 SEGA DRUNK I'm not sure there's been a more perfect marriage between console and developer than the relationship the Sega Genesis and developer Treasure enjoyed throughout the 90s. Treasure cranked out some of the very best 16-bit games ever made, and for whatever reason they were able to bring out the strengths of the Genesis better than anyone else. After the excellent Gunstar Heroes was made in 1993, Treasure split their team up to work on four different projects, which ended up being Light Crusader, Alien Soldier, a licensed Yu-Yu Hakusho game, and Dynamite Heady, which was released in 1994. As you might expect, this is another run-and-gun platformer, only a more accurate genre would probably be run-and-headbutt. You play as the title character, Dynamite Heady, who's a puppet that uses their skull to fire at enemies that are under the power of the evil Dark Demon. It's Dynamite's job to protect North Town citizens, which are all puppets just like Dynamite, and he's got to protect them from the invading evil puppets, I guess. What's funny here is that Dark Demon initially wanted to recruit Dynamite for his evil army, but he deemed him to be defective and just threw him in the trash. What is he, Frank Reynolds? Dynamite's head attack is really well done here, proving to be very consistent in its range of motion, and its own, uh, physics logic, I guess? His head isn't just a weapon though, it can also be used as a grappling hook, or as a battering ram to move stuff. You can also pick up power-ups that turn your head into a vacuum cleaner, a bomb, a hammer, a metal head that shoots sparks, a pig face that will shoot stars out of snout? Sure, okay. But yeah, there's 17 different power-ups you can get, and they're all useful in some way. There's also an invincibility power-up that turns Dynamite transparent. The controls are simple, just C to jump, and A or B to attack, depending on which power-up you've got equipped. And there's 29 total levels split up into 9 different acts, like in a play, with one secret level you can unlock after you finish the game. You have 3 lives on a handful of continues, no saves or passwords though, and your health meter is represented by the spotlight in the upper left. Green is full health, and red means death is imminent. One big standout of this game is the level design. Take this level here with the tilting platforms. I mean, this is something straight out of Yoshi's Island, only over 2 years before that game. It's pretty crazy. There's this rotating tower that's like something out of Sky Blazer, again before Sky Blazer was a thing. There's shoot them up stages, I mean of course there are, it's a treasure game. And there's these vertical stages where you have to quickly move these platforms out of the way. So yeah, there's tons of interactive stuff throughout each stage, where you're knocking stuff out of the way, unleashing boulders that squash enemies, unlocking new areas, and even finding warp points that take you to a minigame for a short period. Throughout the game you also have to contend with this cat named Trouble Bruin, who you have to fight multiple times. When it comes to the visual and sound design here, what immediately comes to mind is the Perotius series for Super Nintendo, the use of color, the crazy enemy design, and especially just the unpredictability of the game really reminds me of a Perotius game. Especially these ridiculously gigantic bosses that take up like three fourths of the screen. And what is this thing anyway? The music fits too, like in this boss fight here you've got an orchestra playing a section of the Nutcracker What? This entire playthrough is crazy in the best possible way, and you never know what's coming next. I'd say the big difference though with Dynamite Heady is that behind the barrage of colors and craziness is kind of an unsettling and sinister vibe. It's pretty well done. There's also a surprising amount of voice samples here as well. If there's any flaws with this game, one is that it's single player only, but a lot of people won't care about that. But one major thing for me is how slowly the game starts out. There's tutorial stuff here, and it is skippable thankfully, but even then the first few levels are just kind of there. It just takes a while for the game to get going. But unfortunately once it does get going it is really hard. At times it feels like there's too much going on to keep track of. I should mention the Japanese version of the game does scale back the difficulty quite a bit, and there's some other cosmetic changes in that game as well. Just FYI. So yeah, Dynamite Heady might take a while to get going, but once it does it is a freaking blast to play through. I mean it's a treasure game on Sega Genesis, of course it's great. Even the freaking McDonald's game they made for Sega is great. You just can't go wrong with that combination, and obviously Dynamite Heady is no exception. This game is like Perodius meets Rayman meets Gunstar Heroes meets... I don't even know what. It's definitely its own thing through and through, and it's fantastic. This game is available on like two dozen different platforms, and it was thankfully listed as available on the Genesis Mini when that's released on September 19th, so look for it there at the very least. It's easily a top 20 Genesis game, and it's well worth a play through. And I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.