While there are plenty of gimmicks tied to things being presented as a puppet show, Dynamite Headdy shakes up the traditional platforming level style by constantly playing around with new gimmicks and playing with off the wall ideas. A sky backdrop will mean that level is treated as an aerial escapade, so even if Dynamite Headdy hadn’t so heavily embraced its stage play style, he would still be going on quite the adventure, and a varied one to boot.
We may see all the behind the scenes activities and props for what they are here, but they all do their roles well. Dark Demon uses these individuals as part of his plans to conquer all puppetkind, this being the game’s unusually traditional fantasy villain, but this also plays into the way the puppet show is being performed in-universe. Headdy’s adventure is even advertised within the game itself, and plenty of the bosses play into the idea of this being an elaborate puppet show, some of them being direct references to the situation with a marionette boss and a wooden puppet one as well, but all of them contain wind-up keys for their roles as Keymasters. The commitment to the style often means you can see the edge of the stage or the areas behind a backdrop, and at times you can even see the stagehands working in the back to keep things moving. A level may involve something simple like hopping across the stage lighting or something more creative like the backdrops swapping mid-level to completely change the enemy themes and how the level is approached. This isn’t just some coat of paint that’s mentioned from time to time though, as your platforming journey constantly makes use of this setup for some fun background details as well as integrated gameplay mechanics.
Headdy’s adventure takes place in Puppet World, a world styled in the manner of a stage play. However, Dynamite Headdy is no mere trend chaser, Treasure’s 1994 platforming title teeming with creative ideas and challenging gameplay.
While those characters were at least identifiable animals, Headdy’s design was a bit harder to make sense of, with him still not being the best looking character even when you learn he’s meant to be a puppet. Amidst a tide of unusual characters like Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel and the duck Socket who spread the belief these mascot platformers were low quality though, a game like Dynamite Headdy really didn’t look like much of an improvement. The 1990s were teeming with mascot platformers who tried to pull in players with supposedly cool main characters, many developers trying to get the same slice of cake Sonic the Hedgehog had managed to cut out of the market.
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