The Christmas NiGHTS advent calendar
Title screens, level themes, and more
Since 1996, people have tried to document all of the special dates in Christmas NiGHTS. There are some things everyone agrees on, e.g. you play as Reala on April Fools' Day. But sources differ on other things. This 1997 guide on GameFAQs even says that there’s special snow at the end of history:
Dec 31, 2099 -- Radioactive NiGHTS, for purple snow
Who is right? Maybe everybody - the remakes of the game do have different clock based features. But let’s check the code for the Saturn version and answer this definitively…
Title screens and level themes
The function at 0604E310 checks this table to determine which title screen to show.
November 1 through November 24, December 26 through December 31, and January 11 through February 29 are the “winter” theme (“Winter NiGHTS” is a remake thing). There’s snow on the ground, Elliot and Claris wear pajamas, and NiGHTS wears the usual purple outfit. The music changes to Jack Frost’s Chime.
From November 25 through December 25 we have “Christmas NiGHTS.” Elliot, Claris, and NiGHTS wear Christmas outfits. There are Christmas trees in Spring Valley, and the music becomes Dream Bells. (You can activate this from the Presents menu all through the year)
January 1 through January 10 use the “new year” theme. Elliot and Claris get party (?) outfits, and the title screen music is New Year’s 9th.
The rest of the year uses the non-winter “Limited Edition” title screen. Elliot, Claris, and NiGHTS wear their usual outfits, and Spring Valley is spring-y.
Santa and Reala
The same function that controls the title screen and such also checks these additional dates:
December 24 at 12:00 through December 25 at 11:59 are special. If you play during those times, you can spot Santa and some reindeer flying through Spring Valley (the function at 060b9c40 controls them).
And as everyone knows, Reala takes the place of NiGHTS in April 1. (You can activate this from the Presents menu all through the year)
Interestingly, Reala’s character index is different here than it is in NiGHTS Into Dreams. In that game 00=NiGHTS, 10=Elliot, 20=Claris, 30=Reala. In Christmas NiGHTS we additionally have 40=Sonic. But Reala gets mapped to 00. This is because there is a bunch of logic that has character index 00 marked as special, and I presume they didn’t want to have to rewrite it.
Snow and backgrounds
From November through February, you can get different types of snow falling in Spring Valley depending on when you play. The function at 060B0020 reads this table:
If you start Spring Valley before 6 minutes past the hours shown, you’ll get the snow for that particular hour. If you play at other times, you’ll get the normal snow. Contra some sources, the Saturn version doesn’t have any particular affinity for Valentine’s Day and heart-shaped snow.
The backgrounds in Spring Valley are even more complicated! The function at 0602FECC reads one of three tables, depending on what day of the month it is. Then the hour determines which background you get out of the table.
The constellation background will override any snow, for some reason!
The end
The GameFAQs person was right about one thing: 2099 is special in that if you set the clock past that, the game doesn’t believe you and makes you set the time properly (it does the same for before 1996).
That’s it! Or is it? While I was writing this, I noticed something totally new: the title screen will chime when the hour rolls over! It’s amazing to me how much effort was put into this little demo disc that everybody knew was going to be free.
In a future edition, we’ll look at how the Christmas NiGHTS was adapted from NiGHTS.
Very nice article! It's a fun demo. Lots of great memories with it.
Love this!