July 31st, 2024

ToyBoss: Additions to the galleries, mainly of the 52Toys Captain Commando figures outside of their packaging, including a group shot of the team and another with Cap next to Hasbro’s MvC:I Ryu and Bandai’s 66mm Mega Man so you can see how they scale next to each other.

I planned to have more toy photos added in the site anniversary update a few weeks ago, but July has kept me really busy in some unfun ways. But I’ve gotten even more things since then. The first Target run I’ve made in a long time led to finding a Jakks SMB Toad (completing the SMB 2 line-up!) and a regular Bebop and Rocksteady set by NECA. I think I’ve bought more NECA this year than every other year put together, they’re getting better about keeping their stuff available. Marvel Legends Ghost Rider (paid for with a lot of gift cards) and classic Warbird/Carol Danvers help fill out two of the 3D Marvel vs. Capcom game rosters. This is the first time I’ve ever had toys of Ghost Rider AND his bike. I have unboxed pics of Ghost Rider and Shredder’s two favorite henchmen on the ToyBoss page.

Toad, Bebop, and Rocksteady boxed and cardedboxed Marvel Legends Warbird Carol Danvers and Ghost Rider


While we’re talking about toys, one of the big San Diego Comic-Con toy announcements was for a Marvel Legends two-pack of Sentinels based on the Konami game, including the rock that a few of them use to throw at the player. The Hasbro Pulse store exclusive sold out the day that it went up, but keep an eye out for it to be back in stock, possibly during the Pulsecon event in October. Hopefully they make more of these than they did those Hellfire Club troops.


August is almost here and that means the site will be in the revenge business on the 9th. Eight month, Ninth day? Yes, it’s time for that theme again, and it’s going to be more than one update.

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July 19th, 2024

It’s the 24th Anniversary of the site, so I’m here with a variety of newness! It’s all game-related, even the comic and cartoon characters are game-specific. Beat ’em ups, platformers, and fighting games are all repped here.

Custom Sprites:
Double Dragon: Abobo (victory pose)
Fighter’s History: new sprite of Fighter’s History series hero Liu Yungmie
Metroid: Mother Brain
Popeye: Popeye the Sailor Man (finally, I know, I know)
Marvel: the Punisher (new pose), female ninjas from Capcom Punisher game

All new custom sprites added to the image generators, except for the really tall Mother Brain sprite, only the shorter version is in there since it seems to work in most big scene situations.

Sprites: the Punisher (more sprites)

Also added or updated in the generators: Akuma/Gouki (Cyber-Akuma sprites)

ToyBoss: I just got my pre-order of the 52Toys Baby Commando figure from HobbyLink Japan in the mail this week and took a picture of the whole squad still on the cards. I’ll be opening them up soon and taking more pics, and I can’t wait because they all look amazing. For now, I’ve added a pic of the crew to the Toyboss page.

I found a comic book article that talks about the really early plans for Data East’s “Avengers in Galactic Storm” and even has pictures of an earlier 3D character model for Captain America in a different style. I put it in a blog post with scans large enough for you to read. You’ll find a lot of interesting info like the earlier roster plans, more confirmation that Iron Man’s home game rights interfered with how he was used in arcade games for years, and the original genre-bending plans for the Story Mode.


Thank you for visiting the site and extra thanks for the people who reply here in the news posts and elsewhere on the internet! Due to offline reasons I didn’t get to do all the things I’d planned (Cadillacs and Dinosars, more SNK stuff in the generators), but I’ll try to work them into future updates. I just want you to know you’ve been heard!

There are a few things that still need to be done (better scans for the Avengers article and putting Popeye’s mini-logo in the gallery, I’ll work on that over the weekend.


added July 20th, 2024:


Popeye had his Ninento mini-logo in the image generators, but it wasn’t in the Toys and ‘Toons mini-logo gallery. now it is, along with a new mini-logo of his 1970s logo with in the 1980 movie colors.

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July 19th, 2024

I was reading a Comixology trade paperback of Mark Waid’s first run on Captain America, which has a surprising amount of bonus material. There were selections from a comic format magazine one-shot named Captain America Collectors’ Preview, something I hadn’t even heard of until now. Luckily the cover has a giant blurb for the “First Look: Data East’s Galactic Storm” feature that wasn’t included in the TPB. So I bought a one from eBay and just a look at the first page makes it immediately worth it.

Whether the March 1995 listed on the inside cover is the date it was published, it’s safe to say this book hit shelves a few seasons before the game hit arcades but was probably put together in or before late 1994. The article written by Brain David-Marshall solidly explains the video game side of things to comic fans and vice-versa, with a line that perfectly sums up game development:

“The anticipated release date of September 1995 may leave game fans wondering what’s taking so long. After uncovering all the considerations that go into making this project a reality, they are more likely to wonder how it gets done so fast.”

What we see are some renders of Captain America and line art of some backgrounds, but, surprisingly, it doesn’t look like the model of Cap seen in the final game.


pages 8 and 9

The game was very early in development when this feature was written, not just because the Marvel staff in the interview say it, but because there’s a test render of Captain America that doesn’t match the version in the game.

pages 10 and 11

pages 10 and 11

pages 12 and 13

pages 12 and 13


Interesting (to me) items in the article:

Kree soliders surround Captain America and Thunderstrike, but Iron Man is here for a rescue

1.) The biggest shock is that this game was almost a beat ’em up/fighter hybrid. “Pretty much the way that it works is it’s a platform game – which means it’s a horizontal play field and you go back and forth fighting villains as they come along, and at the end of each level you reach a point where your graphics enlarge until you have a single background, and then you do have to just fight it out with that level’s boss. It’s a combination of the two video game standards of scroll and fight and the strict fighting format.” In other words the Story Mode we got was half of the original plan. We know they had the tech for the zoom-ins because of the effects the final game uses for sprites like Giant-Man’s size-changing. I’m guessing we would’ve been able to fight the Kree soldiers who appear during this mode. It’s going to be tough to not think about what we didn’t get here.
2.) Part of the beat ’em up’s plan was to have co-op special moves. “Some under consideration include Hercules being able to catch a partner who has been punched or kicked by an enemy, Thunderstrike being able to speed up a partner’s special attack by using his tornado wind, and Captain America using his shield to redirect a partner’s energy blast.”
3.) The sales for Acclaim’s Maximum Carnage inspired the idea to adapt specific comic book arcs. The fact that this was originally planned to be a scrolling beat ’em up factored into choosing Operation: Galactic Storm, a story that would let them avoid the usual street and rooftop settings for beat ’em ups in general and a lot of Marvel characters.
4.) More confirmation that Iron Man’s home video game (presumably the crossover with XO Manowar, but the game is never mentioned when this issue is talked about) prevented him from being a playable character in arcade games. This same problem prevented Iron Man from appearing in Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter and Marvel vs. Capcom years later.
5.) Somehow Iron Man’s playable roster slot was taken by… Thunderstrike? For those who don’t know, Thunderstrike is to Thor what U.S. Agent is to Captain America: a character (Eric Masterson) who temporarily held the identity of a long-running hero and then got their own name when the original hero returned. Masterson was Thor during the original OGS comic storyline.
6.) The original playable roster list here had two additional heroes: The Vision (who became a striker) and Hercules. The original cameo list was: The Hulk, Iron Man, Beast, Quasar, Quicksilver, Giant-Man, USAgent, Wonder Man, Sersi, Thor, The Scarlet Witch. They were considering the Hulk? By the 1990s the Avengers had probably fought the Hulk far more than he’d ever been an Avenger (he’d been in the FF more than the Avengers. But I guess he was in the “we can’t swing a whole arcade game out of him, but he can be easily be a guest-star. As an old dude who saw the Beast in the Avengers first, I’d have been happy to see him and Wonder Man in the same game back then.

BTW: I have to finish this early for the site anniversary, but I’ll update this in a few days with better scans. For now, the photos are clear enough to read (I hope).

edit: here’s the scans with some slight editing to stitch the two-page spreads together.

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June 30th, 2024

Street Fighter Alpha 3: All of the standard Vs. portraits have been added from the arcade, Playstation, and SFA3 Max PSP versions. I can’t guarantee the PSP rips 100% because I had to fill them in with ripped tiles.

“So what did you do all month?”

Some of it was spent working on things you’ll see through the rest of this year.

I also spent a lot of time trying to get better at using Blender. A background you may recognize from this site’s image generators is coming to life in 3D and I’m taking the chance to get used to doing real UV textures.


It takes a lot of time to find reference for just the toy packaging fronts when I do the 2D version, and it’s much more trying to map out 3D versions, but I don’t have the words to describe how cool it is see that in motion. There’s an unlisted test video on my YouTube account if you want to see it in motion, but I’ll have a better example in a video you’ll see next month (maybe even before the anniversary update) and you’ll probably see it again this September. The obvious problem is that makes me want to get back to an earlier background I wanted to remake in 3D.

So here’s the thing. I made a quick Marvel vs. Capcom video to celebrate the news of the upcoming collection and posted it to Twitter and Instagram. I was going to upload a slightly better version to YouTube but didn’t want to risk it with the copyrighted song and used the MvC1 end credits when I posted it there. Chicken? Maybe. Still, here’s that version:

I had way more ideas for a longer version, so maybe I’ll save the R&B classic soundtrack for that instead.


Mr. Q just put up another combo-heavy preview for the “Fight Forever” project!


You can tell Mr. Q is really having fun with these promo intros! I did the pencil and pixel work for the big select screen portraits, but I’d be hype for this game even if I didn’t, because you know how I feel about Final Fight!


Speaking of Final Fight, I’ve seen pics going around of insane scalping of 52Toys’ Final Fight action figures, including someone trying to sell all 3 for over $300! Don’t feed the scalpers! Two places I’ve bought from before still have them for pre-order.
– BigBadToyStore has all three for $34 each and a shipping minimum of $4.
– AliExpress has them straight from 52Toys where they’re $35 each, $99 if all bought at the same time, and free shipping.


Stay tuned for July 19, the birthday of this website!

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May 24th, 2024

Custom Sprites
Marvel Comics: New sprites of Archangel, Beast, Cyclops, Magik, Rogue, Goblin Queen, Magneto, Mister Sinister, Toad.
Portraits – X-Men:Children of the Atom: Mister Sinister
mini-logos (Marvel): Magik and Minster Sinister

All new custom sprites and mini-logos were added to the GFX Generators, where you can make your own screenshot-like graphics like the ones at the top of this post!

edit May 27th, 2024: it’s late, but there’s now a little video to go along with this update, and you’ll even see a few sprites that aren’t on the site:


Chris Baker of the SUPERHEROdotVG channel and author of “WRONG! Retro Games, You Messed Up Our Comic Book Heroes!” has a recent video about some of the X-Men games that never made it to store shelves, including a deep dive and brand new footage of one I’d never even heard of before this. As always, it’s well-researched and definitely worth your time!


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May 20th, 2024

I’ll be showing off a few Mutant Mayhem sprites before the update hits this website and I’m starting off with one of my favorite characters, the Beast:

The Beast

The Beast


The pose is kinda based on the X-Men Mutant Apocalypse idle stance, but drawn in the proportions of the comic art. Most of you are familiar with the ’90s Beast with the yellow belt, but the first few sprites show him as he looked after he mutated himself further in Amazing Adventures #11.

May 21st:

4 sprites of Cyclops

Cyclops


Part of this Cyclops sprite base appears in all the way back in this 2018 video and an X-Men group sprite from 2021, but I redrew it recently and even made an arm and head variant to remake that classic Capcom pose that I and many other sprite editors used as a sprite base back in the old days. I don’t like to make a ton of alternate versions until I’m 100% sure I like how the sprite turned out, but I felt like I needed to make the X-Factor version just to rep Spider-Man and the X-Men: Arcade’s Revenge, and I’ll make a group sprite of that whenever I get around to spriting Gambit.

The CRT screen effect was done with CRT View created by Mattias Gustavsson. Stay tuned for more!

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May 17th, 2024

I’m done with commission work for a while, so I’m back with a few real updates!


The ToyBoss section was updated with more new photos and up-to-date roster photos. One is a quick shot I took yesterday of my still-carded Captain Commando figures by 52Toys, now that I just got my Ninja Commando from AliBaba. Still waiting on my Baby Commando pre-order at HLJ, so I think I’ll hold out on opening them until I get the whole crew. The three figures I have look great and I haven’t even uncarded them yet, and I’m definitely keeping the cards for the artwork once I open them all. Speaking of complete crews, I managed to get the other three Target-exclusive “Pizza Club” Ninja Turtle figures by NECA. This is the first set of Turtles I gotten since the original Playmates figures from the 80s. I was going to (and still may) get all the Loyal Subjects BST AXN Turtles (I only have Raph for now), but I saw these announced months ago and plotted to get them. The BST AXN Turtles are still good, but I think the NECA Turtles themselves scale better when next to other toylines.

Speaking of toy line crossovers, I also added a new “Scale Wars” section with a few photos of figures from different lines standing next to each other to show how they scale. Some of these may help if you’re thinking of mixing and matching toylines or trying to figure out sizes for cross-line toy fodder.


With X-Men hype at a fever pitch again after the 10-episode run of X-Men ’97, there will be some new mutant-related sprites hitting the site next week!

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April 30th, 2024

I’ve spent most of the month working on pixel commissions (more on one of those in a bit) and working on things for two future Sprite Showcase videos. Iron Man will be the next Superhero Sprite Showcase do-over, and I’m redoing nearly everything because the original was done before I had a working version of Anime Studio/Moho again. The original version was done with a few clips in Blender, including a low-poly 3D Hall of Armors, and a bunch of complicated layer compositions in Magix Vegas. I’ve finished enough to show it now, including a new logo sequence and added pixel cover 3-shots, but I think it needs more.


The other Superhero Showcase is a team showcase is something I teased in an earlier video and it’ll share parts of earlier episodes. I’m sure you can probably guess which team that’ll be with no other hints.

There will probably be a BIG ToyBoss section update in May once I’m done with the commissions. I’ve managed to get Captain Commando and Mummy Commando of the 52TOYS line of Captain Commando figures, thanks to HobbyLink Japan, and I’ve got Baby Commando on pre-order. I also lucked up got a NECA ‘toon-style turtle with the Target-exclusive “Pizza Club” Leonardo. Great figure, and it’s good to have one of the 4 TMNT in NECA style after getting Usagi Yojimbo and comic-style Slash. Will I be able to get the other three turtles? Tune in and find out. I took a quick size comparison pic to show Leo’s height compared to a Jada Toys Street Fighters, Hasbro’s Marvel Legends, and a BST AXN Turtle by Loyal Subjects.

Captain and Mummy Commando - carded


One of the commissions I drew recently was for a wild video guide by Avlyrr on hoe to play Hulk in Capcom’s Marvel Super Heroes fighting game. This is easily some of the most fun I’ve had watching a fighting game guide, and you’ll get some good laughs from this while learning what the good doctor (remember: this was the Peter David-written Smart Hulk era) can do in that game.


Big thanks to Avlyrr for being so great to work with for that commission!


Arcade Quartermaster just put up the new arcade game shrines for May: Master’s Fury by Unico and Air Bike Cop by Sega! (sorry that was the earlier update. May’s games are Bally Midway’s smash-hit driving combat game Spy Hunter and the gory Kaneko/Taito side-scrolling slasher Kabuki-Z!


Time for me to get back to work on the current commission. I’ll be back in May!

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March 29th, 2024


Custom Sprites – DC Comics: New sprites Lex Luthor (70’s Battle Array a.k.a. the Jumpsuit), the Parasite (Silver Age era and DCAU versions) and Mr. Myxzptlk added. Updates for Lois Lane: four earlier sprites modified, new Silver Age and Action Comics #1 work outfit added.

Mini-logos: Parasite and Mr. Myxzptlk added

ToyBoss: Added a boxed group shot of Jada Toys Mega Man wave 1, featuring Mega Man, Fire Man, and Ice Man. Been meaning to take more shots of them, but time is tight. But I did get an extra shot of Mega Man and Jada Toys Chun-Li together, and also added a shot I took last December of Chun-Li and Black Widow fighting some Cobra Valkyries.

The new sprites have been added to the main image generator, which I used to make the pic at the top of this post!

Last but not least, here’s the 2024 Superman Sprite Showcase video! Every clip (that I can remember) from the 2020 version has been redone and now has things like those cover-like sprite displays I didn’t come up with until 2021. Look carefully one of the characters who got a new sprite today also got a new animation that isn’t in the update. Best of all, it has WizzyWhipitWonderful‘s perfectly on-character original Superman CPS-2 music!


Friend of the site Arcade Quartermaster just put up new shrines for MASTER’S FURY (Fighting) and AIR BIKE COP (Driving)!


HobbyLink Japan has the 3.75-inch Captain Commando and Jennety/Mummy Commando figures by 52Toys in-stock, with Baby Hoover available for pre-order and Ninja/Sho still sold out. I got my orders in for Cap and Baby. I know a lot of people want 1:12/ 6-inch scale and 7-inch scale versions of everything, but I’m still a big 1:18 fan both for budget and space reasons. These Captain Commando figures look great and I can’t wait to get mine.

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February 23rd, 2024


Comic Books: Ace Harlem, the first recorded Black hero to star in a comic book story (part of an anthology book) in 1947. He’s been on my to-sprite list ever since I first heard about him a few years ago, so I’m glad he’s also the first public domain character I’ve sprited (and won’t be the last).
Marvel Comics: a redrawn Konami stance for Storm.
Final Fight: Damnd gets a new standing laugh frame added to the site.

Is that not enough Storm for you? You’re in luck then, because Storm is star of the brand-new Superhero Sprite Showcase video!


That other new pose you saw in the video will hit the site at a later date, I still want to make some adjustments to it.

This is the first real Superhero Showcase I’ve done since finishing the new computer in early 2021, so I had to hunt down and re-render some of the series’ files and streamline how the main videos are assembled. This should make future videos easier, which is a good thing because you’ll be seeing the Superhero Showcase happen more often. My current plan is to make one all-new episode followed by one update until the all four original episodes (Wolverine, Superman, Iron Man, Bat-Man) get remade.


BTW: There was another mandatory PHP update by the hosting company yesterday, so please let me know if you run into any errors. I did some basic checking, along with trying those partial palette choice characters in the image generators and didn’t see any problems. I’ll look around some more this weekend. There will be yet another of these later this year (didn’t seem like this happened that often until recently), so I want to make sure things are alright before all that.


Huge congratulations to the Arcade Quartermaster site celebrating it’s 16-bit anniversary! The site celebrates with a giant update of four new shrines: Final Fight Revenge, the relatively-recently uncovered Danger Express, Lone Wolf and Cub, Steel Gunner 2. Be sure to take a second look at some of the other shrines there if you haven’t been there in a while, because the webmaster’s been updating some of the older sections and you’ll never know what you’ll find (or hear)!

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