Reviews from

in the past


When I was a kid, I didn't really have a lot of knowledge on games outside of Mario, Sonic, Rock Band, and some GTA through word of mouth at school. We went to GameStop one day in maybe 2011 or 2012 or so and Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection for the PS3 caught me eye, so I took it home with me. My mind was absolutely blown when I started playing it. 40 doesn't seem like too many now, but all those strange little games from before I was born were awe-inspiring to me. However, for the longest time I couldn't really make any dents outside of the Sonic and Alex Kidd games, so I didn't really form real thoughts on many of them until the past two or three years.

Dynamite Headdy, on the other hand, stuck out to me almost immediately. Might be the very first one-off title to really resonate with me. I knew very early on that I wanted to finish this one, that it was a winner. Similar story with Ristar, but between the two this won me over.

To this day, this is my favorite game in the Genesis library. Upon replaying Gunstar Heroes it came into a VERY close second, but the memories and nostalgia for this one are near unparalleled for me. It helps that I also love just about everything that it does. It's so goddamn stupid in the best way possible, just all over the place, completely off the rails. You can poke around at random shit and maybe you'll find some secret bonuses, which after I learned about it basically completely enthralled me all over again. It also has maybe my favorite game soundtrack out there. I really don't think there's anything not to like here. It's a stone cold classic.

It's another victim of changes in localization, though. I've always been used to the international release since I've played it so many times, but for today's replay I did the Japanese version and I think I have more issues with the palette changes than the difficulty changes. A lot of stuff just looks much, much better in the Japanese version, and in the process of turning Maruyama into Trouble Bruin overseas it made a lot of boss and enemy palettes comparatively really awkward. Most of the dialogue is taken out as well, which unfortunately removes a good chunk of the humor. I fucking love how these wacky ass adversaries all speak so professionally, like the big colorful goofy ass dog who is played completely straight as a bounty hunter. That kind of shit is so funny to me.

I think charm prevails over all in a grand majority of my favorite things, but aside from a few brutally difficult sections such as scene 8-5 (again mitigated in the original Japanese version) this is pretty much flawless in all other regards too if you ask me. It was probably my favorite game of all time before joining the site, and it still comfortably sits in my top 5.

One more thing, I think it's genuinely one of very few things that couldn't be recreated today. There's a ton of overly absurd and "quirky" indie platformers nowadays, but they just don't hit the same. There's something lost these days in the art of presenting the goofiest shit possible with a straight face, instead typically being overtaken by layers of irony and pandering to internet culture. And then a bunch of kids who probably advocated for Banjo in Smash Bros will shove it down your throat. Maybe it's something I'm just a killjoy about, but it really just isn't the same. Post real Soul™.

Any dipshit loser who complains about localization ruining modern games because of a single homophobic joke being cut or some shit like that should be forced to play the localizations of 8/16 bit games that made them way harder than they had any right to be

Tired: Super Mario Bros. 3 is all just a huge stage production

Wired: Dynamite Headdy is all just a huge TV production

God damn am I surprised on how much this game's grown on me ever since my first playthrough a while back. I think this might genuinely be my favorite Genesis game as of now. It's just bursting with so much creativity and charm, not to mention it's just super rad as hell too. A stage play is a super cool style to theme a game around, and Treasure truly knocked it out of the park with it. You have super cool set pieces and sequences like the opening chase, practically every fight with Maruyama, the climb through Dark Demon's tower, and the flying stages which honestly became one of my favorite parts of the game. The game is a blast to play as well too, with Headdy's gimmick making for some really fun platforming and combat. I initially had some issues with odd difficulty once I first played it, but I didn't really have that issue this time around. That's probably because I played the original Japanese version, which is noticeably more fair. (Though to be fair, extra knowledge this time around did help as well) Either version would probably be fine for me now though, since I basically love every corner of this game now, but I would recommend the original version if you want to try it out for yourself though. This Genesis classic really is something special.

Also if nobody got me, I know Dynamite Headdy OST - Hustle Maruyama got me. Can I get an amen?

Um ótimo jogo de plataforma antigo, com uma trilha sonora muito boa e cenários LINDOS pra época.

A jogabilidade tenta inovar com o diferencial do protagonista conseguir "trocar de cabeça", cada "cabeça" tem uma habilidade diferente que irá te ajudar a passar determinadas fases.

As lutas contra chefes são o destaque do game, a grande variedade e criatividade nos níveis do jogo estão entre os melhores de qualquer plataforma de 16 bits.

O maior contra do jogo é sua dificuldade. O jogo até começa tranquilo mas uma vez que o desafio aumenta, tudo fica MUITO DIFICIL. Os estágios mais pro fim do game terão inimigos vindos de todos os lados, alguns dos chefes começam a usar ataques aleatórios que são muito injustos. O que realmente torna o jogo absurdo de injusto é que você tem vidas muito limitadas e os níveis não apresentam checkpoints. Morreu uma vez e você terá que começar o estágio atual novamente (incluindo lutas contra chefes de várias fases). Game over e você terá que recomeçar do inicio do jogo.

Em poucas palavras o jogo é estranho, frenético, repleto de lutas de chefes memoráveis, esteticamente agradável e realmente criativo. Em contra partida a dificuldade do jogo faz você desanimar com ele.


beautiful and all and shows how creative and experimental treasure was, but by the end, i was just willing it to get over soon. not really good but interesting nonetheless!

Playing the Japanese version after being stuck with the American one for so long feels like fucking baby mode now

An emotional Journey with one of the most powerful rivalries in gaming.

Play the English patched Japanese version the US version cuts all the dialogue

Un juego que no va a nada. Otros de Treasure al menos dejan ver un nervio creativo por explorar distintos tipos de acción. Este parece hecho exclusivamente para presumir de lo que eran capaces de hacer gráficamente.

I really wanted to like this one more but I feel like it peaked in the first half. Still a good game at the end of the day but some of those later levels were pretty brutal.

One of my favorite games of all time. Do yourself a favor and play the English patched JP version. Bosses are less spongy and you get some dialogue that was removed from the US version.

You found a secret bonus point!

This is a unique and cool concept for a platformer that has me wishing there was more story for this game.

Definitely a few steps behind Treasure's best 90s games, but a fun time nonetheless if you've already gone through the others

Every single stage does something different and the personality is off the charts. No other game feels like Dynamite Headdy.

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.

Now this is a god damn video game.

It really feels like Treasure threw everything they had at this game, and anyone familiar with their output knows that's saying a lot. This game is wild. It's weird, it's crazy, it's kinetic, it's gorgeous, and it's a whole lot of fun to play.

Headdy definitely outpaces Gunstar Heroes (arguably Treasure's most acclaimed game of this generation) for variety, with gimmicks and power ups that are always fun to engage and experiment with. Platforming is tight, Headdy's controls are very responsive, and the art direction gives you so much to soak in as you dash between bosses - which (in true Treasure form) are the real highlight of the game. It's never quite on the same level of Alien Soldier, where levels simply feel like a means to an end, though. But, very much like Alien Soldier, bosses are creative showcases that are sometimes too chaotic to fully take in. There's a few that really push the Genesis and I was surprised to see what Treasure was able to pull off at the time.

True to form for Treasure, this game is also hard as hell. Unlike Gunstar Heroes and even Alien Soldier, however, I didn't mind running the gauntlet again after burning through my continues. Dynamite Headdy owes a lot of its replayability to just being a damn fun game to play, but its aesthetics and music certainly pulls its weight. The soundtrack in particular is incredible and very effective as invoking stress and excitement at the exact right times.

Dynamite Headdy is hands down one of the best games on the Genesis and pretty high up there in Treasure's catalog. There's only a few reviews on this site for it, which I just have to take as a sign that not enough people have played it. Fix that. Right now. Or so help me, I will rip my head off and I will throw it at you.

iyellatcloud recently described shadow of the beast as 'designed by 10-year-old [themselves]'. For my money, Headdy is the good future equivalent of that kid design fantasy. Just this insane deluge of visuals and gimmicky set pieces crammed into a 2MB cart. It's actually pretty adjacent to Ristar in being this sensory-oriented arcade platformer, though it aims further into structural chaos than dreamlike delight. Not every idea lands - I could do without izayoi, dark demon and baby face's boss fights. The western version's bizarre localization sucks, but the worst part above all else is the sparsity of continues - this game is too on-rails to justify having to start over THAT many times just to complete it.

gonna show the first boss to an overworked Target employee and see what happens

(sonic's ultimate genesis collection 16/40)

completely surreal and off the deep end. pretty solidly lodged into my top 5 games i've ever beaten, was very pleased to do it again for this marathon thingy. makes me wonder along with many other examples, why was 1994 so stacked for quality video games? crazy shit

To this day I never knew how or why I got a secret bonus point

holy crap this game is nuts like dezz nuts levels of nut its insane bro I am going to talk more in anther review so just play the and give it a 10/10

In all honesty, I didn't think I would finish it when first picking it up, but woooow, it's so demented that I couldn't stop myself.

Dynamite Headdy is certainly not as addictively action packed as some other Treasure outings on the Mega Drive. What this game does have, however, is one of the most out of this world art directions in any 2D game I've seen. As always, Treasure pushes the hardware to great heights in both graphical effects and outlandish mechanics. Couple that with its sheer visual insanity and Dynamite Headdy manages to stand on the same tier of Mega Drive classics as Gunstar Heroes and Alien Soldier.

I say Mega Drive because I had to play the japanese version with an english patch. The american release is too cheap to bother with, and a lot of its visual mayhem is needlessly tampered with.

On a final note, the credits theme gave me a very melancholic feeling. It was rather beautiful, even if not entirely in tone with the rest of the experience.

This review contains spoilers

Highly recommended playing the Japanese version with the translation patch. There are dialogues, better balancing, and it gets rid of some weird stylistic changes.

Endlessly charming and creative. It's nice to play a nostalgic game and for it to not completely suck for once. Now I can tell why kid-me always went back to this game.

When fighting the Baby Face boss after the third phase and the old guy appeared I was like "ANOTHER PHASE!? WHAT THE FFFFF-" ...and then it dies of old age. Genius.

Is that some sass from the devs against Sega/Konami in the secret ending btw? 🤣

★★★½ – Great ✅

First things first, I'm gonna go on record and say that the japanese version of this game is the way to go. Not only did the western version double the difficulty of everything, it also... neglected to translate any of the dialogue and cutscenes from the japanese version, so it just chucks them out altogether. There's a fan translation of this version of the game, and I wholeheartedly recommend it over what the west half-heartedly gave us.

With that said, Dynamite Headdy is the type of game where even through several completed playthroughs, I'm still kinda struggling to wrap my thoughts around it. It's like a platformer, with the pacing of a run 'n gun. That is to say, it almost feels like I'm supposed to play more methodically, but the game is just blasting through its mechanics and setpieces at such a rapid-fire pace that I feel like I'm not being given time to digest any of it.

Despite this, I can't help but admire the creativity on display. Headdy leans headdily into its stage play aesthetic, far more than Mario 3 ever did. Every stage is an act of a play, filled with blatant props substituting the sky, spotlights, behind the scenes background elements, and - on a side note - the occasional ridiculously high-quality voice clip that made me double take my prior understanding of what the Genesis sound chip could handle.

This is a Treasure title, through and through. Their technical prowess, penchant for weirdness, and thrilling setpieces are all present here, and are all worth experiencing. It's just... it feels like there's a difference between me thinking "This game is really cool," versus "This game is fun to play," the latter of which I don't find myself thinking as much. It's not bad to play either, nor is it clunky. Maybe the problem is that whereas the aesthetic is very focused, the gameplay is not. There's tons of powerups, but few of them contribute towards a fun flow of movement that I normally expect out of platformers. Headdy carries no momentum, no running button, he isn't much more other than servicable to play as.

It's the kind of situation where the style of the game carries everything else. And man, if there's anything that'll win you over, it's the style. The amount of scenarios present here are all wild and crazy beyond all imagination. And yet, for all it does, there's just that one tiny thing missing that makes me wonder if the simplicity of the controls not matching up to the complexity of the level variety creates an awkward balance of design priority. In the sense that the gameplay and the variety should've been equally prioritized, but clearly, one thing took precedence, and thus Headdy winds up as "fun enough," but could it have been more fun?

Yeah, again, it's difficult for me to collect my thoughts on Headdy. I love what it's doing, I highly respect it just for being a game that the developers had complete freedom over. But it feels like it's doing too much within too little time, and I guess it makes it difficult to keep a lot of it in your memory once you're done. Perhaps that's not a bad thing, though. It just means that my next playthrough is going to still feel fresh.

The first Treasure game I ever played as a child, now beaten for the first time many years later. Not as great as Gunstar Heroes, but easily one of the best games on the Genesis. Like Gunstar, it's surprisingly modern, including tutorials, awesome setpieces and how it messes with video game story tropes for fun.

This one doesn't have infinite lives, but continues are easier to get than I expected. I think most people wanting to play this could get pretty far without needing to use savestates because it's a tough but fair game, except maybe for the final boss. Even once you figure out how to predict his attacks, you'll need to be so fast you'll probably want to pause the game. This is all about the Japanese version with the English patch though, the western version was made even harder, removed all story and changed names and enemy colors and designs for no reason. Play the Japanese one.

What is better than Gunstar Heroes is the music. It's shocking that tracks like "you're Izayoi" or "Danzen Dungeon" aren't in best Genesis music compilations on YouTube. I also can't not praise the graphics, the art design stylized around a puppet show, the game's surreal, funny tone and what may be the first Vergil in action games, Maruyama.


this game is wack. the devs must have been high on something when they came up with all this random bullshit, and i love it. each scene has a different twist around the corner, whether it be a funny new gimmick or a crazy ass boss.
the american team must have been absolutely wasted when they were tweaking the game for international release though, they had no right to make the bosses take so many hits :(
though i like the american version more, because going back to the japanese version feels like a toddler's game

For me this wasn't as good as Gunstar or Alien Soldier but it's still an interesting and fun title from Treasure. The difficulty and level design aren't good later on but I liked the weird atmosphere and music

It's a toy world
It's a toy world
It's a toy world
It's a toy world