My original plan was to post yesterday’s sprites together with these two clip compilations today, but I just felt like splitting them up. These clips in each compilation were different reasons, including early promo vids, for learning how to use Anime Studio (now Moho), and for the upcoming Superhero Sprite Showcade or Comic Book Showcade (I’m still undecided on that right now).

The Marvel video is a mix of official Capcom sprites with my fan pixel work with a sprinkle of Data East’s Avengers game with the second Onslaught BGM from Marvel vs. Capcom as background music. The DC vid is all my work, including unfinished music I’m working specifically for the Showcade videos. Please forgive any sound issues, I’m currently using some cheap temporary speakers, so I couldn’t fine tune the audio before uploading.

Also: a gallery of custom portraits for Capcom’s X-Men: Children of the Atom is now up, with an improved Deadpool portrait and a newly converted Batman portrait, both with art by Jim Lee (like most of the portrait art is in that game).

Those portraits are also in the GFX Generator so you can make your own fake screenshots with them!

The Anniversary celebration finally wraps up tomorrow!

Comic book characters have had a heavy presence on this site since the early days, so today’s spotlight falls on superhero characters from Marvel and DC Comics. Back when I started the site, anyone who wasn’t Batman, the X-Men, or Spider-Man was considered an obscure character (sometimes by their own companies), but that didn’t stop me from making sprite edits of Green Lantern Hal Jordan (who was still dead and buried both in the literal AND wrestling sense of the word), Black Widow, and Taskmaster. Now I’m spriting everything from scratch, replacing all the edits I made from Capcom sprites while trying to add characters I’ve never sprited before, and this update is a combination of that!

Custom Sprites: new sprites (and new galleries) include…
DC Comics: all-new scratch-made sprites of the Atom, Firestorm, Power Girl, Steel
Superman (Taito): the unknown female character found in the game’s rom (something I found using Turaco and posted on the site back in the early ’00s) and the basic drones.
Marvel Comics: the Blob, Pryo, Sentinel (all three based on their Konami beat ’em up/Pryde of the X-Men pilot appearances), Spider-Man (improved scratch-made sprite in “Spider-Man the Arcade Game” pose), Mysterio, the Green Goblin

Mini-logos
DC Comics: Firestorm, Steel
Marvel Comics: the Blob, Mysterio, Pyro

All newness was added to the GFX Image Generators, where you can make pics like the ones at the top of this news post!

I planned to skip a day and post these sprites and something else on Tuesday, but I just wait. Is there still something coming this Tuesday? Of course, and if you didn’t get enough comic book content today, come back tomorrow for some video fun!

I’d noticed some issues in the image generators while working on May 22nd’s Pac-Man Anniversary update and started working on a few the next day. That led to working on a few random things and this is the result.

Custom Portraits – there are now two separate galleries for the custom portraits I’ve made/converted, with credits for as many things as I could find for the converted official art.
Street Fighter Alpha/Zero 3: same as the portraits page, but with an improved Billy Lee (Double Dragon)
Marvel Super Heroes – Capcom: finally, all the custom MSH-style portraits seen in the site’s image generators are in a gallery. The X-men CotA portraits will get a gallery soon.

A gallery for the X-Men: Children of the Atom custom portraits will be added soon.

Mini-logos:
Capcom: Rose (Street Fighter), Bishamon (Darkstalkers), Felicia (Darkstalkers)
Nintendo: Pokémon (redone), Pikachu (“Hey you, Pikachu” style)

BTW: Feel free to use these custom portraits and minilgos in your fan projects, just give me a credit somewhere.

These things were added to the graphics generators. Additional fixes include:
Marvel Super Heroes: fixes to the character list (originally copied from the SFA3 Vs. lists and using old temporary versions of characters made when I re-wrote the generator scripts).
– Fixed Firebrand’s Darkstalkers 3 portrait, made MSH vs versions of Arthur and Firebrand’s custom portraits.

DC Comics: Deadshot, Deathstroke, Sinestro, Star Sapphire

Those were the last four DC Comics villains who needed scratch-made sprites instead of the old sprite edits made from Capcom sprites (though the edits can be seen in the characters’ mini galleries).

GFX Generators: All new sprites added, along with…
– MvC ending: frames based on Street Fighter Alpha 2 (with and without top) and Final Fight (3 font colors)


My day job is currently deemed “essential” so I only get to quarantine in my time off. That means I only get my normal amount of time to hunker down and work on things. Here are some little previews of things that aren’t quite read to show just yet.

No tricks here, all fun!

Custom Sprites
NuChallenger: Bruce Maxwell (Treachery in Beatdown City)
Marvel Comics: Misty Knight
DC Comics: improved Wonder Woman hands-on-hips pose (and new 1973 and 1995 outfits)
Horror: Tina Shepard (Friday the 13th pt. 7)
Portraits: Street Fighter Alpha 3 Vs. screen Wonder Woman

GFX Generators: all new sprites and portraits were added along with…
– End – Marvel vs. Capcom 384×224 (in main generator and MvC1): 3 new non-specific layouts


The wait is over and Treachery in Beatdown City is out now! Here’s the trailer from last year:

Tactical turn-based beats in the streets are now available on PC or Nintendo Switch, so run get it if that sounds like you’re thing (I gave to the Kickstarter and downloaded it with the quickness last night). Congrats to the whole NuChallenger crew, who have been fighting for YEARS to get this game made and out into the world!

(BTW: shout-out to the YouTube genius who removed the sizing options from the Share:Embed feature. Thanks for that step backwards!)

For the first time in the year 2020, THE NEWNESS IS ON!


Custom Sprites:
Sonic series: Tails
Shinobi series: Karasu (the Revenge of Shinobi)
Spawn: Spawn (original outfit)
Marvel Comics: Spider-Woman
DC Comics: Starfire

BTW: the last three galleries are linked in the looong-overdue Comic Books Custom Sprite gallery hub.

Mini-logos: McFarlane: Spawn, Sega: Tails

All new sprites and mini-logos were added to the image generator, along with two Image Comics covers added to the 88×136 pixel option (even though the Spawn sprite is way too tall to fit in the cover).

Finally, here’s a short video teaser for some of the things I’ve been working on for the site, future videos, and more.

What the things in the video mean will be explained as I get to them, because it’ll be a hell of a lot easier to show you than explain. In the words of Guru, “Peace out, we’ll be back, stay tuned.”

Finally, a day when Batman gets more attention than other characters! I dropped some Batman-related sprites in the Revenge of 1989 update, but I’ve got a couple more AND a sprite that finally finishes a beat ’em up crew!

DC Comics: Improved the “Blue and Gray” sprites of Batman, added a Dick Grayson teen Robin
Ninja Baseball Bat Man – Roger finally steps up to the plate and completes the playable team!

These sprites have been added to the fighting game-scale GFX Generator and Batman now has extra palettes.

One more thing: here’s a quick little animation of Batman I was working on. Still rough (esp. the cape), but far enough to show where it is now:


Bonus:

Here’s a video from the excellent Superhero VG Channel about what things were like when the Batman 1989 hit:

One last update in 2018 with a bunch of unused stuff and to set the stage for 2019!

Custom Sprites:
Final Fight: Carlos, Lucia
Marvel Comics: Daredevil, Taskmaster, Mockingbird
DC Comics: the Question

Thanks to actress/martial artist/cosplayer Kimberly Root who came up with the pose during Free Comic Book Day at All American Comics (Warren location)!

Mini-logos: Mockingbird added to Marvel gallery

The Daredevil and Question sprites are in honor of two comic book greats we lost in 2018: Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.

My plan to have more videos didn’t work out the way I’d hoped (though the really short Black Panther video turned out nicely), but I’ve put together a video with some unfinished work, including something I’ve shown teasers for in TWO year-end videos.

That third part of the video is a big reason why there weren’t that many new sprites added to the site this year. I spent a bit of 2018 working on animations you haven’t seen yet and, let’s be real, if I show them on this site before I put them in a video, they’ll be in someone else’s video before mine (with no credit). Not that I’m bitter or anything. Truth is, getting ripped off is part of what inspires me to want to make videos. Let’s see if 2019 is the year that I finally start finishing some videos!


Public plans for 2019:

  • Animation (and showing it this time) and video. I didn’t show everything in that Unfinished Business video, so some long-percolating animation and video projects will show up in 2019.
  • The Revenge of 1989: 30th anniversary edition!
  • Bring back the missing Crossup Beatdown
  • More prints, including the upcoming custom print program where you get to pick what goes into a one-of-a-kind print. Imagine being able to choose who’s in the 2018 Horror Fighter print, including a customized roster.

    More info on that next year!


That’s enough of all for 2018! Thank you for coming through to check out the site and I hope you have a Happy New Year!

This is update is mostly themeless, but it’s also on the day that Action Comics #1000 hits the stands, so there’s a bit of Metropolis flavor in there.

DC Comics: Superman (Action Comics #1 interior and Kingdom Come battle hover), Black Lightning, Lex Luthor (battle armor), and Toyman (Superfriends version).
Mini-logos: Mario added to Nintendo, Scorpion, Kitana and Cage added to Williams/Midway, Toyman added to DC Comics

GFX Generators (Fighter scale): Avengers 2018 and X-Men 2017 have been added to the Marvel Legends box tribute. Of course, all new sprites and mini-logos have been added to this generator, too.


VGJunk site celebrated its 8th anniversary by making and sharing a visual novel!

Arcade Quartermaster’s new shrines for the month are Arabian Fight, Arabian Magic and Cannon Dancer/Osman!

RageQuitter’s Earnest Evans series shrine was updated with more info!

The only April Fool’s trick involving the site happened to me yesterday when I thought I’d spend the whole time making 8-bit style sprites. HA! You’ll read about that in a bit.

GFX Generators – The oft-neglected Fake Screenshot generator (with 8-bit graphics) gets some love today. I spent much of yesterday untangling a bug in the engine that messed up font selections on a few screens (esp. the Mega Man boss intros). I also added sprites to:

– Custom 8-bit sprites: Dr. Bones McCoy, Dr. Herbert West, Dr. Clayton Forrester, Dr. Giggles. They were meant to be scratch-made Mega Man-style doctor sprites, but they really seem like more of their own thing.
– RCR/Kunio-Kun NES customs, media: Agent Dale Cooper and Shelly Johnson from Twin Peaks
(edit 10:20 PM:)


– RCR NES edits/customs, game chars: Pit (Kid Icarus classic)
– RCR/Kunio-Kun NES customs, media: Batman

Also: I cleaned up the the links section a bit. FINALLY!

Sorry, but I’m a bit low on time here. I’ll be back later to add them to the sprite galleries (and possibly throw in a new sprite). The new River City Ransom NES sprites are now in the gallery. The others aren’t because… I don’t know what style they are, really. They were supposed to be like Mega Man doctors (Wily and Light), but don’t. I’ll figure it out later.

Be sure to check out the news in last week’s update post if you haven’t been here for a while, as it includes new fighting-scale sprites and a preview of an upcoming pixel art print!

beforeinbetweenafter