ve got the highest score so far, though I haven’t checked back through the thread…
I wouldn’t mind in the slightest; a definitive video guide to the harder aspects of the game would be a great resource for NiGHTS fans, so I’m glad that my input’s been helpful. I assume this thread will be sort of ending tomorrow (when Arcie’s deadline comes), but if you think I might be able to help out with any other info afterwards, be sure to let me know; I’ll probably start visiting those nightsintodreams.com forums a bit, too…
I seem to think that it’s indeed possible to get infinite links on Frozen Bell 2, but don’t hold me to that. As for flying backwards, I’ve honestly hardly ever tried it, but it would presumably be better than going forwards in a few courses, as you say.
Sure thing, I’ll get my scores up there myself sometime in the next few days; I think I’ll grab some screenshots to go with them, too…