The Headmasters

Takara's only Transformers game for the Famicom Disk System

Takara followed up their 1986 Famicom game 'Mystery of Convoy' with this side scrolling shooter/platformer game in 1987. Released for the 8-bit Famicom Disk System, 'The Headmasters' would stay a Japanese exclusive just like MoC. Both games currently have pretty bad reputations with the online gaming community-MoC because its so hard, and The Headmasters because MoC is so hard. I think people just hate MoC so much that they don't give Headmasters a chance. It's a guilt by association thing. I've not read any reviews that give good reasons why Headmasters sucks or raise any valid points about why the game is bad. So that's what I'm going to do here. I've beaten both games (unlike all the reviewers I've read) and I'm here to tell you just why Headmasters sucks because I've got experience with the game.

Gameplay

Headmasters has some gameplay elements that make it interesting and almost fun. You start out as Chromedome on a search for Rodimus Convoy and your three Headmaster brothers Hardhead, Highbrow, and Brainstorm. You must journey across three worlds-Earth, Cybertron, and Jail looking for your fellow Cybertrons. Each Cybertron is an immediately playable character once Chromedome finds them, and each world has two levels that the player must navigate through. Each of the levels has a boss that easily recognizeable (most of the time) as a Destron from the Headmasters cartoon. When you beat the final bosses of all three worlds, you get access to a fourth world called 'Last' where the final battle is played out between Fortress Maximus and MegaZarak (Scorponok in the US).

Playable Characters

I know what you're thinking-five playable Transformers, plus Fort Max in the final stage? That's awesome! But the bad news is that you can't transform, and all the robots are made of the same sprite, just colored differently. I don't think there's any difference between Chromedome and Rodimus's colors, and Brainstorm's vehicle mode is a bit off. Only Fort Max is his own sprite, but even then he's the same size as the other Cybertrons so he's not very detailed or impressive when you finally do get to play him. So when do the vehicle modes come into play? Remember how each world is divided into two levels? Well the first level is an above ground, side scrolling shooter where you're in vehicle mode blasting away at lots of generic enemies. Once you beat the above ground boss, you continue on to the second platform style level in robot mode. The second level is always an underground maze for each world. The only big differences between the characters are their weapons. They shoot different patterns of bullets. Chromedome and Brainstorm fire the best once their weapons are all powered up.

The Levels

Earth, Jail, and Cybertron all look similar and although the backgrounds are a big improvement over Mystery of Comvoy, they're still nothing special. That's not to say they're terrible or without any redeemable value. One cool feature is that the two airborne Cybertrons Highbrow and Brainstorm don't fly on the same screen as the earthbound Cybertrons roll along on. When you switch from Chromedome/Rodimus/Hardhead to Highbrow or Brainstorm, the screen extends a bit and you fly up in the sky. What was the upper half of the ground based screen changes to the bottom half, and more of the sky is displayed. So the programmers get points for that. I found that the flyers are the best characters to use in the above ground levels. The ground based vehicles have weapons that just suck, and Hardhead's the worst. Every other bullet of his dosen't go straight, instead they follow a curved trajectory that doesn't go high enough and manages to miss hitting enemies in front of him. The enemies are wave after wave of generic shapes that shoot lots and lots of bullets at you. There are cassette tapes, black balls, and other weird baddies. Thankfully your bullets can absorb the enemy projectiles, but what happens is you spend so much ammo countering their fire that the enemies fly away before you can get a bead on them. But at least you don't die with one shot as in Mystery of Comvoy. The ground based vehicles tend to speed along a bit too fast, with the brakes not providing much stopping power. It's as if the floor is an ice rink. So don't plan on stopping and keep shooting at everything. The bosses at the end of the above ground levels all have different attacks, but their patterns are pretty easy to figure out and the flying characters are the best ones to use against them. The bosses for the above ground levels are Dinosaurer/Trypticon (Cybertron), Menasor (Jail), and some oddly colored guy who I can't figure out (Earth). Trypticon is colored green for some reason. The below ground parts of each world are the absolute worst parts of the whole game. Each underground maze is horrendously boring. What you do is go from room to room shooting at enemies until one of them leaves behind a Destron insignia. Then you pick it up and a door opens leading to the next room, where you do it all over again. Some of the enemies underground (like the black balls) can only be defeated by punching them, but all enemies can be stunned by first shooting them which renders them harmless. So the odds are heavily stacked in your favor. The control is pretty bad and you hover around each room a bit too fast. If it weren't for the bad control that keeps you flying into the baddies, you'd hardly ever get hurt. The boss battles for the underground levels are what I can only describe as 8-bit pong games. You fight Bruticus (Cybertron), Abominus (Jail), and Sixhot (Earth) in pong to the death. They stay on their side of the room and you stay on your side, both of you shooting bouncy bullets. It's weird. Everyone's projectiles go bouncing around the screen in a fashion reminiscent of the old Atari game Combat. You can only fire three bullets at a time, and you must wait for them to dissipate before you can fire three more. The boss gets a seemingly unlimited burst of ammo. Abominus is the toughest one to defeat because there is very little by way of barricades to protect you from his onslaught of bouncing bullets. These underground bosses are very tiny, unlike the towering giants in Mystery of Convoy.

After all the bosses have been defeated and all the levels cleared (and I think all the Cybertrons found), the final stage opens up and you get to see a quick cinema of the Headmasters and Rodimus Convoy flying in space and then jumping into Metroflex. (Metroflex is waiting outside somewhere in battle station mode.) Immediately after all five Cybertrons have gotten in Metroplex, he starts flashing and the final battle between Fortress Maximus and MegaZarak begins. I thought it would have made more sense to have the Cybertrons all jump into Fortress Maximus in spaceship mode like they used to do in the Headmasters cartoon. Maybe a mistake was made somewhere and the programmers got their robots confused. I don't think Metroflex belongs here.

So hey, here's the final battle, and boy does it suck. These two towering giants are supposed to be bigger than the buildings behind them, but instead they look like two kids in Halloween costumes plaing catch. For some stupid reason, Fort Max kept jumping in the air whenever I hit the shoot button. It was tremendously aggravating. I'm hoping it was a bug or glitch because I don't know why anybody would program that quirk on purpose. It turns out MegaZarak/Scorponok can transform-he's the only Transformer in this whole game who can. He's also pretty tough to beat. Chalk up another beaten baddie to the constant usage of my emulator's save state function. Once Scorp is defeated, a lame ending screen pops up and all the Headmasters and Rodimus jump over Metroflex one at a time, disappearing in a twinkle over the horizon. Remember how Mystery of Comvoy ends in a 'Congratulation' screen? Same here. In some ways this game is better than Mystery of Comvoy, but that's not saying much. The dissapointment is that in many other ways it's much worse. The small bosses, the repetitive and boring levels, and above all not being able to transform all just suck. MoC's only big flaw was that one shot kills you. If they fixed that, it'd be an okay game. But this one just sucks. It's not that I hate 8-bit Transformer games-I think Beast Wars II for the Game Boy color rocks. If I had to pay for Headmasters I would have been terribly dissapointed as a consumer and I'd probably hate Transformers. I remember being envious of the Japanese when I was a kid because they got the Famicom disk system. Now I know better. Let me put it this way-this game is so bad I'd RATHER play MYSTERY OF COMVOY!