Sonic the Hedgehog’s creators accidentally made the best Christmas video game ever

Dream delight

When Sega released its 32-bit Saturn console in 1994, it was inevitable that the platform’s speedy mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog, would get a star turn on the new hardware. But the team behind the blue blur didn’t release a new Sonic game right away. Instead, they made a forgotten roller-coaster 3D platformer called Nights into Dreams, which was released in Japan on July 5, 1996.

Like the best Sonic games, Nights boasts a vibrant atmosphere, toe-tapping music, and the rare ability to lull players into a flow state almost instantly. Stages are 3D but not totally open-ended: instead, you’ll traverse a looping linear path around a rotating stage, performing somersaults, gathering glowing orbs, and defeating enemies as quickly as possible in order to collect points. It’s trippy and kaleidoscopic — maybe there’s too much happening on-screen at once, but it works to situate you into the game’s surreal dreamscape.

Development on Nights was led by a trio of Sega veterans — Naoto Ohshima, Takashi Iizuka, and Yuji Naka — who were fresh off the Genesis’s successful trilogy of Sonic games. If that last guy sounds familiar, that’s because Naka has been a particularly colorful industry figure in recent years. Some notable lore about him:

• He’s widely described as the creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, though later accused by a former colleague of “stealing credit” for the idea
• He sued Square Enix after the company removed him as director of 2021 flop Balan Wonderworld, and later complained about the case extensively on social media
• He was arrested twice, jailed, and fined $1.2 million in 2023 for insider training related to Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest mobile games while working at Square Enix
• Former Sega executive Mike Fischer told Sega-16 in May 2026, "[Yuji Naka] is literally the most miserable person I have ever worked with in games or anything else in my life, just a horrible human being, and you can quote me on that.” Wowza!

Whether despite or because of the involvement of this notorious weirdo, Nights into Dreams is a charming little game. But where its potential truly shines is the Christmas Nights demo disc, which was given away for free in various regions at the tail-end of 1996. If it weren’t for that holiday branding, you’d probably assume that this is just a brief demo of the game’s first level. The title screen reads Nights into Dreams: Limited Edition — unless you tinker with the Saturn’s calendar. That’s how you can experience the best stuff Christmas Nights has to offer.

By setting the date to Dec. 25, you’ll unlock Christmas mode, where a jazzy rendition of “Jingle Bells” plays in the background and the normal loops and orbs are replaced with red and green tinsel, bells, and ornaments. Admittedly, I struggle to think of many explicitly “Christmas games,” other than the many underwhelming attempts to bring the Grinch to the medium, but Christmas Nights has them all beat. Even though it’s a very short experience, it’s cheerful, adorable, and downright merry — everything you’d want from a game dedicated to the December holiday.

There are other days that trigger aesthetic tweaks too, like New Year’s Day, Valentine's Day, April Fools’ Day, and Halloween. Yes, it’s “just a reskin,” but the premise of a platformer whose visuals and music change depending on the date has always stuck with me as a missed opportunity. It’s such a memorable gimmick, and it never got integrated into the short-lived series in a more robust way.

Why wasn’t there a whole game like this? My brothers and I had so much fun testing out new dates to see which ones triggered something special, even if it was something small like giving the main character a Halloween hat. I search (in vain!) for a copy whenever I visit a vintage game store. You can easily find Christmas Nights on eBay for well under $100, depending on the variant, but it’s not quite the same thrill as stumbling upon a copy in the wild.

The 2007 sequel for the Nintendo Wii, Nights: Journey of Dreams, received middling reviews, spelling the end for the series. Critics weren’t impressed with its old-fashioned level design, and argued that the 3D characters and environments paled in comparison to contemporaries like Super Mario Galaxy. The Nights games were referenced in numerous Sonic spinoffs over the years, like Sonic Adventure 2 (2001) and Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (2012), but those cameos never led to anything bigger. More recently, Naka’s ill-fated Square Enix platformer Balan Wonderworld had a visual style that evoked the original Nights, but the game itself was much more of a joyless 3D Mario rip-off than the fluid and flashy Saturn platformer.

There’s no denying that the Nintendo 64 and original PlayStation were watershed consoles that deserved their massive success. But their less popular Sega sibling had some damn cool games that never reached a wider audience — especially Nights into Dreams and Christmas Nights. Sure, even with more sequels, the series probably never would have reached the heights of Sonic or Mario. But there were definitely less worthy mascot platformers that got plenty of chances to win us over. (I’m talking about you, Gex.)