Nightmare

"The lowest of the low, Nightmares are the quintessential chump baddies."

- Description, Sonic Unleashed

The Nightmare (ナイトメア) is a type of Dark Gaia's Minions that appears in Sonic Unleashed. They are the most common of their kind, and serve as both the basic footsoldier and backbone of Dark Gaia's Minions. They only appear during the game's nighttime stages.

Appearance
The Nightmares take the shape of humanoid lizard-like beings with thick arms, spiked backs and a small horn at the front. They have purple smoke emitting from their backs. They have cyan-green colored skin with glowing purple markings on their bodies.

Behavior
The Nightmares are not very bright and act only on a basic drive to hurt others nearby.

Powers and Abilities
The Nightmares are able to move around by either teleporting into an area in a puff of purple smoke, or emerging from black puddles on the ground. As a Dark Gaia minion, the Nightmares can possess people by latching onto the deepest, darkest part of the heart, and generate despair, negative emotions or even erratic behavior that are completely opposite to the person's personality.

The Nightmares possess elastic bodies, allowing them to stretch their limbs over a slightly larger area. They can even enlarge their limbs and amplify the power of their physical strikes with dark energies, though doing so exhaust them and leave them weak and invulnerable afterwards for a few moments.

The Nightmares have a certain degree of skills and cunning in terms of hand-to-hand, being able to fighting opponents with combos and guard against attacks with their arms.

Attack Patterns
The Nightmares can swing their stretchy arms as clubs and can flip and jump, causing damage to the player when landing upon the player. They are also capable of aerial attacks; if Sonic jumps into the air, the Nightmares can jump up and knock him down to the ground. On the PS3/Xbox 360 version of Sonic Unleashed, they can slightly enlarge their arms and attack while spinning, much like Sonic the Werehog's Were-Tornado and Were-Cyclone, to deal heavy damage, but after performing it they will shrink down from exhaustion and be vulnerable to attack.

In terms of defense, the Nightmares can guard against attacks, nullifying any damage they may receive. These guards can only be bypassed if the player breaks the Nightmares' guard with the right combo or waits until the Nightmares put it down. They can as well jump backwards to avoid the player's attack.

As they player advances to higher playable stages, the Nightmares will become faster, stronger and more refined in their defensive maneuvers.

Overview
The Nightmares were created alongside the rest of Dark Gaia's Minions when Dark Gaia itself broke apart upon its awakening in Sonic Unleashed. Most of the fragments from the beast then became Nightmares after coming into contact with peoples' negative feelings, speficially a person's ambient fear, anger and doubts. They first appear in Apotos Night Act 1: Moonlit Town in the Wii/PS2 version and Windmill Isle Night Act 1 in the PS3/Xbox360 version.

They rarely appear alone, and usually attack the enemy in packs. There is also a stronger variant of the Nightmares, called Red Nightmares.

Upon the reconstruction of Dark Gaia by Dr. Eggman, all of the Nightmares along with the other Dark Gaia minions were returned to the beast, who was later defeated and sealed within the planet's core.

Archie Comics
The Nightmares make an appearance in the Sonic the Hedgehog comic series and its spin-off comics published by Archie Comics. In this media, they are Dark Gaia Monsters that began emerging from the core of Sonic's world during the Shattered World Crisis. They first appeared in Sonic Universe #63, where a group of Nightmares and Killer Bees ambushed Knuckles in Pumpkin Hill Zone, but they were quickly defeated by Knuckles and the Chaotix.