Dynamite Headdy is much better than any character action game has any right to be. Once again Treasure had created a visually stunning and vibrant side scroller for Mega Drive, almost like a proto Rayman meets Mischief Makers but much better. There’s a tonne of extras, special awards, bonus games that spell out a word for post-game goodies and difficulty settings. Unfortunately I stuck with standard difficulty and still needed to cheese some sections (rewinds), I don’t have as much time and patience that I used to. Basically a must play for Mega Drive.

(Beat this, but used saved states liberally— it’s really fucking hard.)

This is an insanely-paced platformer with wildly varied game mechanics from level to level. In fact, one of its downsides may be that it throws TOO MUCH at the player too quickly, and could’ve benefited from some conceptual editing.

However, as it stands, DH is tough-as-nails but mostly fair, super smooth in the control department, and highly impressive from a graphics/art direction perspective. It contains some absolutely brilliant boss fights, as all Treasure games do!

The bonus game sucks, the melon head sucks, and it’s arguably FAR too unforgiving with health, saves, continues, etc... but if you’re playing with a saved state at the beginning of every scene, and can learn via trial and error, it’s a joy to play.

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

Aside from the one time I played Gunstar Heroes a few years ago, I have needed to "educate myself" on the Treasure catalog for a while. Having played the Japanese version of Dynamite Headdy via the Sega Genesis/Megadrive Classic Collection on Switch, I can say it's a solid, yet long 16-bit platformer.

Having looked into Dynamite Headdy a little, I decided to play the Japanese version due to a lighter difficulty, though it offers a lot more than that. Unfortunately, in the English localization of this game, the actual story of Dynamite Headdy is lost in translation. It's appreciated that SEGA's compilation cart for the Switch includes both NTSC and Japan releases, but it's still a shame that the text boxes exclusive to the Japanese version were not translated on the cartridge. Thankfully fans have already done that with plenty of ways to access a translated ROM, an option I may take for any future playthroughs.

Analyzing Dynamite Headdy to any extent reveals a boundary-pushing piece of software for the time. Including impressive 3D effects predating many more popular titles using similar features. This extends to the stellar soundtrack, as well as a general gameplay loop that feels both familiar and radically different from its contemporaries - even ones made by Treasure, themselves; think Gunstar Heroes meets Sonic meets Rayman. I could probably describe Dynamite Headdy in better detail, but with its ease of access both legally and otherwise, it's best you just give it a shot, yourself.

One of the best Sega Genesis games, and in my opinion, the best game made by Treasure.

Yes, it's true that they ramped up the difficulty for the Western release, and while that kind of stinks I still think this game is fully approachable to anyone in 2023. For the younger people on here...this is basically Cuphead with more a bit more platforming and a play aesthetic.

Shame that the Super Nintendo port was cancelled, and, if I recall...there may have even been a Sega CD game planned. Oh well, at least it's on NSO for the five people paying for the premium package.

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.

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.