Nights: Journey of Dreams for the Wii is the sequel to the 1996 Sega Saturn title Nights into Dreams and the fourth game developed by Sega Studio USA. It seems that “NiGHTS 2” was going to be a game for the Xbox 360 and PS3, before being “cancelled” and “ported” to the Wii. Thanks to this article on TsszNews we can read some rants from a developer that worked on the X360 / PS3 Nights before the change: “In particular, it reveals an internal strife between Sonic Team and Sega of Japan, highlighted by the fact that NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams was originally developed as an Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 title – going so far as to say he played an Xbox 360 build of NiGHTS at one point. Upon witnessing the overnight success of the Wii, Sega of Japan apparently forced Sonic Team to retool the game for Nintendo’s lower-spec platform, something its producer (Takashi Iizuka) was not happy about. Despite the shift in platform, the game’s fast-approaching release date and limited development budget remained firmly unchanged, giving Sonic Team roughly one year to rebuild NiGHTS exclusively for the Wii (when most games typically take two years or more to develop).”
We’ll try to find screens from this version. We wonder how much far in development it was and if it was going to be different from the final game, apart from the obvius graphic differences.