I've got real admiration for the theatrical trappings, with panels falling off the back wall and gyrating stagehands gussying up the set as you stroll through, but I think coming back to this style of gameplay doesn't hit the same for me anymore. the treasure hyperfocus on impressive boss fights is here without the richer mechanics of gunstar heroes or alien soldier, leaving much stricter scenarios where the player has less leverage over the proceedings. it's heavily setpiece-driven and thus built upon cracking open whatever essential strategy solves each individual encounter rather than learning particular mechanics over the course of the game. a good example would be izayoi, who has a rapid arm extension attack that aims for your head, so if you throw your head above you right when she starts tracking, you can repeatedly have her whiff and then bop her in the face when she briefly exposes it afterwards. that's a cool little extension of the game's primary mechanic (you can throw your head in any direction), but once you lock it in the repetition of her behavior pattern and her cyclically available weak point make the fight rather static.

not sure what to think of the different abilities you can get with various heads throughout either. theoretically I could've enjoyed having them woven in through enemies or something else organic a la kirby, but having the abilities just sitting out in the open right where you need them feels a bit raw. it's especially apparent given how few there are that alter mobility or do anything other than make combat easier; perhaps a bit of tunnel vision on the developer's part, even though you can tell they attempted some actual level design here. you may get a sequence with some wall-climbing thanks to the spiky head ability, but these segments boil down just to "scale the wall with the powerup" without many complicating factors thrown in aside from a late-game segment where you use it to stall on the ceiling and avoid rocket trains zooming by. the way that abilities are applied in the boss fights also fall into a narrow paradigm, with more than a few bosses having abilities sitting around that effectively shut them off: time stop in multiple fights, both a bomb with crazy damage and invincibility in the aforementioned izayoi fight, and the hammer in both rever face and the final boss fight. really something where some sort of trade-off regarding grabbing the ability would've made more sense; the developers settled instead of interleaving junk abilities in the rotating ability selection that will inevitably cause you to eat a lot of damage until they wear off.

I suppose this is technically a PS2 game, since I played it on the Gunstar Heroes Treasure Box, and even then I played that via PSN on my PS3. Though this is a game I've beaten many times, this is the first time I've beaten the Japanese version. The last time I tried, Funny Angry (aka Twin Freaks) stopped me, but I persisted this time and managed to beat him! It took me a little over an hour and a half to beat the game.

Dynamite Headdy is an action platformer made by Treasure for the Genesis. Headdy, the Puppet Hero, must battle his way through the Puppet Kingdom to defeat the evil King Dark Demon and save the land. Headdy attacks by flinging his head to headbutt things, and you can get all sorts of different power ups to help you through various parts of each stage, ranging from heads that shink you, make you hit harder, heal you, or even a booby-trapped head that basically makes you just sit and do nothing for like 20 seconds XP. Stages are very varied from world to world, as are the bosses, as they utilize all sorts of gimmicks ranging from a shoot-'em-up world to messing with 3D-ish effects.

There are numerous changes between the Japanese and international versions of the game that largely serve to make the Japanese version more story-rich and easier than its counterparts across the sea. In the Japanese version, there's a lot more dialogue and much more of a story, Headdy can take more of a beating before dying, earning continues from defeated bosses is easier (and you actually start with some banked continues), and there are quite a few cosmetic differences (sometimes as small as some color changes, and occasionally an enemy design with be totally different, such as the boss Rebecca, a giant doll in the Japanese version, but a giant lego-looking robot in the American version). I'm much more practiced on the American version, so changes particularly to Funny Angry make that fight a lot harder for me (his hit box is larger in this version, but he also has a lot more health), but overall the Japanese version is a far easier time.

The Treasure Box collection itself is a really cool way to experience this, despite it taking a decent while to come to grips with playing this on a Playstation controller rather than a Genesis controller. You can choose to play either the Japanese or the "OVERSEA" version of the game, as well as look at tons of concept art, read through the American or Japanese manuals for the game, access a sound test, and even save and load replays. Given that it also has Gunstar Heroes and Alien Soldier with their own respective versions of those extra goodies, it's a really stellar pick-up for like 800 yen on the Japanese PSN store.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. Dynamite Headdy is my favorite game on the Genesis, and I enjoy it every time I play it. The American version will always be closer to my heart than the Japanese one because of how much more I've played it, but I'm really glad to have finally seen the Japanese version in its entirety. Dynamite Headdy, and by extention the Gunstar Heroes Treasure Box, are two games I can easily recommend for a great time with some Treasure games ^w^