With sinister clowns, magicians and giant fish vanquished it was time to try out the multiplayer.  TRiPPY was keen to take people on and as the former World Record holder for defeating Wizeman had every right to be confident.  Unfortunately Jof beat her, then DiGi beat her, then her brother beat her… then I beat her.

Whoops.

However she’s been practicing like crazy and no doubt will be up for a challenge should you ask her at any time.

After that we recorded the podcast where I answered a load of questions from NiGHTS fans to the best of my ability.  Having already helped provide them with various answers with the interview with Iizuka-san, fan base questions instead were in the “who the heck are you” and “why are you here” bracket as opposed to the “what are the fundamental changes in control methodology” bracket.  Though when you bare in mind my answer to “What is your role at SEGA?” was “ham and cheese” you can guess how things went.

The podcast is up on NiGHTSIntoDreams.Com now if you’re interested (parental advisory - explicit DiGi in places).

Speaking of cheese, TRiPPY had a hankering for some cheesecake but first I had a little matter of giving out some rather splendid gifts courtesy of SEGA.  From my magic bag I pulled seemingly endless goodies including Sonic t-shirts, NiGHTS posters, a Sonic 06 mug, glow in the dark NiGHTS stickers, soundtrack samplers, the Japanese NiGHTS pre-order toy, Ghost Squad, Golden Compass, Sonic Rush Adventure and Sonic Rivals 2.

Poor DiGi was half-buried under a mountain of merchandise by the time I finished, unable to move.

That would have been all, but for the bag within the bag.  Ah yes, in a major merchandising coup I pulled out a Japanese NiGHTS bag, the same bag that had been given out in ridiculously limited quantities at the Tokyo Game Show.

The reaction was PRICELESS, a sort of strangulated yell followed by diving and grasping and clutching with great excitement and lots of thank yous.

I dunno about you guys, but rather think they liked it….

It was at this point that TRiPPY REALLY needed some cheesecake, so as we were now all rather on the hungry side ourselves it seemed only right that we go out for some food.  Catching a bus which took a small eternity to arrive but thankfully had no excitable pets on board we made our way back to Edinburgh city centre.  All of this of course was great for me because it allowed me to return to my hotel room and dump the accurs’d Wii back there with a shake of my fist skywards… or at least southwards.

So where to? Well, a restaurant presumably so having tidied myself up a bit I raced back downstairs to rescue Team NiGHTS - or more specifically the reception staff from this odd collection of youths sitting in the lobby of their swanky hotel.

Having found a bar called the Filling Station, which was filled with various examples of motoring Americana, we sat down and ordered drinks.  Not really being in the mood for anything too strong I ordered an Appletizer which was roughly about the same time I found out about the Heathrow crash.

Yes, trust me guys there’s nothing that makes your day than to find out there’s been a mysterious airplane crash on the airline your flying back on the very next day.  So while I was sipping my drink thinking as soon as I left tomorrow the wings would fall off or I’d find out that the pilot had mysteriously been replaced by a hippo, the guys placed their orders and talked about the game some more.

Oddly enough the topic at hand was Owl and what a great character he was.  This was odd as I was sure Owl would annoy the hell out of everyone (Visitor. Visitor. Hoot. Visitor. Yes. Ho ho. Visitor.) Including myself but that was until people saw NiGHTS’ reactions to Owl. 

You see if you are a Visitor who gets a little tired of Owl keep an eye on NiGHTS in the cut scenes.  Ignoring the one prior to the water ball level in which Owl nearly drowns… to howls of laughter from Helen and NiGHTS.  NiGHTS is often rolling his eyes and looking incredibly bored at the old bird’s hooting and generally not giving a, well, hoot.

TRiPPY made a very good point too about NiGHTS being somewhat snappy in places, i.e. “Dual-ize” in that NiGHTS is as you may recall still a Nightmaren despite also being a “carefree rascal”.

The food arrived shortly afterwards, I forget what mine was called but it was essentially an inverse pizza apparently full of ALL THE CHEESE IN THE WORLD.  As such I completed about half of it, which I suppose gives me a D rank.

Other topics flowed through the meal including NiGHTS’ voice artist (and the voices in general), speaking with Iizuka-san, creating NiGHTS artwork, how DiGi was NOT going to use the stickers I’d given him for an urban advertising campaign as I didn’t want to end up with some street fine thank you very much and how amazing, apparently, NiGHTS’ ass had been rendered on the signature artwork.

Yesssss……

TRiPPY demolished her slice of cheesecake in near record time all the while making lots of ‘mmmm’ noises which considering the rest of us had no desert didn’t go down too well. The meal was paid for and we left, but where to now?

We decided to march up to Edinburgh Castle - as you do - and risk the wrath of the ghosts and ghouls…