NiGHTS has a main and personal Extreme Gear called the Night Sky, which is a purple board type extreme gear. NiGHTS is a Flight type characters, which means they can fly through floating rings spreaded throughout the circuits which gives the characters boost. To unlock NiGHTS, the player must beat all of the Babylon Rouges missions (a mode unlocked by clearing the game's story mode). Ulala from the Space Channel 5 series and AiAi from the Super Monkey Ball series were also unlockables guest characters in the game. The game has a total of 16 characters (nine being unlockables), with NiGHTS appearing as an unlockable guest character. Players can also collect rings scattered across the track collecting a certain number of rings will cause their character to level up for the remainder of the race, increasing the strength of their attacks and extending their maximum air capacity. To prevent their Extreme Gear from running out of air, the player can refill their air by performing tricks when jumping off ramps or off opponents' slipstream, with higher-rated tricks sequences restoring more air. When this happens, the character shall look for an "Air Pit", a special terminal that refill the Extreme Gear's Air Tank entirely which can be found throughout the circuits. If a player runs out of air, their character will start running on foot this prevents them from boosting, attacking, cornering easily or using charged jumps. Boosting and cornering also cost a certain amount of air. During the races, the Extreme Gear's air slowly decreases. The Extreme Gears are powered by an Air Tank, which is displayed at the lower right of the screen. Cornering allows the player to round sharp turns with ease. By jumping off ramps at the right moment, the player can perform Air Tricks. Boosting into an opponent will make their character attack and stun the opponent for a brief period. The player has a buttom to boost, jump and corner.
Speed type characters have the ability of grinding on rails, Flight type characters can fly through floating rings which give them boost and Power Type characters can destroy certain obstacles throughout the circuits. The characters have an unique stat each, and they are divided into three varying types: Speed Type, Flight Type and Power Type. Sonic Riders is a racing game where eight characters race against each other using futuristic hover boards, skates and bikes known as "Extreme Gears".