We love a bit of weird SEGA trivia here at SEGADriven, and this certainly fits that bill!
Very recently, a cuddly soft toy called “Cheerful Usa-Chan” was released in Japan. It seems like it’s a spin-off from another popular product, IWAYA’s “Cheerful Kuma-chan”, and the idea is that it’ll sing kids a lullaby to help them sleep. Which is all well and good, but has absolutely nothing to do with SEGA. Or does it?
Turns out one of the songs included with Cheerful Usa-Chan is none other than a brand new arrangement of “Dreams Dreams”, the main theme of SEGA Saturn cult hit NiGHTS into Dreams! Specifically, it’s a new spin on “Dreams Dreams in Silent Memory”. Composer Tomoko Sasaki goes into detail about the surprising inclusion on her blog – from the sounds of things, she asked SEGA for permission to use the track and they granted it, so you can officially have your kids put to bed by a stuffed rabbit singing old SEGA music at them. The rabbit’s singing for the track is even provided by Sasaki herself! For those unaware, her resume includes Ristar and Burning Rangers, and later on tracks for Namco’s “The iDOLM@STER” series. She even voiced the Chao in Sonic Adventure!
Fortunately Twitter user @mid0_ring0 already got their hands on the plush, and being a NiGHTS fan they’ve provided a video of the new arrangement, after the jump:
チアフルうさちゃんの何がやばいって、収録されてる「Dreams Dreams〜In silent memory〜」が新バージョンってこと。てっきりサントラ音源かと思ってたのに…！
オルゴールの音色がすてき。トモコさんが歌ってるのもやばい。今までのSS版やWii版のピアンのやつとはまた違う魅力でいっぱい☺️🙏✨ pic.twitter.com/ACYQTEbimY— midori (@mid0_ring0) September 17, 2019
It’s certainly a surprising place to see SEGA music show up, but it’s very cool to have new arrangements of NiGHTS music in 2019; and makes for a fun piece of obscure SEGA trivia!
When Tracker isn’t playing SEGA games, he’s talking about SEGA games. Or drawing about SEGA games. Or all of the above. You can also catch him over on Twitter.
Tags: Cheerful Usa-Chan, nights into dreams, sega saturn, Tomoko Sasaki
