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.

Recently replayed this game and it's still fun as hell. The creativity and style of this game carries it. The whole game is a play filled with props, spotlights and behind the scenes sections. It's colorful and wacky with a lot of charm. Easily top 10 Genesis games (see my list to know where I rank it lol).

I remember this game being hard but man is it harder than I remember. There's even a 1 hit hard mode I never knew about.

It wasn't till decades after it's release that I learned the Japanese version is easier and even has dialog that was cut from the western version.

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.

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^

I played the fan-translated Japanese version of this game. It is vastly superior to what we got in the west. The story segments have been kept in rather than omitted entirely, and the difficulty level hasn't been adjusted in order to make things crushingly hard for the player. It's definitely the way to go.

A very imaginative platformer. Bursting at the seams with ideas and various little details that give it the essence of a demented Japanese kids cartoon. It doesn't always work and sometimes the difficulty, even in the Japanese version, is just too unfair for its own good. But Dynamite Headdy is dangerously close to hidden gem territory. Well worth checking out for any platforming enthusiast.

7.75 outta 10

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.

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.