Breakin’ News


Joystiq reports that there will be a Midway Arcade Origins compilation of over 30 games for $30 for PS3 and X-Box 360. Don’t forget that Midway acquired the libraries of The game list in the press release mentions Defender, Gauntlet, Joust, Marble Madness, Rampage & Spy Hunter. Multiplayer modes will be local only, but there will be trophies and online leaderboards so the rest of the planet can make you feel crappy about the scores you’d normally be okay with. Backbone Entertainment will be doing the emulation duties again, so this thing is in good hands. Honestly, the extras like artwork and developer interviews are one of my favorite things about game compilations and I’d be happy if they just re-used some of the videos they included with the Midway Arcade Treasures series. Games like Gauntlet and Rampage that allow more than two players should be much more interesting now that these comps are on machines that don’t need multitaps. Midway’s Tapper actually shows up in the upcoming Wreck-it-Ralph’s, so maybe they’ll think of including that one, too.


Just in case you hadn’t heard about Keiji Inafune’s new game with the interesting concept and premise:


Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z by All-Games-Beta

Here’s the Project X Zone video with all kinds of Capcom, Namco and Sega characters in crazy-go-nuts mode combat mode:

I finished the first art commission that caused me to put the site on pause for a while, but just had to start another one. I probably won’t be able to have another update for another month after this one. I made a little Street Fighter 25th anniversary update between commission jobs to prove that I’m still around. This site isn’t supposed to focus on fighting games, but Street Fighter and Final Fight share the same world and that’s my excuse.

Graphic Generators

Adon (added sprites)
Birdie (added sprites & SF1-based palette)
Eagle (newly added)
Cammy (new SFA-style Delta Red win pose edit)
Charlie (P1 and P1 Shadow palettes from MSH vs SF)
Chun-Li (Three SFA/SFZ tracksuit sprites in four palettes)
Gen (added sprite)
Gouki (added SFA set sprites and lots of palettes)
Guile (SFA3 PSX palettes)
Guy (added SFA sprites)
Ryu (new sprite edit based on old Akiman SF2 art, fixed MvsC P1 palette)
Rolento (added SFA sprites, new edited sprite based on SFA2 ending)
Sagat (added sprites & palettes, including a custom SF1 palette)

Over a dozen backgrounds from different Street Fighter games were added to the “384×224 scenes + text” in the GroupShot Generator.
8×16 font from Super Street Fighter II Turbo added to font-enabled styles in the GroupShot Generator.

Custom Sprites – The Capcom page was updated with the new Rolento edit added to the Final Fight section. Ryu and Cammy edits added to Street Fighter section.


Breakin’ News


I’m not too big on most Kickstarters because I’m usually so low on funds that I’d need to start a Kickstarter to contribute decent dough to other Kickstarters. Here are two that I’ll definitely donate to if my commission money comes in before the deadlines:

Every Move is Special – The plan is to host a special event and all-around celebration of both Street Fighter and fighting games as a whole. See previews of the artwork and more on the project’s Tumblr. This looks like it’s going to be a really cool book and possible event, so I’m really rooting for this one.

Mercenary Kings – The same crew behind the excellent Scott Pilgrim vs. the World beat-em-up are working on a side-scrolling platform shooter that harkens to many 2-D classics while adding the ability to make your own weapons and gear. Check out the website for more details and watch this video to see what kind of game they’re going to hit us with in 2013.

Site stuff: I’m still working on this site while doing character designs, logo work and other preparations for my own projects. Work on a new GFX Generator feature can be found in this weblog post and improvements to the Game Index section can be found in this post. A scratch-made sprite of DC’s Black Lightning was posted on Illmosis.


Breakin’ News


Elevator Action Deluxe, an update, remake and overhaul of Taito’s classic “Elevator Action” spy-shooter, is out on PSN today.

It’ll be a while before I can buy this one (gotta pay the website bill soon) but it looks sharp and sounds funky. I like how the in-game documents you steal are Taito documents like flyers that you can view in a gallery. The character designs have a Lupin-esque look mixed with the classic official artwork.

Between this and the criminally underrated Moon Diver, Square-Enix, who now owns Taito and it’s intellectual properties, has thrown some great old-schoolian love our way. I hope those of you who are angry about a lapse in a game series with more entries than most entire companies have games will take some time to support the companies that put work into projects like this when they really don’t have to.

Kotaku feature on classic Nintendo composer, Hip Tanaka
It’s just a short overview of the man’s work but it’s always good to see him get attention for his music. Do yourself a favor and don’t look at the comments section on that page. I’m serious.


Capcom-Unity: Rockman-Unity TOM-PON interview

Capcom-Unity has links to a translated and subtitled interview that Rockman-Unity had with TOM-PON, artist and background designer for some classic Capcom titles starting with Mega Man for the NES.
(Note: more posts and interview segments came out after I posted this so I’m updating this news post as they’re added)

part 1
| part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | part 6

Let’s end this one on an high note, courtesy of Wizzy…

GFX Generators – Slight improvements were made to the engine but the only one you’ll notice is that the transparent shadows no longer overlap and make darker areas.

New characters: Adon, Birdie, Dee Jay, Fei Long, Gen, Karin, R. Mika, Rose, Sakura, Shadaloo Dolls and T.Hawk from Capcom’s Street Fighter. Marian, Abobo & Burnov from Technos’ Double Dragon games (Neo Geo fighter sprites).
Updated chars: Double Dragons (Neo Geo sprites added), Jubilee (mini-logo & X-Men:COTA name graphic), Zangief (new sprites)
GroupShot scene updates: Golden Axe vs. 01 – improved shadow transparency
VS. Mode “Custom Scene” backgrounds: Italy from Street Fighter Alpha 2, Code Red and On The Hilltop from X-Men vs. Street Fighter.

Game IndexCaptain America and the Avengers added.


The next update update will be in about two weeks from now. That puts it close to the 11th Anniversary. It won’t be anywhere near as big as the 10th Anniversary but there will be medium-large announcement about why it will be the last ScrollBoss update for a while.


Another reminder: the ScrollBoss Tumblr, Scroll like a Boss, exists, is active and has more than update post links. I’ve been posting screenshots that make me smile for all sorts of right and wrong reasons along with videos and reposts of cool game-related stuff I like there.

Sorry for the taking so long to get this update but technical difficulties held it back for one week so I decided to keep adding things to make up for that wait.

GFX Generators – The first thing you’ll notice is that they’ve de-uglified. They share a new layout template lets me make changes to any generator using that engine by working on one file. I didn’t want to improve on the generators’ look until I had that mod in place. You can now disable individual characters in the second menu of the GroupShot generator. Finished pictures now have a timestamp at the end of the file’s name so you can save multiple images on a devices that won’t let you change file names or make it a pain to do so. No one complained about it but I’m all about trying to figure out problems before they happen. The character update isn’t that deep this time but you’ll find lots of new screenstyles and most have secondary options for more backgrounds. I also ironed out a minor big in the GroupShot that messed up the placement of some characters. Those adjustments made many of these newly-added GroupShot game box tributes possible.

GroupShot Maker styles: Kenner’s Super Powers toy card, Capcom’s first and third NES box designs (with many background options), old Konami NES box (with a scratch-made Castlevania background) and SNK NES box.
New characters: Black Canary, Goemon (Konami), Phoenix/Jean Grey (with X-Men CotA name graphic)
Characters updated: Arthur (G’nG) gets a new sprite edit and a fixed sprite, Athena (new sprite), Clark & Ralf (Ikari Warriors minilogo), Darkseid (white logo from Super Powers card) and the Shadow Warriors from Double Dragon (currently just Jeff, Linda, Roper and Willy).

(Update Feb. 5, 2011: Magic Sword hero is fixed with a new Magic Sword mini logo along with being added to the Vs.Maker)

Sprite Index – Enemies and Ending pic added to Burning Fight page.

Custom Sprites – Improved Linda (Double Dragon) sprite edits.

Game Index – Burning Fight (Neo-Geo) and E-SWAT (Arcade) added. Growl (Arcade) updated.

Mini Logos – Black Canary, Darkseid (white logo), Goemon, Ikari Warriors, Phoenix, Shadow Warriors (Double Dragon) added. I also remembered to add Green Arrow’s ’70s and ’80s logos.

Game List – I forgot to add Bionic Commando: Rearmed last time after buying it for the PS3 but it’s added now.

My eyeballs are a bit fried after this one so it will be a while before the next update. I hope you enjoy the update and leave a reply if there are any box tributes or backgrounds you’d like to see. I can’t promise to get them done but I’ll try.

Here’s the final update for the tenth anniversary year:

Games Index – Black Tiger and Magic Sword (Arcade) were added. Final Fight (Arcade) and Golden Axe (Arcade) were modified.

Sprites – Black Tiger sprites and cinema scenes added.

Custom Sprites – Storm Shadow added to the G.I.JOE page.

Game Logos – Black Dragon, Black Tiger, Magic Sword added.

Mini Logos – The G.I. JOE, Cobra, He-Man and Thundercat mini-logos from last week’s GFX Generator updates from Christmas are now in this gallery.

MugenBoss – There’s no new content but I added List Index pages for Magic Sword and Kirby.

That’s it for 2010’s updates and I hope you liked some of the new stuff and changes that the 10th anniversary brought. I’d like to thank everyone who gave me feedback about it because you helped make things better here. I hope this place brings back memories about games you forgot about, introduced some new games to those who are just getting into the scene or let you know that you weren’t the only fan of that one game your friends scream on you for liking. It’s even more important now that many of these games can be downloaded and played again for just for the first time ever on a console like Konami’s X-Men. The updates in 2011 will be a bit farther apart but I still plan to bring the love of these games to the table and maybe finish one of those long-term projects I’ve been working on in bits and pieces. No promises on that. See you next year!

This is just a small update

GFX Generators – The last update added the ability to pick options for certain backgrounds and I said something about future updates taking crazy advantage of that. I’m using the Slam Masters rings as a demonstration for that again. Having different backgrounds and Vs. fonts for the Slam Masters rings was just practice.

Vs. Maker screens:
Slam Masters series rings – Rings and crowds/bgs can now be mixed and more background parts from whole series were added.
X-Men: CotA Vs – Added a few stage preview options.

GroupShot screens:
X-Men: CotA “Moon Night” – with a few bg options.

Custom Sprites – Ken (known as Kevin in the Japanese version) from Street Fighter 2010 has been added to the Capcom page. I just couldn’t let this year slip by without making a sprite edit of him. I also updated the “Then and Now” page to compare the Johnny Storm and Superman sprites along with a more detailed progress chart for street-clothes Cody.

I also made a commissioned from-scratch sprite of a legendary comic book advertising hero and you can see that on the deviantART page in this link. Be sure to check out the work by man who commissioned the sprite!


Good news, everyone: Quartermaster is back with a new URL and highly-updated Capcom and SNK shrines! Shadi has done a ton of work on the shrines and they’re as informative as they are attractive. He doesn’t play favorites and put as much effort into the Black Tiger and Magic Sword shrines as he gives into pages of more well-known games. Please give the place a visit! I apologize that all of my links from here to the new URL aren’t fixed in this update but I’ll get that done as soon as I can.

The next real site update will be next week but I’m throwing some extra stuff out there for the funk of it. Here’s what’s cracklin’ today:

GFX Generators – The “name graphic display” part of the second menu has been cleaned up, more Vampire Savior/Hunter 2 name graphics were added (Arthur, Dracula, R.Taylor) and Arthur just got a custom portrait:

Game List – I forgot to mention that I got the best early Christmas present last week. Why should you give a crap? Because the game that I got with it has just been added to the Game List. What game is that? Little Big Planet. I finally have a so-called current gaming console so I’ll be able to work in more content about certain game re-releases and revivals.

Here’s part two of the Halloween update:

GFX Generators – The Vampire Savior 2 VS. screen has been upgraded to use that game’s name graphics. All Darkstalkers characters and one Castlevania character can use them. New characters have been added and the breakdown is like this:
Capcom: Jedah, Lei-Lei
Nintendo (new!): Mario (with alt. palettes), Samus Aran (no armor & Zero Suit shared palettes)
Konami: Death, Belmont Clan (Simon/Trevor with lots of alt. palettes)
IREM: Thomas/Vigilante gets his black and white outfit from Kung-Fu, the NES version of Kung-Fu Master.

Custom Sprites – Simon Belmont (NES stance) added to the Konami page. I plan to improve it a bit more before I use it as a base for other versions of the outfit.

Mini-logos – Jedah was added to the Capcom section, Samus (NES style) was added to the Nintendo section and Trevor (Belmont) was added to the Konami section.

I’ve also done some horror and NES themed updates on Illmosis for the last few weeks with new art of Death and Medusa from Castlevania and the Bubble Head Nurse from Silent Hill.

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.