December 31st, 2009

Before the 1989 theme month is over in a few hours, I’d just like to throw in a few of the things that weren’t done for the Sunday update.

1.) A few system bugs with the Company Index have been fixed.
2.) Double Dragon II (NES) and S.P.Y. (Arcade) were added to the Game Index.
3.) Vs. Maker just got a new company: Technos. The Lee Brothers, Kunio-Kun and new sprite edits of Alex and Ryan from River City Ransom were added to the Vs. Maker. Nothing spectacular but I think Alex and Ryan really deserved to show up before the theme month was over.
4.) You may have noticed that the main menu has a slightly new style for the header. Hopefully, these new, adjustable headers will help the page adapt to more screen sizes and ratios. The old Brawlstreet and a new Strider banner are the only two for now but there will be more added throughout 2010.

Things go back to normal in January with update about every two weeks. See you next year!

(originally posted on Thu, 31 December 2009 05:18:21 by PrimeOp )

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December 27th, 2009

The Revenge of 1989 has had enough. It’s time to release the Robeast hit you in the face with a truckload of graphics!

Game Index – Due to the growing size of the Mini-logo page, links now lead directly to the relevant section of that page. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade) and Batman (NES) were added.

Vs. Maker Generator – The first thing that you’ll notice is that there are now six character slots. After you select characters, you’ll notice that the second menu page only displays the characters that will be appearing in the shot and that the preview graphics resize themselves depending on how many characters will be in the shot. I recoded a few bits to make that possible along with paving the way for more character slots. All of the new characters and themes are connected to 1989 games. I’ve posted some obvious tease preview shots for a few weeks now but there are still a lot of surprises. Here’s the line-up

Characters Added: Ax-Battler, Gilius Thunderhead, Tyris Flare, Death Adder, ESWAT I.C.E. armor, Ryu Hayabusa & Irene Lew (Ninja Gaiden NES style), Clark Still & Ralf Jones (Ikari 1-3 outfits!), Solo, Ton Pooh, & Two.P. Last but not least…

… Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! Look, it’s the 20th Anniversary of their NES and Arcade games along with their 25th Anniversary in comics so they had to join in.

Characters updated: Andore/Hugo (Andore logo), Batman (1989 film sprite and logo)

Themes: King of Fighters ’94. I would’ve used ’98 to almost fit the month’s theme but they didn’t do much with the sprites in the VS. intro there.

Mini-logos – Andore, Astyanax, Ax-Battler, Gilius Thunderhead, Musashi (Shinobi), Irene Lew, Clark Still, Ralf Jones, Solo (Strider), Ton Pooh, Two.P, Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo, Batman (1989 film).

Custom Sprites – Everything on the “Game-Related” page has been split into their own appropriate company pages. Here are the new sprites:
TMNT (NEW PAGE!): Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo sprites (from scratch)
Sega: Ax-Battler, Death Adder, Gilius Thunderhead, ESWAT I.C.E. armored officers and File 96 (from ESWAT)
SNK: Ralf (Ikari Warriors 1-3 outfits)
Tecmo: Ryu Hayabusa (NES stance) and Irene Lew (NG1)
DC Comics: Batman (1989 film sprite)
Capcom: Two.P

Sprites – Batman gets solo page with a few sprites from the NES game by Sunsoft. Sprites from the 1989 TMNT arcade game were added to the TMNT sprite page.

Articles – The 1989 article series continues with a short look at two famous magazines that made their debut in 1989: EGM and GamePro.

There may be some adjustments and fixes made to this update but that’s it for now.

(originally posted on Sun, 27 December 2009 04:53:02 by PrimeOp)

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December 24th, 2009

Whatever it is that you celebrate this time of year, have a happy one!

The update won’t be on Friday because that will be Christmas Day which should be spent chillin’. Since I’ll need some John Witherspoon-like co-ordination with the Illmosis site on this next update, both spots will have a joint 1989 update this weekend. There will be lots of sprite edits and a few sprites made from scratch including the best scratch sprite I’ve done yet. Most of them will be part of the big Vs. Maker update and the biggest character surprises haven’t been in any of the teaser shots and I’m hoping to add a few more things before the big upload on Sunday. See you then and have a Merry Christmas!

(Originally posted on Thu, 24 December 2009 02:15:43 by PrimeOp)

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December 18th, 2009

The Revenge of 1989 gets serious (not really) this week with the main 1989 article. The article is only the beginning and leads to a feature about three important beat-em-ups of 1989 (and a bonus 4th) that changed the face of the genre forever. For real. There is also an incomplete list of 1989 platformers, beat-em-ups and other genres that ScrollBoss covers. Beat-em-up fans may guess the main three games but the bonus game may take you by surprise. Trust me, it earns it’s spot. But wait… there’s more!

Game Index – The basic engine was updated with the genre display. It me a while to decide on how to make it work but it now has support for games with multiple genres. Why? Because you’ll eventually be able to list games by genre and it’s easier to give every game multiple genres instead making a bunch of merged genre categories to search through. The funky-looking genre entries you saw before were from planning for this in advance. Now that the system is in place, the genres look like regular words now. The games Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle, Crime Fighters and Ikari III (arcade) were added to the Game Index.

Company – IREM and SNK added.

Sprites – Alex Kidd gets his own sprite page with additions from Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle game including Ashra’s hypnotic animation and that damn Wizard that disappears right before you can punch him.

Now that I look at it, that’s a decently sized update. Not as big as next week’s update is going to be, though.

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December 11th, 2009

Thanks to unexpected stuff that popped up, I couldn’t finish certain things in time for this update. The big update wasn’t going to be this week but I did want the main 1989 feature page done. I’m trying to save certain things custom sprites and Vs. Maker for that big update and some of the surprises would be blown by uploading them now. Here’s the limited update:

Game Index – Crime City was added and Strider got some minor update.

Company Index – Taito has been updated with some Crime City stuff.

Sprites – sprites and animations to the Revenge of Shinobi (including Kasumi and Bootleg Batman!), Strider and two Crime City pics were added to the Taito page.

Logos – Crime City, Last Battle, Keith Courage, Mystic Defender and Vigilante (TG-16), Adventures of Bayou Billy, Battletoads and Double Dragon (NES), Burgertime, Megaman 8 added.

Meanwhile, thanks to Shin Otaru for pointing this link out to me:
2D-X:
Interview: Robby Zinchak, Associate Producer, Final Fight: Double Impact

Some very interesting info there and, of course, related to 1989.

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December 2nd, 2009

A Wednesday update? Just like the old days. Sorry about not updating last month but things got busy in both real life and with the Illmosis site. This is just a small update to get a few things out of the way and to alert you to this month’s theme…

That’s right. 1989 was an amazing year for video games. The Genesis and Turbografx-16 hit the U.S. and the Gameboy debuted to change portable gaming forever. Then there are the games of 1989. That list includes Golden Axe, Final Fight and the Revenge of Shinobi are just three of my personal favorites on this list and you’ve probably noticed that those series get a lot of love on ScrollBoss. Since I couldn’t do 20th anniversary celebrations of all this amazing stuff, I’ve decided to celebrate the 20th anniversary of 1989 itself. There will be multiple updates fortified with 1989 essential vitamins and minerals and this update is just a microscopic taste of what is to come. As much as I’d like to pretend that I planned to have this mini-update feature those three games I mentioned earlier, it just turned out that way.

S-Files – The engine was updated to give small sprite galleries to each character profile. Many of the Final Fight and Golden Axe profiles got small updates.

Sound Rips – A zip file with the sound effects from the Revenge of Shinobi was added.

Expect much more in the next updates including Sprite Edits, Vs. Maker additions and more.

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October 31st, 2009

But enough talk! Here’s what’s in the Halloween update.

Vs Maker – Here’s a (mostly) Monster and Halloween themed update to the Vs Maker. A new Vampire Hunter 2 theme was added. New characters include…
Capcom: Blanka, Demitri, Felicia, Gallon/J.Talbain, Pyron. Also: Morrigan gets a new sprite!
Sega: Altered Beast
Konami: Alucard, Dracula
Namco: Rick Taylor (Splatterhouse)
SNK: Mars People

Game Index – New “Other version” and “Port of” parameters added to system. If the game is a port of another game, it lists that game and links to it if it’s in the index. If the game has other versions, it will list the alternate versions and link to them if they’re in the index.

Sprites – More sprites and animations added to Castlevania:SOTN section.

Sprite Edits – Konami gets it’s own page with two Dracula sprite edits, one Succubus and a made-from-scratch Alucard sprite. Yes, Alucard! Finally! Altered Beast wolf form added to Sega page and Rick from Splatterhouse was added to the Namco section on the “Game Related” page.

Logos – Castlevania Chronicles, Castlevania SOTN (full size), and animated Golden Axe logos added.

Mini Logos – Alucard, Blanka, Demitri, Dracula, Mars People, Rick Taylor, Sonic, Simon Belmont, Succubus, Tyris Flare (GA1 style) added.

Okay, that was more talk. I’m sorry. Enjoy the update and have a Happy, safe Halloween!

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October 29th, 2009

The Darkstalkers attempt a hostile takeover of the Vs. Maker Graphic Generator with new characters and a custom Vampire Hunter 2 screenstyle:

Dammit, this is supposed to be a site about side-scrollers! The last thing the Vs. Maker Generator needs is more fighting game characters hogging the spotlight. If only some of the horror or monster-based characters from those game genres would – –

See, that’s what I’m I’m talkin’ about. The Darkstalkers face off against monsters and monster-fighters from a few side-scrolling classics in an all-monster update for the Vs. Maker and it all goes down this Saturday.

(Archive of post originally from Thu, 29 October 2009 07:27:43 by PrimeOp )

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October 16th, 2009

Busy, busy, busy but here’s another small update:

Game Index, Company Index – Castlevania:SOTN was added. There isn’t much there except for links to other ScrollBoss material and some new ePSXe-made screenshots. The game and a few new character listings (but no S-Files) were added to Konami’s company index page here.

Sprites – A few more Castlevania:SOTN sprites were sprinkled onto the Castlevania page. Many other sites have this game very well covered but it’d still be a shame to not have a small gallery here.

Logo – Added a thinner version of the SOTN logo.

Plus, a new SOTN pagetop graphic was added to the main menu. You’ll still get the older ones randomly but you’ll probably get this one until Halloween is over. Then it will just be on regular random rotation. I’ll try to get some more horror-related things together for a near-Halloween update.

(Archive of post originally from Fri, 16 October 2009 01:33:02 by PrimeOp )

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October 3rd, 2009

Majesco Entertainment announced that there will be a “Data East Arcade Classics” game for the Wii that will feature 15 games for $19.99. The current game list from the press release says: “BurgerTime and its sequel, Peter Pepper’s Ice Cream Factory, Bad Dudes vs. Dragon Ninja, Burnin’ Rubber, Heavy Barrel, Caveman Ninja, Magical Drop III, Side Pocket and many more.” Caveman Ninja is the other name for the game Joe and Mac. The ESRB listing also mentions Street Slam and Secret Agent (a.k.a. Sly Spy). It also mentions the jiggle-action in Magic Drop III. It’s good to see an arcade compilation that has so many platformers and side-scrollers along with a beat-em-up even in that incomplete list. See Majesco’s press release here.

Just in case you haven’t heard, M.U.G.E.N 1.0 New Release Candidate 2 was released this week and has fixes for many of the problems from RC1. Elecbyte has been using the feedback and testing info of users and programmers to get the new M.U.G.E.N as backwardly compatible as they can. Get the new version at their site and remember to keep your older versions, too.

(Archive of post originally from Sat, 03 October 2009 04:22:35 by PrimeOp)

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