Dynamite Headdy — Issue 51

A slight headache

Dyna­mite Head­dy is a jum­bled mess of hit or miss eclec­tic ideas

In the 16-bit era, the Gen­e­sis was the first shot fired in a decade’s war against Nin­ten­do for the atten­tion of teenage gamers and the cold hard cash of gamers’ par­ents. While Sega had Son­ic as a mas­cot to counter Nin­ten­do’s Mario, there were many unique char­ac­ters Sega had in their sta­ble ready to bat­tle with Nin­ten­do if Son­ic need­ed to take a break. One of those char­ac­ters was mem­o­rable for chang­ing the plat­form genre. His name was Head­dy, and his debut game Dyna­mite Head­dy was his big break.

Dyna­mite Head­dy tells the sto­ry of Head­dy, a star pup­pet in the Trea­sure The­atre Show. Head­dy’s loved by every­one except his rival, Trou­ble Bru­in, who believes he should get top billing. In addi­tion to reduc­ing Head­dy’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, Trou­ble is a hench bearcat for the evil Dark Demon whose goal is world dom­i­na­tion by con­vert­ing oth­er pup­pets to his grow­ing army of mind­less min­ions. With inno­cent pup­pets and the future of the the­atre in jeop­ardy, it’s up to Head­dy to stop Dark Demon and Trou­ble’s nefar­i­ous plans. 

I’ll admit the graph­ics are like a chil­dren’s pup­pet show but they are pre­sent­ed in a way that’s col­or­ful and engag­ing. Trea­sure did an excel­lent job with the pre­sen­ta­tion, keep­ing the sto­ry of the game sim­ple. I did, how­ev­er, dis­like how Trea­sure played with pro­mot­ing the game and placed ads for their oth­er prod­ucts front and cen­ter as I played through the first stage. It was super tacky and did­n’t real­ly help the game in any way.
The con­trols are slight­ly sim­ple thanks to the options screen allow­ing you to con­fig­ure a con­trol scheme. How­ev­er, the con­stant switch­ing heads and keep­ing up with what but­ton does what invoked anger with­in me many times. In the­o­ry it looks sim­ple, but the exe­cu­tion is off. It’s a lot to remem­ber once you get going and drags down the platforming.


The music in the game is OK, hav­ing its ener­getic and for­bear­ing doom moments but it’s gener­ic enough to get by. I did feel though, some­times with Dyna­mite Head­dy, that the com­posers were pres­sured to out­do Super Mario World to see which game could have the cutest game music instead of keep­ing focus on how the music could be paired prop­er­ly with each stage. 

One of the more non­sen­si­cal and cringe-wor­thy moments that stuck out to me was nam­ing each stage after well-known movies and pop cul­ture series. Toyz in the Hood, Stair Wars, Far Trek and Ter­mi­nate Her Too were named after the movies Boyz in the Hood, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Ter­mi­na­tor 2. Don’t get me wrong, I under­stood that Trea­sure was try­ing to seize the moment but should have found oth­er ways to accom­plish the task because it came off as goofy and grat­ing, not cute.

Dyna­mite Head­dy is an inter­est­ing and high­ly orig­i­nal game that takes chances and some­times suc­ceeds and some­times falls flat. The orig­i­nal­i­ty was obvi­ous­ly a sell­ing point because Dyna­mite Head­dy’s lega­cy endures on main con­soles and Steam. There are some neat con­cepts here, but some­times it needs to get out of its own head.