Beat ‘Em Update: Final Friday

It’s the final Friday of Final Fight’s 30th anniversary month, so this update is filled with new Final Fight sprites, including many you may have seen in a video a while ago, but there’s a whole new one, too. This update also features other beat ’em up characters and the debut of the NEW Brawlstreet crossover beat ’em up site header on the main menu (you may have to refresh a few times to see it). Let’s get into it!

Custom Sprites:
Final Fight: new sprites of Haggar (FF1 art pose), Axl and Slash (redone, better), Edi. E (scratch-made, FF1 waiting pose), Sodom (made from scratch), Poison (Capcom Fighting All-Stars alt), Dean, Bay Area Dog/Shiro
Double Dragon: Lopar/Roper (new, better standing sprite)
Streets of Rage: Dr. Zan
Kunio-kun: Misako and Kyoko – SD sprites of their Shin Nekketsu Kōha -Kunio-tachi no Banka outfits
IREM: the Vigilante. Kung-Fu Master was finally moved to its own gallery.
Technos: the red shirted bald enemy from Renegade

All sprites have been added to the main image generator, where you can make graphics like the ones I used to show off the sprites here.

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2018: a new year of newness about oldness

First of all, just in case you didn’t come in through the front door, check out the new and improved index page. That new index pic is YEARS in the making, because I wanted the new version to have 0% sprite edits. That’s all scratch-made, including a sprite done for the new group shot and can’t be found in the galleries yet. I’ll let you find him for yourself. That external link icon set is new, too. Like a lot of the things in this update, it’s long overdue, so let’s get to the rest of it.

Info Center: After years of neglect, the Game Index, Company Index, S-Files/Character profiles and Definition/Vernacula-X sections have been recoded and the main page itself has a new pic with site character Vonetta (a.k.a. Vernacula). She’s in charge of the Info Center and likes the place to be quiet, so keep the noise down while you’re in there.. The pages mostly look the same, but there were a lot of little fixes and improvements to a lot of entries, and the new system I’m using for all of them makes it easy to make changes in the future. Unfortunately, since I’ve been working on this here-and-there since mid-2017, I don’t remember all the brand new pages, so this is a partial list:
– Definitions: Doppelgänger, fighting game, fixed screen, frankensprite, head swap, tile
– S-Files: Billy Lee, Jimmy Lee

Custom Sprites: there are now separate galleries for Alex Kidd, Ghosts ‘n Goblins, Ninja Gaiden, the Zelda series
– Ghosts ‘n Goblins: a new scratch-made Arthur sprite.
– Mega Man: a new scratch-made MvC1-style Mega Man sprite.
– Data East: Santos (Trio the Punch)
– Konami: Solid Snake (MGS)
– Sega: Mary (Quartet)
– Marvel: Black Cat (Spider-Man arcade fighting stance)
– Illmosis: a new sprite of Vonetta (a.k.a. Vernacula)

Sprites: lots of behind-the-scenes work was done on nearly all the galleries, mostly switching to the new image display format. There are a few new things, though.
– Golden Axe: the Duel: all arcade big portraits are now there (and separate) and an new .GIF of the final boss.
– P.O.W.: new gallery with sprites of the player characters.

Mini-logos:
– Konami: Metal Gear Solid

GFX Generators: All of the new custom sprites and mini-logo have been added to the main generator, where The Mego WGSH set-up gets a better set of Konami face circles.

**wipes brow** That’s all for now. Please let me know if you run into any errors or broken parts of the site, because this update changed at least 40% of the site!

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April Fool’s Day: River City Ransom sprites

Beating River City Ransom: Underground this week kept me in the mood for spriting more characters in the original NES game’s style. I’m still trying to find a balance between sticking in that original game’s look and trying more unique things like RCR:U did. Today’s batch features do-overs for sprites I’d edited from RCR sprites years ago (the Lee Bros. and some Street Fighter stalwarts), other teenage characters (including five with attitude), a few clownish characters (including my own character, Nutroll) and one man who will pity these fools.

also, one character that I thought I’d done for the Megaman NES style finally gets his turn:

You can now have such a thing as Thunderball Fists!

They’ve been added to the River City Ransom custom sprite page and, of course, the Fake Screenshot generator.

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Double Dragons get a dojo

In honor of Double Dragon IV‘s release, today’s update is (almost) all Double Dragon! Don’t worry, the guest star will fit right in.


– Double Dragon: Billy and Jimmy Lee (Super Double Dragon fight stance), Marian (D.D.1 outfit, D.D. Neo Geo stance), Abobo (classic, redone), Chin Taimei (NES outfit, redone), Abore (NES look).
– Technos: Renegade

Mini-Logos: Renegade added to Technos section.

All newness has been added to the GFX Generators, and so has a remake of the area outside the Dojo from Double Dragon III (NES). I also made adjustments to the engine that finally let me fix the X-Men Vs. screen name alignment for the second player.

Don’t worry, there will be more Double Dragon stuff hitting the site later this year, because you know I’ve got to celebrate the 30th anniversary year.

If you follow me on Twitter or Tumblr, you might have seen me post about opening up some sprite commission slots last week. All four commission slots were taken before I could post in other places and it went so well (and I have so few work hours at the day job right now) that I’ve opened four commission slots again! Please see the details on the Illmosis site’s commissions page if you’re interested!

edit: removed the Twitch video as it was causing the page to act funky. Will replace A.S.A.P.

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New SFA3 Portraits: Abobo, Maki, and Mai

Custom Portraits: Maki gets her SFA3 MAX portrait(imperfect, as I didn’t have an easy time ripping it), SNK’s Mai gets a new scratch-drawn SFA3 portrait, but so does Abobo (replacing the lame version I made a few years ago). The portraits were added to the v.2 image generator.

Also, a glaring omission was added to the Mega Man NES edits was added.


Thank you for the music.

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GFX Generator v.2: SFA3 Vs. screen

The new GFX Generator engine has been upgraded to the point that it can replicate the Street Fighter Alpha 3 Vs. screen, though the ISM is stuck at X-ISM for now. I’ve added upgraded versions of every (I think) character from the old generator that had SFA3 portraits, and a few now have alternate palettes. Two new SFA3 portraits have been added: Cammy (a Delta Red edit of her Shadowloo pic) and Double Dragon’s Lee Brothers. The Lee Brothers pic was sketched out last year, but decided to wait until I got the portrait palette feature working.


Some of the older SFA3 portraits now have alternate palettes, but you’ll have to look around to see who has them. There will eventually be separate pages for certain generators where you’ll only see characters that work 100% with that specific screen, but things will be a bit jumbled until then.

Breakin’ News:

The always-productive Zvitor just released his long-awaited “Justice League vs. Street Fighter” crossover fan game!


Don’t worry, Gotham-related characters don’t dominate the DC side and some Final Fight mainstays in the Street Fighter side. You’ll also find a few surprise characters in the mix. You can download it from this page on Zvitor’s site.

edit (2016 04 16): This update hit the site in the wee hours of the morning, before I knew it was the birthday of artist Rusty Shackles. Happy birthday to him and both the site and site creator of VGJunk, who celebrated with a look at Final Fight!

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Return of Double Dragon

I’m done (mostly) with the commission I was working on, so the site is back in active mode. Between Double Dragon’s announced return as a fighting game mode in the upcoming Kunio-Kun game and Hardcore Gaming 101 deepening their articles on the Double Dragon series throughout March, I figure the 22nd day of this month would be perfect.

Custom Sprites – the Double Dragon series finally gets its own custom sprite gallery and new sprites of both Billy and Jimmy Lee, Marian, and Linda. You might have seen the Lee Brothers’ sprites in some preview .GIFs, but I’ve tuned them up a bit since then. I also improved the earlier sprites of Williams and Roper a bit and their out on the streets, too. All of that newness is also in the GFX Generators with a lot of palettes. I’m not done with the Double Dragon characters, so expect more redone sprites, different outfits and added characters soon.

I’ve wanted to rewrite the GFX Generator engine for a while so I could add things that the current version can’t do. It’s been a side project since last year and you’ll finally start to see some early versions of it this Spring. I made a blog post to talk a bit about that new version, including why part of it almost drove me insane (well, more than usual).

The #GameAudioGDC Bundle – Part 2 is a free 10 GB download of high-quality and royalty free (a.k.a. hassle free) sound effects suitable for video games and videos. They’re from packs sold by Sonniss, so that’s only the tip of the iceberg of what they have to offer.

Steam has RPG Maker VX Ace for 90% off!, so any game makers may want to check that out.

Crowdfund round-up:

Moira – a magical adventure with a look inspired by classic GameBoy games and the heart of an SNES action/adventure game!

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Happy 30th Birthday, NES!

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.)

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Battleturtles and Double Dragon

TMNT: Leonardo and Michelangelo join their brothers in getting new sprites based on their 1989 arcade game fighting stances.
Technos: new scratch-made arcade/NES fighting stance sprites of Billy and Jimmy Lee arrive to face off against Jeff (a.k.a. the Lee Brother headswap enemy from the arcade game and Super Double Dragon) and Boss Willy.

Those new sprites have been added to the GFX Generators where the Lee Brothers and all four turtles have more extra palettes and an Ultra (NES) box was added to the GroupShot’s “Boxes, Flyer & Posters 160×192” set-up.

Side note: this update means that I’ve finally made sprites of the whole original Double Dragon cast.

The ScrollBoss Shop page has been updated with the game-related prints I’m also selling on my Illmosis site, including the new Horror vs. Horror (still trying to find a good name for that) select screen.

8×10 and 8×11 prints are $6 each, two for $10, and three for $15. I’ll have more pixel art prints in the near future, so keep an eye out for those!

The shop is (fictionally) run by Tina Fong, the newest fictional member of the ScrollBoss site team.


Tina’s had experience working in places where a rumble could happen at any moment, so she’ll fit in on this site. Of course, you never know when someone else will be behind the register…

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The Revenge of 1989 ultra-mega update

There’s no space for introductory yammering, only for the newness!

Custom Sprites –
– Atari: Thyra the Valkyrie, Merlin the Wizard (three versions of each) from Gauntlet
– Capcom: Amazons and Kuniang M.A. Team (Strider), Metal Man (Mega Man)
– Final Fight: brand new Two.P and J (fighting stances)
– Konami: Bayou Billy West
– Sega: Joe Musashi (new RoS fight stance), the evil amazons from Golden Axe (arcade and Genesis/Mega Drive versions)
– Taito: the Priest from Cadash
– Technos: Riki (Kunio-Kun series), Billy and Jimmy Lee (new scratch-made sprites)
– Games (other): Gogan from the Legendary Axe
– Toys & Cartoons: Captain N (!)
– TMNT: Bebop and Rocksteady

Mini-logos – Believe it or not, it’s another A-to-the-mothereffin’-Z mini-logo update with the entire alphabet representing!


– Atari: Thyra, Thor, Merlin and Questor
– Capcom: Hugo (USF4 style)
– Epyx: Epyx
– Kaneko: DJ Boy
– Konami: S.P.Y. Special Project Y, Ultra Games
– Marvel: X-Men, The Uncanny X-Men
– Movies: RoboCop
– Nintendo: Captain N
– Sega: Alex Kidd (High Tech World style), Yamato (Shinobi), Zeed
– SNK: Ikari III, the rescue, Guerrilla War
– Taito: Fighter (Cadash), Mage(Cadash), Ninja(Cadash), Priest (Cadash), Violence Fight
– Tecmo: Ninja Gaiden (NES box), Wild Fang
– Technos: Billy (Lee), Jimmy (Lee)
– Victor: Legendary Axe


GFX Generators – All those new sprites, characters and logos were added to the generators.
– Groupshot Generator: box 160×192 gets four new TurboGrafx-16 set-ups
– Backgrounds: Three Ultra Street Fighter IV backgrounds, one Double Dragon Neon background and a remake of Final Fight 1-1
– Updated characters: Poison (blue palette from Mighty Final Fight)

Minus World – the “Run, Woman, Run!” article was updated.

Game Index – added: the Adventures of Bayou Billy.

I hope that made up for the poot-butt, small updates from the past few months. There won’t be any updates this gigantic for a while, but this Revenge of 1989 theme still has some surprises in store. No promises, but there might be an additional update later this week, including tune-ups of earlier content and things I didn’t have time to work into this update.

“Hey, why are there Gauntlet characters in a 1989 update?” Besides the fact that there was a good port of Gauntlet 2 for the Commodore Amiga, there’s a new Gauntlet game coming out this month!

BTW: the Boy and his Pup Kickstarter is almost done, so help out if you can!

Edit (September 20, 2014) Besides making a few fixes here and there, the following things have been added:
– Mini-logos: Rolento (Ultra Street Fighter IV), Bebop and Rocksteady (TMNT Classics)
– Custom sprites: Kunio-kun (Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari cover pose)
– GFX Generators – All new content was added to their characters in the generators, fixes were made to a few characters (Andore/Hugo, Thyra the Valkyrie), the Lee Brothers new palettes were improved to include Double Dragon 1 sets (with the gray boots) and the “Mego: WGSH” has three new “head bubble” sets.

Okay, that’s enough for now.

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