Today is the 20th anniversary of the original ScrollBoss website. Starting on Tripod with a template and some miscolored PC screenshots and sprites from a Sega compilation, this site started as a place for me to talk about old action video games, especially the ones that didn’t have much presence on the internet back in the year 2000. It eventually grew into a place for me to do the same thing but now I’m making most of the sprites that I’m adding to the site, and I never would’ve believed it if you’d told me that decades ago.

This hasn’t been the easiest year for most of us, and the last few weeks have been really irritating for me, but working on this site and seeing your reactions to the pixel art has done what it’s always done for me, help pull me through some tough times. Thank you for that and I hope this place can do the same for you, even if it’s just for a few moments of browsing the galleries and messing with the image generators. There will be multiple updates throughout the week, along with some visitor participation moments (more on that in a bit), so stay tuned!

Custom Sprites: new sprites (and new galleries) include…
Bionic Commando (NEW separate gallery): Radd Spencer (NES design) in MvC3/MvCI fight stance
Double Dragon: Billy and Jimmy Lee (DD Advance fight stance)
Dragon’s Crown(NEW separate gallery): Elf, Wizard
the Legend of Kage: Kage
Metroid: Zero Suit Samus
Rushing Beat: Kazan (Brawl Brothers/Rushing Beat Ran select screen pose)
Streets of Rage: Cherry Hunter
Sunset Riders (NEW!): FINALLY, right? Standard gunfight stance remakes for all four heroes kick off the new gallery.
NuChallenger: : Brad Steel (completing the hero team from Treachery in Beatdown City)

All newness has been added to the GFX Generators where you can make your own graphics like the examples up there!


The print company I work through, Perfect Posters, reopened a while ago, so prints are once again available for sale in the shop! Also, I’ve set up a page on RedBubble with some original pixel art available mostly as stickers, but it’s on a few other products, too.


I pay to keep my sites hosted with my own money, so any sales puts a little money back into my pocket and helps support my Maruchan Instant Lunch habit!


Later this week, I’ll put together a special arcade background for the image generator based on YOUR votes. The Twitter post is here and the Instagram post is here, but I’ll repeat the set-up here. Leave a reply with up to seven games you’d like to see based on this list. NOTE: if you choose “Capcom Big Blue (Capcom’s late 80s to late 90s arcade games that worked on the CPS or CPS2 system)” or “Neo Geo”, please mention WHICH games for that you want (“Capcom Big Blue – Captain Commando” or “Neo Geo Metal Slug 2 and Samurai Shodown”). Here’s the list (click to see the full sized version):

Game fans all over the internet are celebrating the #Happy30thNES event (thanks to PlatinumFungi) on their websites and on Twitter. Made to honor the 30th Anniversary of the Nintendo Entertainment System, the event is a chance for us to show and tell why we love that gray box of 8-bit magic. I’ve done my part by making 30 new NES-like sprites based on a few of my favorite NES games while using colors from the original sprites:

You can find the separate sprites (and an extra sprite that didn’t make the cut) in the new NES-like 32 gallery.

No offense to my Atari 2600 and ColecoVision, but the NES was the first system I owned that could play the kinds of games that inspired me to make this site. Platformers, beat ’em ups, run ‘n guns and similar genres really started to come into their own at that time and the Nintendo Entertainment System was one of the best ways to play those games at home. It’s the beginning of what I consider to be the sweet spot of action games becoming adventures while still being unashamed of being games. That’s probably why we still see new games using the look and feel of those NES classics and it’s definitely a big part of why many of us are celebrating its 30th anniversary today.

Help spread the word about the event if you can and feel free to talk about your own Nintendo favorites in the comments section!

Articles: I’ve had this page about Rob Strangman’s Memoirs of a Virtual Caveman book for a long time, but didn’t finish it until now. It’s made in the old, abandoned game review format because of a few jokes in the info section that I thought were funny at the time (sigh). As it says on the page, I’m probably a bit biased because I drew the cover, but I really dug that book and the voice it gives to various parts of the video game community. The article is here and I hope you give Rob’s book a chance!


Arcade Quartermaster’s latest batch of game shrines is monster-themed and features Night Slashers (one of my favorites), Kiki KaiKai (Taito’s original Pocky and Rocky game), Laser Ghost and Nightmare in the Dark.


You know, we’ve had a lot of fun here today, but it’s time to get serious. Dead serious.

Horror returns to ScrollBoss next week. Be there* and be scared.

(by “there” I mean “here.” Just making that clear.)

A few enemies from 1988 games have hit the site: Giant Soldier (Capcom’s Bionic Commando) and Emperor Zaas (Taito’s Superman arcade game). They’ve been added to the GFX Generators and the Custom Sprite Capcom and DC galleries.

Mini-Logos – Alex Kidd (in Miracle World and Enchanted Castle styles) added to Sega section. and Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari added to Technos section.

Logos – Added a bunch of Alex Kidd logos, the SMS Double Dragon logo and Blaster Master (NES)

Game Index – Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari (Famicom), Dragon’s Crown (PS3) added, Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle (Genesis), River City Ransom (NES) updated.

Company Index – Atlus added.

Things are moving slowly these days because I’ve got quite a few things in the lab that I can’t show right away. Here’s a sneak preview:

I’ve been working on an improved version of that section and it’ll hit the site in early February.

BTW: I updated my DC & Marvel LittleBigPlanet 2 item giveaway level. I added some new items I’d made a while ago and forgot to add, including a Lex Luthor symbol much like the better one in the new DC Comics DLC pack. I used new items from that pack to make the level look a bit better, too.

Game Index – These 1988 games were added to the Index: P.O.W. (arcade), RoboCop (arcade), Superman (arcade game by Taito) and Vigilante (arcade) added. The Superman and Vigilante text sections have a bit more content and commentary than many of the other index pages and is something I might try to do more often.

GFX Generators – What’s been updated:
GroupShot and Vs.Maker:
Capcom: Radd Spencer/Bionic Commando (new sprite)
Technos: Linda (new sprites and palettes), Abobo (DD2 sprite & new palettes), Double Dragons (doppelganger/shadow palette), Shadow Warriors (Williams DD2 headswap & new palette), Marian (3 new palettes)
Fakeshot Generator: new Mega Man NES-style sprite edits were added, including Radd Spencer, Nth Man (from Larry Hama’s Marvel Comic) and more DC characters whose name ends in man or woman, plus Dr. Sivana.

Articles – I just made some various fixes to the 1989 articles, especially an improved 1989 Game Index list. My plan is to make sure those pages are completely up-to-par before next year, the 25th Anniversary of 1989, the greatest year for video gaming (in my opinion).

Custom Sprites
Capcom – Radd Spencer (NES stance/uniform)
Technos gallery – Linda (new scratch-made pose), Abobo (improved sprites + DD2 version), Williams (hairswap).
Mega Man NES-style – a new gallery with all those crappy edits I made for the Fake Screenshot generator.
DC Comics – The old sprite edits of Player 2 Superman and the Mystery Woman from the Taito Superman arcade game were finally re-added after being left out when the galleries were redesigned. Wait, you don’t know about the Mystery Woman? Read the Superman entry in the Game Index!

Sprites – Superman (sprites and animations from the arcade game) updated.

This year is the 25th Anniversary of many great games and this update pays tribute to a few of them. I planned to have separate updates for them, but that big commission a few months ago forced me to condense them into this chunky tribute. To make it worse, a cold I caught right before Christmas robbed a few more days of work out of this update as well. Still, between this and the Mega Man NES-style screenshot generator I posted a while ago, I hope this is a worth tribute to 1987.



Graphic Generators – For those who missed the debut of the new Fake Screenshot generator and its NES-style pixel flavor,
Fake Screenshot: Rush, Eddie, a new Mega Man edit based on an MvsC win pose were added I also added more edits since the December 17th update.
Vs. Maker & GroupShot: Dr. Light, Dr. Wily, Eggplant Wizard, Pit, Wonder Momo added. Abobo (new sprite), Joe Musashi (Shinobi 1 sprite added), Marian (new Double Dragon 1 sprite), Mega Man (new palette and re-sized NES sprites), Radd Spencer (new sprite) updated.

Custom Sprites – this update’s additions are:
Capcom: Dr. Light, Dr. Wily, Bionic Commando (arcade version)
Namco: Wonder Momo
Nintendo: Pit, Eggplant Wizard and Monoeye from Kid Icarus
Sega: Joe Musashi (original Shinobi uniform)
Technos: new Marian sprite, new scratch-made Abobo sprite (to replace that crappy Hulk edit), slightly-modded/improved Lopar and Williams.

Sprites – Kid Icarus (sprites and animations from the original NES/Famicom game added).

Fake Screenshots – “Rokman (title screen)” was added. No, that’s not a typo.

Mini-logos – Dr. Wily, Dr. Light and Dr. Right added to Capcom section.


I’d like to thank everyone who has been enjoying the site this year, especially the those who have given feedback. Most of this year has been okay for me, but I’d randomly get some really good feedback right when I was feeling like a wet food stamp. You made me feel better and that caused me to push myself to make updates bigger (especially that Halloween update). I’d also like to thank those of you have been digging the Tumblr account I’ve used to show off weird things that didn’t quite have a spot on the site just yet or game-related thoughts that were rolling around in my head at the moment.

What’s up for 2013: I’m not going to talk a bunch of smack only for it to not happen, so I’m going to stay quiet on it. All I’m going to say is that I’ve been working on a bunch of things I’ve wanted to show you for YEARS, huge chunks of it were finished in 2012 and, time willing, 2013 might be when some of it is done enough to show. Besides the fact that people will pretty much swipe anything that you post on the ‘net if you preview it before the main project is done, it really is better if you see some of this stuff in action first. For now, continue to have Happy Holidays, including a Happy New Year!

What was going to be a Halloween update expanded when I found out about the 25th Anniversary of the NES. The easiest way to celebrate that is with some Castlevania-related stuff along with things related to my favorite NES games. Due to work-related things beyond my control, I’m splitting this update into two. Most of it drops today with what you see here. There will be a small update on Sunday to go along with the Illmosis art site update. Sunday’s update will have newness to the GFX Generators. Here’s what’s new today:

Game Index – The NES versions of Bionic Commando and Castlevania were added to the index. Bionic Commando’s entry has a few of my notes on certain things in the game including something that people keep citing as another localization mistake.

Custom Sprites – a scratch-made fighting game scale sprite of Death (Castlevania 1) was added to the Konami page. A smaller, better version of the scratch-made Mario sprite was added to the Nintendo page.

Sprites – A new Super Mario page starts with some sprites and lots of animations from Super Mario Bros. for the NES. Yes, just about every other site has Mario sprites but I had to make a few .GIFs for this place, too. New sprites and animations were added to the Bionic Commando (NES) and Castlevania (CV1) pages.

Fake Screens – New fake Famicom-style screenshot of the Richter vs. Dracula battle from Dracula X: Chi no Rondo and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

Mini-logos – Medusa (Castlevania), Death (Castlevania).

That’s it for today. A bit more will be added on Halloween in two days.

MugenBoss – I’ve been promising to improve MugenBoss’ look for years but never came up with anything I liked until now. There will be a few more things added in July but I really wanted to get the basics out there now to see how they look. Honestly, MugenBoss had been ugly long enough.

Vs. Maker Seeing as how I almost burnt myself out working on this last week, this update is really small. Thor got another sprite and another color set while Strider Hiryu’s palette was modified to include his helpers (options) which let me add another win pose.

Time for another two-color preview sprite:

You’ll see that whole sprite along with other scratch-made sprites, sprite edits and much more when the Anniversary updates kick in starting on July 19th.

edit: oddly enough, the hit counter was at 99500 when I originally posted this update and it went by twenty by 8 PM EST. I’m curious if the 100000th hit will be before or after July 19th. “Hmmm. I wonder. Oh well.”