So here's the ending, pretty much the intro just in reverse.
Now, what's interesting is at this point, after CONGRATULATIONS appears, the game will cut to the Sega logo if you do nothing... But, as pointed out on this post by Reassembler, developed of Outrun engine clone Cannonball, there's actually a secret credits secret that you have to enter a code to see. When CONGRATULATIONS shows up, hold Player 2 Start and press Player 1 Start 15 times. (Alternatively, if you're playing the set in MAME listed as (Set 1, 8751 317-0095) with the filename ddux1, that plays the credits sequence after the game is completed without the need for a code.)
As well as using a load of artwork you'd otherwise never see, the hidden credits are full of pseudonyms... That we can't really identify, sadly. There's two you might, though- that is, people we can name and rattle off a gameography for. The first is Hiroshi Kawaguchi/Miyauchi, appearing in this credits roll as hiro, one of Sega's best composers who worked on Outrun, Space Harrier, Fantasy Zone, After Burner, Power Drift and many others, mostly AM2 titles. The second, as pointed out by reader btribble from UnMAMED, is Satoshi Mifune, the programmer, listed in here as bin_chan_san, and as you can see he worked on many of AM2's classic Super Scaler games, and even their Mega Drive RPGs like Sword of Vermillion and Rent-a-Hero.
The other exception is the poor staff member Match, who apparently served as the model for the villaoinous Achacha. This would normally serve as just a little footnote, but Match is also mentioned in another AM2 game- After Burner II! A series of secret messages, seen by inputting secret codes in the transitions between levels, mention some kind of alternate plot for the game where Lucy- also the name of Bin and Pin's owners, you'll note- has been kidnapped by Match. As a result of this odd little joke, it's got me thinking about two of the other strange things in Dynamite Düx, which we've pictured above- a sign that appears in Round 1 and a wanted poster in Round 5. Are these little in-jokes too? Has Match ever been properly identified? We leave these mysteries for you to ponder, dear reader.
Lucy has finally been rescued and Achacha's been given the boot, so we've beaten Dynamite Düx.
To tell you the truth, playing this game again was a little sad. Way back when, just as I was starting to master this whole 'emulation' lark and I was learning about all the wonderful Taito games I missed out on via RAINE, I was also using a dedicated System-16 emulator, and Dynamite Düx was a game I was completely obsessed with. Part of it was because I badly wanted to play Sonic the Fighters in any form (before it got any kind of home port and we had to rely on poor screenshots and basic information via the internet) and the other part was just because it was a colourful, cartoon-like game I'd never played. The fascination was so strong I half-made a section about the game on my very first website (the one that, fortunately, no-one ever saw). It was a big deal! And then, I just... Stopped playing it.
So, going back to it... It's not actually that spectacular. In terms of pre-Final Fight brawlers, it's not terrible and certainly playable- it does fare a bit better than P.O.W. - Prisoners of War mostly down to the variety of enemies and weapons available. and relative brevity of the game. Even so, the collision detection is really off in parts (sometimes you'll think you're clear and you get hit anyway) and really, it's all just a little slow and can drag on a bit too long, mostly due to how slow Bin and Pin move. It does the job well enough, and it feels like there's some lost potential (Round 4 does some neat stuff with the background layer, but it's never touched upon again) but it's really not a game that demands your attention immediately. Sega would get better at the scrolling brawler game in the following year with Golden Axe, and a few years later with Streets of Rage (and, we mustn't forget, Alien Storm), so Dynamite Düx is an interesting, if not entirely essential, footnote in the genre.
So, basically, worth playing through once but that'd probably do it, you know?
And now, it's that time, folks!
EXTENDED PLAY!
Dynamite Düx's home computer/console ports are a little unusual- aside from the lone console port which made it to Brazil, they were all Europe-only!
And that's the version we're gonna talk about now, released for the Master System in Europe and Brazil in 1989 and apparently developed by Sega themselves (I can only assume so as it's not attributed to SIMS, Aspect or any of the other usual suspects for Master System games). This port alters the story, with Pin being cut out completely (this is a solo mission) and the story now being that Bin is actually Michael Bin, Lucy's human boyfriend, who is turned into a duck by the now-greenskinned Achacha the Great. As you'd probably guess, seeing as this is a System-16 port to the humble Master System, lots of compromises had to be made, with two-player mode, one weapon (the flamethrower) and one entire stage (the Jungle) completely cut out. Additionally, the dragon boss from Japan has been replaced with a variation of the stone boss, and Achacha no longer has the stone golem in his fight. The graphics are also cut down too, with enemy sprites being a lot smaller.
Mechanics-wise, though, the game is pretty faithful, with a few changes (there are far less enemies, Bin doesn't get thrown around when hit anymore) and perhaps considerably looser collision detection. One last change is the Kentucky Fried Chicken and 7-11 storefronts are gone, but the Colonel is still around for some reason. As a result of some of these changes, the game is considerably easier than the arcade version, to the point where one-credit clearing the game on your very first try is perfectly possible. In fact, I'm pretty sure I did this by mistake when I first played this version. So, if you figured the arcade version was just too tough, you should definitely give this one a go.
Curiously, despite not getting a release in Japan, the game does have an FM Sound soundtrack! There's some more information on the FM sound pack here, and more specific information for Dynamite Düx here- unlike some of the other US and EU-only releases with FM sound support, the game won't automatically play the FM Sound music and needs to be patched a little, so if you'd like to listen to it anyway, it's in this YouTube video, starting at the 1:22:36 mark.
There were several home computer ports too for the usual suspects- Commodore 64, Amstra CPC, Atari ST, Commodore Amiga and (seriously) ZX Spectrum (c'mon really?). Due to rampant incompetence that exists on every strata of Gaming Hell, the only version we could even emulate properly was the Amiga version, and even then we kept starting a two-player game by mistake. As a result, probably the best way to get a sense of how the home computer ports fared is to watch the Battle of the Ports episode on the subject so you can actually see them in motion. For the most part, they're definitely slower and less playable than the Master System port. So, there you go.
Next, we obviously have to mention the game's ties to the Sonic the Fighters' character Bean the Dynamite.
In 1996, Sega AM2 worked on their only Sonic game, Sonic the Fighters (AKA Sonic Championship), a one-on-one fighting game with an engine based loosely on that of Fighting Vipers released the year before- Sonic and Tails were added as a joke (apparently by Masahiro Sugiyama) and after it was presented to Yuji Naka, was given the go-ahead as its own game. Anyway, while there were plenty of Sonic characters at that point to fill most of the roster (including obscurities like Fang the Sniper and Espio the Chameleon) AM2 decided to add two of their own- one created solely for this game, the bruiser Bark the Polarbear, and the bomb-throwing duck Bean the Dynamite... Who's very obviously based on Bin/Pin from Dynamite Düx. Even if he's green, his name and design make it obvious that at least one person at AM2 fondly remembered their weird little brawler (or just really didn't want to put Mighty the Armadillo in as a character).
While we're here though, if you ask me at least there's one other thing Sonic the Fighters and Dynamite Düx have in common- a slight debt to American cartoons like Looney Toons and Tom & Jerry. While Düx had the comical weaponry and bulging eyes of these kinds of cartoons, Sonic the Fighters has the 'elasticity' of them, with characters getting comically stretched and squashed, to the point where certain attacks can even turn them into a smaller version of themselves with a limited moveset! In particular, every character has a weapon throw where they use a character's weapon against them, and in Bean's case they stuff a giant bomb in his mouth, which I'm certain I've seen in a million Warner Bros. shorts.
And if you still didn't think he was based on Bin, Bean's alternate colour in Fighters Megamix literally is Bin complete with bowtie.
No love for Pin though, sorry.
... I guess this is kind-of a sad ending, huh.
BAD END~ Back to the index for you.
