NiGHTS Drifts into Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds

On Christmas Eve 2025, a pleasant gift arrived for Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds: a new character, the one and only NiGHTS, from Sega’s 1996 Saturn classic, NiGHTS into Dreams. A free DLC release that caught everyone off surprise, available on all platforms and a total game changer. It’s NiGHTS on the track as usual, but this time in a car that looks like it came from out of your wildest dreams, with some exclusive emotes and a festival event that has everyone shouting “wow.”

NiGHTS appears as a playable character, joining an already crowded roster of over 50 racers, including some of the regular Sonic characters as well as the occasional guest star such as SpongeBob and Hatsune Miku. Unlike many kart racers, NiGHTS does not sit in a cockpit; instead, they float above the Dream Sleeper, a sleek, seriously high-boost vehicle that exudes the flowing ethereal emotions of their original game.

Customization has always been a big aspect of Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, and NiGHTS fits right in with all of its quirky character emotes and sounds. Mid-air spins and victory songs straight from the NiGHTS into Dreams soundtrack, along with all of the bells and whistles you’ve grown accustomed to. The customization menu, a powerful tool, allows you to interchange and combine these with other DLC packs to create your own unique racer. Five new tracks from the NiGHTs series are also added to the Jukebox, allowing you to replace the background music with legendary songs such as “Dreams Dreams.”

The NiGHTS Festival, which runs from December 25th to December 28th, 2025, binds everything together. When you play online, you collect Festival Points, which you can then spend to acquire some pretty incredible goodies, such as title banners, sticker sets, and 3,000 Donpa tickets.