Dynamite Headdy

It says a lot about Dynamite Headdy that its bastardized remix of a Game Gear port was the best game I ever played for that battery-eating monster. This game is insane even by Treasure’s usual unbridled standards. The main character’s swappable super-powered projectile heads fit right in with the setting – an unbelievably elaborate puppet show featuring sumo stagehands, basketball minigames, and a jealous bear. The amount of nonsense on-screen at any given moment can honestly be detrimental to gameplay (particularly when there are also pseudo-3D effects happening), but it’s also a huge part of the charm. Those pseudo-3D tricks also open the door for some utterly unique platforming challenges and boss fights. I wish the level design took advantage of the different heads’ powers more often, because when it does, it works great. Headdy also controls well, and the Steam release contains both regional versions, somewhat alleviating the unnecessary and unfair difficulty tweaks of the international release.