Dynamite Headdy is an action-platformer that was developed by Treasure and released in 1994. Done in Treasure style, meaning lotsa bosses and barely any normal stages without gimmicks. 16 Megabit ROM of creativity.
The game that you have here is nothing more than emulation of Sega Genesis version. There is a Western version. That means that almost all of dialog was removed, ending changed, some enemies changed graphically into something else, higher difficulty level albeit not crazy. And it also has Japanese original too.
Now, technical part about Sega's emulation here:
The Sega Classic games that you purchase on Steam count as DLCs for "Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics" game that should appear in your library.
It has Bedroom HUB which is the one with many features yet lags for many and Simply Launcher which lacks Workshop and Online but at least it works just fine for everybody.
However, Simple Launcher has it's fair share of glitches as well. It can crash. And it does the second time you go to main menu, so always quit after saving there so it doesn't crash when you want to save next time!
Emulation itself, mostly sound, isn't that good but it does it's job. Also, yes, emulator supports quick saves.
As alternative, you can use external emulator to run games that you purchased. Sega kindly placed in all games that you purchased in "uncompressed ROMs" folder that program itself doesn't use, just change file extension to ".bin" or so. The file for this one being "DYNAHEAD_UE.68K".
And “DYNAHEAD_J.68K” for it includes Japanese original too.
I also demand you to read digital manual of this game first. You can find it here on store page or go to "manuals" folder of game root and open "DH_PC_MG_EFIGS_WW_HR.pdf".
Next goes US version review as it was the only one available back when I wrote this:
Dark Demon wishes to take over the puppet theatre! It's time for you to headbutt 5 Keymasters until they give their keys in order to reveal D.D.'s castle by shoving them down Gatekeeper's backbag. And then save the world.
But watch out for Trouble Bruin, the cat. He is a rival and arch-nemesis of yours who serves Dark Demon for sake of getting you out of the spotlight. Great rival that always gets in your way. In Japan he actually was purple, was called Maruyama and had an innocent face to attract kids.
Too bad that dialog before bosses was cut out in Western version. They even changed ending to more generic one. But hey, at least it's cool for most parts, action speaks by itself.
This jolly game was made near peak of Mega Drive adulthood and thus is loaded with audiovisual goodness. Such as some of good sounding voice samples. And boy, the music has so many genres and crazy compositions it's totally dynamite. The graphics are also amazing as Treasure find new special effects to show off. Like the rotating tower and 3D like spherical bosses and dolls with freely moving rotating body parts that put on clothes. And the world is extremely colorful as well. However some people say that they have problem with understanding action at times due to overdetalization and overly jumpy colorfulness.
Ah, gameplay. The main feature of this game is Headdy's head. As expected, you attack with it by shooting it forward, with limited range, and it's the main body that you have to take care of. You can also grab small balls, HangMan, which pull you with force once you release attack button.
Protip: To go further with HangMan you shouldn't touch D-Pad when you get launched.
But main part is that there are different head powerup scattered through the game, 14 of them. They don't usually come alone and you always get to pick which one you want out of few. Sometimes it allows for different ways to beat the level and sometimes you have to pick the right one. Such as Vacuum Head that sucks everything on screen in or Pig Head that shoots homing stars. But watch out for Heavy Head, it's a bad one!
Protip: Sleep head is actually a good powerup. It restores your health and you can cancel it anytime
The people who are looking into the pure platforming actually will be dissapointed with Headdy. That's because there are very little of pure platforming exploration levels, most of them are flat and are at the beginning of the game. Instead Treasure made a great game for general action genre players. It's your usual Treasure design. There are a lot of bosses, you will spend more time on them than platforming. And every level is different and has it's own gimmick, even few. It doesn't even follow any levels formula, each level can have different amount of stages. Pacing is awesome. I mean, it's not like Battletoads that abuses people who came expecting beat-em-up with near-QTE one-dimension minigames, so.
Oh yea, and levels have a lot of secret bonus points that you get by doing certain actions, with sexy voice announcing when you get one. Like hitting something that looks out of place. You get nothing for finding them all, they are just for points, just enjoy the process of finding them.
Protip: Press Down+Jump to go below some floors.
It's actually amazing at how much creativity this game has, throwing new and crazy ideas at you non-stop. There are more ideas in first levels than other devs have for whole games. It can actually come off as negative as devs are so busy coming up with new ideas at times that they forget to further develop earlier ones into more complex challenges.
Protip: To get a continue you have to collect 13 debrises from defeated bosses. Use your head to grab them too.
And since Treasure were fans of shmups genre the game includes one horizontal shmup level with four stages where you got three heads to pick. All of them have same Damage per Second due to enemy invincivility frames, it's about the reach. Worry not, these levels aren't insane shmup action, they are fun.
Protip:
And yea, difficulty of a game is a bit all over the place. It's a game that is fairly easy but the last parts of the game will murder you. It's all about you knowing what's coming, you will need to replay those to learn it. Such as knowing what each orb color that Dark Demon holds does. I actually used Level Select code to practise later stages before doing a single vanilla playthrough. Died only three times.
For most part Western version upped up the difficulty. Such as you starting with no continues. Some more tweaks. For most part it's pretty good. Final boss really needed those double HPs. Nasty Gatekeeper really did NOT need double HPs though. It was probably made so because there is a trick to make powerups appear in arena but those who don't know of it have to suffer.
Protip: Nasty Gatekeeper only targets your head. Shoot up!
Oh yea, and that boss was actually geisha in Japanese but in Western it's much more boring toy robot. Same for huge doll in Terminate Her Two stage. At least the level names are more creative movie-references in Western version.
If you grab liBerty head then you will go into Bonus Game. It's Basketball! Sorta. Push balls into hoops, you will lose only if you get damaged by bombs heavily or if you knock them into the Key hoop which destroys ball dispensers. You can always hit ball again if it goes wrong. You can't get any actual bonus here however. At least the health gets fully restored when you leave. If you win you get a single digit from four-digit password that you should write down.
You get to input it after the credits. An extra boss fight! But no, it's not related to little tease in the ending or to in-game plot. You will see for yourself.
And yep, options menu. Sadly it's just sound test and controls.
Overall, this game wouldn't fit to pure platforming fans but action players are in for a big tasty juicy treat there.
