can enter a Bonus Stage in which the player must shoot basketballs into the correct hoops. Unlike other platform games where falling into a bottomless pit results instant death, if Headdy falls off, he will bounce back up which allows the player to put him back on a platform, though Headdy will still sustain some damage. Development and release After developing Gunstar Heroes, Treasure was divided into four teams to work on four separate projects: Alien Soldier, Light Crusader, Yū Yū Hakusho Makyō Tōitsusen, and Dynamite Headdy. Development of Dynamite Headdy started in August 1993. Inspiration for the game came from Koichi Kimura, who wanted to work on an original project. Up to this point in his five-year career, Kimura had only worked on projects using the pre-existing works of others. Kimura lead development, and president of Treasure, Masato Maegawa, served as head programmer. Kimura designed Dynamite Headdy to be commercially viable. He wanted the main character to attack with a part of its body, so he felt a puppet that could throw its head would be appealing. Not wanting Headdy to be a stereotypical lone hero, Kimura added support characters that appear in every stage. The game's visual design was inspired by Western animation and the work of film director Terry Gilliam. After deciding to publish a localized version for overseas markets, Maegawa was told by Sega of America to make the game more difficult. This was because Sega did not want customers completing the game too easily on rental. Maegawa happily obliged, and the North American release was made about twice as difficult. In addition to changes in difficulty, most of the dialogue in the game was removed, and several of the character and boss sprites were changed. Dynamite Headdy was originally released in Japan on 5 August 1994 for the Sega Genesis, with North American and European releases following in September and October respectively. A port was released for the Game Gear, and a Master System port based on the Game Gear version was released exclusively in Brazil. A 32X conversion was planned but canceled. The game was included along with Gunstar Heroes and Alien Soldier in Sega Ages 2500: Gunstar Heroes Treasure Box, a compilation released for the PlayStation 2 in 2006 in Japan. The compilation includes all versions of Dynamite Headdy released on all three Sega platforms across all regions. The game saw a digital