“What game news?” an old fandom friend asked when I reported my new Gameranx position the old-fashioned way, not with a Facebook update but with an IM status message.
“Just news,” I said. “Briefs and such.”
“Oh.” It’s hard to tell emotion over IM but there was some visible disappointment in that reply. “So you don’t know when NiGHTS HD is being released?”
This only seems like an oddly specific request if you aren’t aware that this friend and I met through NiGHTS fandom more than a decade ago. It’s like being alumni of a tiny northeastern college that got shut down soon after our graduation, apart from a brief revival under a radical change of management that everyone tries to forget ever happened. So of course she came to me specifically for her NiGHTS HD news. This was capital-I Important.
Well, fandom friend, I have good news. NiGHTS HD and Sonic Adventure 2 HD have both been dated for October 2nd in the US and across Europe the day after. Both are arriving simultaneously on Xbox Live Arcade and PSN for 800 MS Points/$10.00 US. In addition to the base games both feature DLC, which– wait, huh? Are you freaking kidding me, Sega?
All right, it’s a bit more understandable than it at first sounds. Sonic Adventure 2 HD will have a Battle Mode DLC for 240 MSP/$3.00 US and NiGHTS will have a totally, utterly free DLC for the rare and prized Christmas NiGHTS reskin, which was previously released in the US only as a sampler disc with various gaming magazines (back when those were a thing).
A PC release date does not appear to have been set yet for either game but will hopefully surface before the year is out. This is likely to pave the way for other HD revivals of latter-day Sega classics but, come on. Christmas NiGHTS!
Via Eurogamer.
