Been working on commissions lately, so I didn’t have a lot of time to make new things. But I still wanted to drop a quick update separate from what’s coming next week. ToyBoss – added an updated TMNT Villains pic with the new NECA cartoon Shredder, all-new heroes and villains line-up pics for DC (a mixed DC Direct, Mattel, and McFarlane collection) including that new “Silver Age” Superman (really the José Luis García-López, artist of DC Comics Presents and the legendary DC Comics Style Guide), new Marvel Legends S.H.I.E.L.D. lineup, and my modern Autobot Transformers.
edit: added a pic that I just took of Jakks Sonic holding a Mattel Electronics Football game from a Super Impulse Toy Box I just got.
edit 2: added a pic I forgot: my updated Jakks Pacific Sonic 4-inch figure with added Classic Amy figure.
We’re in the middle of Black History Month, so I’m hitting you with some new sprites of Black characters from comics and toys!
Custom Sprites:
– Marvel: the Falcon
– DC Comics: Bumblebee (’00s cartoon and ’80s comic versions)
– M.A.S.K.: Hondo MacLean in his v.1 outfit and Blaster mask
all new custom sprites and mini-logos were added to the GFX Generator, which is what I used to make the graphic at the top of the post.
Just a heads up: I’m now working more hours at the day job, so I have less time (and energy) to work on this stuff and commissions. I’ll do my best to keep it moving, though! Also, unless we talked about it before now, I won’t be taking on any more commission work until further notice.
Wrapping up the month with a few odds-and-ends before getting back to work on some commission and then getting ready for the you-know-what in October.
Game Index:
– Crime Fighters: a bit of rewriting, plus extra outside confirmation that the game was the template for Konami’s later brawlers, thanks to a great interview Time Extension had with some Konami staff members who worked on it.
mini-logos:
– DC Comics: the 1976 DC Bullet (welcome back, best DC logo)
ToyBoss: a few new photos added, mostly of my newly-acquired 52Toys Mike Haggar figure.
Arcade Quartermaster‘s update is live, too! Two new shrines: Data East’s ninja platformer Hangzo and Konami’s Jackal (a.k.a. Top Gunner)
Reminder that Rob ‘Dire51’ Strangman (author and creator of the OPCFG, West Mansion Splatterhouse fan site, and more) has a Kickstarter campaign for four of his books about gaming and more, including updated versions of his previously released books. Please check it out, back it if you can, and spread the word about the campaign!
Another game-related Kickstarter from a long-time site runner to check out is the NES Endings Compendium: Volume 2. This one is from Rey from the VGMuseum, one of the best screenshot and ending resources out there (and my first go-to site choice when I need to look at screenshots I haven’t taken yet).
So… if you’ve been on social media you may have noticed that people have been trying to bring back goofy arguments from 2016 while the the world feels like it’s on the verge of falling apart for frighteningly real reasons. Really, some of them never stopped, checking in every few months to see if they could get any traction off the grifts again. A while back I’d joked that if this is what’s hot in the streets right now that I’d just start reposting my 2016 updates and acting like they’re new. Now that 2016 nostalgia is at its peak and more annoying than ever, I’ve made a decision about October: I’m going to bring back something dumb from 2016, too.
Right now I’m starting work on an old commission request, but I have a few new, overdue, and fixed things for the site.
Custom Sprites:
– DC Comics: Catwoman’s character gallery is fixed (thanks to the site visitor on IG who let me know that was broken before), she now has her own little row on the main page. I also finished and added the Batman Returns and Golden Age Purple Dress versions of her calm stand pose, originally done for the Catwoman sprite display for a Batman video showcase long ago but not added to the site until now.
GFX Generator –
– Marvel vs. Capcom 2 characters/sprites of Ruby Heart, Hayato (Star Gladiator), Amingo finally added (JustNoPoint rips).
– Marvel vs Capcom ending: the Punisher (arcade) and MvC2 skins added. I made the MvC2 skin’s font by hand based on the font in the credits and score screen, forcing everything into 8×16 spaces as it’d be in a CPS-2 game
Rob ‘Dire51’ Strangman (author and creator of the OPCFG, West Mansion Splatterhouse fan site, and more) has a Kickstarter campaign for four of his books about gaming and more, including updated versions of his previously released books.
I’m looking forward to the material I haven’t read yet and re-reading what I’d read before. One of the things I’ll continue to mention is that I’m grateful he wrote a book talking about the early 80s from a non-rich kid point of view, especially when talking about things like the now-mythical Video Game Crash of 1983. There are also interviews with game creators and other people in the industry and contributions from others in the fan community. If you want to know how much community is in the mix, I drew all the covers and was one of the people who requested a music-related question to arcade Strider director/artist Kouichi Yotsui about a fan-favorite character. Please check it out, back it if you can, and spread the word!
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.
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.
I’ve mostly been working on animations for this year’s videos since NYE, but I’ve got a few things to add this month.
Custom Sprites:
– Mega Man: I’m experimenting with my own Mega Man sprites, because I want to have some that are just mine and not trying to add to the Marvel vs. Capcom sprites.
– Golden Axe: new sprites of Longmoan and male villager. If you visited this site in the old days, you may remember how the index page used to have animated GIFs of arcade version, and that’s part of why I had to animate it myself:
– Mega Man: An all-new Mega Man sprite
– Marvel: Daredevil – two poses, new style, because I disliked the sprite I made in 2018.
– DC Comics: Peacemaker, from the backlog of sprites I’d drawn lineart for but hadn’t pixeltraced yet.
– Illmosis: ScrollBoss site character Vonetta (aka Vernacula) redone holding stack of books sprite in her 2023 outfit. You’ll see more of Vonetta and other ScrollBoss site characters this year.
– Street Fighter Alpha 3 Vs. portraits: Blaze Fielding (SoR2)
– G.I.JOE: Low-Light v.1, Red Ninja added. Redrew Grunt from scratch and made a Footloose based on the base sprite. BTW: this FINALLY replaces all my ancient Capcom edits in G.I.JOE gallery (but they’re still there to see in a sub-gallery.
– M.A.S.K.: Vanessa Warfield (masked and unmasked) added to the new separate gallery
– Street Fighter: scratch-made G.I.JOE versions of Blanka and Ryu
– Toys and Cartoons:Skull (Super Naturals) and… Barbie? Yes, Barbie. That lady’s everywhere.
– Marvel Comics: Secret Wars Mattel Magneto
– Illmosis: My Christmas mascot (and toy store owner) Hilde Santessa
portraits: Street Fighter Alpha 3 – Snake-Eyes and Cobra Commander
Mini-logos: Barbie and Super Naturals ToyBoss: group shot of Golden Axe (Storm Collectibles), Super Mario (Jakks) (only five figures, just got Luigi, Peach, and a 2nd Mario in a 3-pack).
GFX Generators: All new custom sprites were also added to the generators. Still finding and fixing things from the PHP upgrade (that’ll be going on a looong time). Also added:
– the Toy Aisle background got a big update, with more variations to figures (all wave 1 Super Powers figures carded) and many more boxes (especially the Transformers section). Some weird issue is keeping a thumbnail of the new version of showing up on the background selection screen on my hard drive’s copy of the site.
Finally, the toys get their own video this year. Check it out here or on the ScrollBoss YouTube Channel!
Thank you for stopping by! Whatever it is you’re celebrating or not celebrating, I hope you have a good weekend
It’s the birthday of this website, but the presents are for you! No, you can’t exchange them at the store if they don’t fit. First, thank you for visiting the site, whether you’ve been stopping by since the Tripod and Angelfire years or if this is your first time. It’s fun to make these things, but it’s even more fun when people other people enjoy it. But you know what? Instead of doing the usual thing with shots from the generator, I’ve got a short video with most of the sprites in it.
Custom Sprites:
– Captain Commando: all-new sprites of Captain Commando (1991 design), Carol, Brenda, Wooky, Eddy, Dick.
– Final Fight: Eliza (a.k.a. Elissa) and Mary from Final Fight 2
– Mega Man: original Mega Man robot master lineup is completed with new sprites of Cut Man, Guts Man, and Ice Man.
– Street Fighter: Kimberly
– DC Comics: Green Lantern Hal Jordan
– Marvel Comics: Shadowcat/Kitty Pryde
– Music: Wu-Tang Killer Bees
Mini-logos:
– Capcom: Street Fighter 6 cutscene style logos for Kimberly, Dee Jay, Juri, and Damnd
– Atlus: Atlus
– Marvel Comics: Shadowcat
– Music: Wu-Tang Clan
Custom Sprite Packs: (edit: 2023 July 22) Kitty Pryde and Shadowcat added to the X-Men CotA name graphics pack.
The high amount of new Capcom items is making up for the fact that I planned to do a bigger Capcom anniversary update a while back, but I had to concentrate on commission work. As usual, the new custom sprites and mini-logos are available to use in the GFX image generators
ToyBoss: A few new pics have been added, including that brand new side-scroller legend you see off to the side. Last year’s anniversary update featured a pic of my then-new Tyris Flare figure from Storm Collectibles and this update just happens to parallel that event with my new Gilius Thunderhead figure. I lucked out and caught one of the last sets on sale from Entertainment Earth, the online store where I got some of the luckiest finds of my rebuilt collection. Storm Collectibles is now exclusive to BigBadToyStore and you can find their Golden Axe line (and other Golden Axe items) here. Entertainment Earth still has one “Not Mint” Gilius left for $96.53 and free shipping, but it probably won’t be in stock for long. I also managed to get another figure I’ve wanted for years but aftermarket prices usually kept me away, until I found an incomplete one for a decent price: Sodom! It may have been a Street Fighter figure from SOTA, but we all know Sodom comes from the Final Fight series. I’ll probably have to customize a crest for his helmet and get a spare pair of swords so he can reach his full boss potential.
There’ll be more updates to the ToyBoss section soon because I need to update a few roster pics and my current customized figure project is about halfway done. I also got a new digital camera (on sale, of course) that won’t immediately murder its battery after being on for more than 8 minutes, so I’ll be having fun with that, too.
I mentioned a while back that I’ll have to rewrite a lot of code on the site to get it ready for the updated Dreamhost servers, and that’s going to be my main focus for a while. My hard drive has copies of the old and new code versions of the site running in two different XAMPP installs, which complicates adding new things to the online (and old) version of this site. So while site updates will be limited as I work on the new version of the site, I’m going add more things to the ScrollBoss YouTube channel on the side. Some areas may temporarily disappear when the site upgrade starts in August, so be sure to check out, enjoy, and right-click save what you want before then.
Street Fighter Alpha/Zero 3 portraits: Andore/Hugo (Final Fight/SF), Captain Commando, Harley Quinn (DC Comics), Spider-Man (Marvel), Black Widow (Marvel Comics)
Four of these were requests that I already wanted to make, but for various reasons (I had a Hugo/Andore sketched years ago, but didn’t like it) didn’t get done until now. Harley Quinn is just one I just had an itch to make.
Seeing my custom portraits in fake screenshots is one thing, but did you ever wonder how they’d look in the game? Using a new rendering technique, I made a short video using some of the older portraits I made from scratch:
What’s that rendering technique? I’ll tell you at the end of this post.
GFX Generator: The engine itself got some minor fixes, including a fix to some reflection effects. Also
– a “ScrollTech pattern background (added by request) added to the main generator
– The new portraits were added to the GFX Generators, mainly the SFA3 generator
Happy New Year and Happy Year of the Rabbit! I’ve spent most January 2023 working on a line art commission that you’ll see some time this year (it was teased by the author last year, but I can’t show it yet), so this update is a bit lighter than the usual First Update of the Year, but at least it has variety.
Custom Sprites:
– Street Fighter: new Cammy SSF2 win pose, updated her other win pose sprite to match better with the others.
– Marvel Comics: the Enchantress
– DC Comics: the Rabbit enemy from Taito’s Superman arcade game
– Illmosis Network – ScrollBoss: Vonetta “Vernacula” Paige gets a new sprite, a slightly modified outfit, a satchel and a last name in an all-new sprite!
All of these sprites are tied to things I plan to work on throughout the year, including a rabbit theme to celebrate the year.
Vernacula-X Glossary: Vonetta, mascot of the Info Center area of the site, threatened suggested I also work a bit on that part of the site, so I updated amazon (updated the main pic), Beat ‘Em Up (added info, main pic borrows the main menu “Brawlstreet” banner for now), Versus Mode (added more info and main pic) and minor updates to other entries.
Image Generators: All new custom sprites were added, and the following screen styles were updated…
– Vs 3v3 scene 384×224: 12 more Vs. graphics from different games were added.
My newest game-related action figure is the Marvel Legends Capcom-style War Machine (not that they mention Capcom, but we know the deal). The Iron Man sculpt it’s based on was already proven solid twice in the standard red and gold release and the special flat red and yellow PROTON CANNON edition from last year. The spark effects, also used in that Proton Cannon IM, are still great, but you’ll probably have to heat up the rubbery plastic of the biggest spark to bend it back into shape. What makes this version really sing is the use of metallic paints and plastics to mimic the sprite’s look. I’m not a fan of factory-done painted-on cel shading for action figures, 97 times out of 100 it just works against the sculpt work and only looks good if you have light coming from a specific direction (if it ever looks right). But this figure looks really close to the sprite when it’s hit with enough light, mimicking the car paint finish found in the sprites.
Ever wonder what would happen if Captain N: the Game Master had its own Netflix monkey paw-grasped revival? Friend of the site Channel 905 a take on that (and a few other things) in this video!
Okay… I’m going to try and take a break again. A real one this time. Besides getting rest, I’ve got some new programs to learn, and maybe I’ll even take enough time to play a game again. I’ll be back at some point between late February and early March, but there may be some small updates before that.
