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):

Custom Sprites:
Alpha Denshi: Bujo (Kyros)
Arc System Works: I-No (Guilty Gear)
CastleVania: Salome
Vanillaware: Morgan Lisley (Dragon’s Crown)
movies: Asa & Katia Vajda (Black Sunday), Nancy Downs(the Craft), Elvira

All new sprite were added to the the fighter-scale image generator!

The sale on prints has been extended to November 2nd, 2017 because I forgot to post about it on the Illmosis site and wanted to give people who only go there time to get in on the sale.

Tomorrow’s update is something that was only hinted at in last year’s DTHT preview video and barely seen in this year’s preview. Something mysterious has been happening in the woods for a quite a while. This Monday, it’s finally time to take a closer look.

edit: I messed up and put I-No in the Atlus gallery at first. Whoops. She’s now in the new Arc Systems Works gallery.

This update could be done only at night, for it is filled with Vampires!

Custom Sprites
Castlevania: Dracula (original CV and SotN)
Alpha Denshi (NEW!): Kyros
Movies: Blacula/Mamuwalde and Selene (Underworld)
VanillawareVampire (Dragon’s Crown)

Mini-logos
Movies: Kyros
Movies: Blacula and Underworld

All of these bloodsuckers (and their mini-logos) have been added to the GFX Generator, where you can make your own screens and graphics, including one with that new Dracula’s lair background based on the original Castlevania.

You know, that’s a lot of vampires and tomorrow’s the last day for the DangerTerrorHorrorThon. I really hope someone shows up to make sure these nosferatu MF’ers don’t get out of control…

previous parts of the DTHT: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4

Here’s today’s batch of newness:

Custom Sprites
Movies: El/Eleven from Stranger Things, Trash from the Return of the Living Dead and Frank Stewart from the WNUF Halloween Special. Yes, I know Stranger Things isn’t a movie, but it’s on that page for now.
Castlevania: Richter Belmont (original outfit)
Vanillaware: Sorceress (resprited and MUCH better)
Other Games: Julie (Zombies Ate My Neighbors) in her select screen pose
Marvel: Ghost Rider in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 stance

Mini-logos
– Movies: the Return of the Living Dead, Frank Stewart
– Television: Stranger Things
– Vanillaware (new!): Vanillaware and Dragon’s Crown logo

All of the new sprites and mini-logos were added to the new GFX Generator, which you can use to make pics like the one near the top of this post. I also added a “horror” character list so you can easily find horror characters to build your own nightmares.

The madness continues tomorrow with even more sprites!


“We’ll be right back.”

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.

Happy Halloween! This is the 25th anniversary year for both Altered Beast and Splatterhouse, this year’s monster/horror update will focus more on those two series.

GFX Generator update –
– New characters: Jennifer and Splatterhouse enemies (Master Dead and Pumpkin King) for Namco, Altered Beast enemies for Sega, Ptolemy for Taito, Sorceress (Dragon’s Crown) for Vanillaware (Other Games), Skeletor for Toons & Toys
– Updated characters: Neff (Rhino form)for Sega. All Darkstalker’s Revenge characters have their Select/Vs. portraits from that game.

Game Index – Splatterhouse (arcade) added.

Sprites – Night Slashers finally gets a gallery with a few sprites and animations.

Custom Sprites – Jennifer, Master Dead and Pumpkin King added to Namco page. Neff (Rhino) and Headless Horror added to Sega. Sorceress added to Vanillaware page. Ptolemy added to Taito. Skeletor added to Toys & Cartoons.

Fake Screenshot – Here’s one for the horror movie fans: Mike Haggar’s Halloween.


Of course, other game fan sites are celebrating Halloween, too. Here’s a few other places you should check out:

VGJunk
has a fresh page all about Splatterhouse 2 for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive.
Games-in-Bits has an excellent feature on some creepy urban legends in video games, including the first video game character to kill actual people.
Arcade Quartermaster also added a Splatterhouse shrine along with one for House of the Dead! It’s a creature double feature of foreboding abodes, so check it out!

First of all, I want to thank all the people who spread the word about the River City Ransom Shop generator. That helped turn the tide against the last few crappy weeks I’ve had. I was going to wait a bit longer for another update, but I’m putting another small update together just for you.

Custom Sprites – the Vanillaware gallery page opens with 8-bit Dragon’s Crown sprites of the six heroes and Morgan.

GFX Generators – The RCR Shop Generator turned out to be something people like, so I came back a week early to keep that momentum going.

Fake Screenshots:
– Screenstyles: River City Ransom NES Shop screenstyle: new BG’s: the Double Dragon Dojo, Gilius’ shop from Shining in the Darkness, Haggar’s Gym and Morgan’s shop from Dragon’s Crown.
– Sprite sets: Double Dragon – NES (new with the whole cast), RCR/Kunio-Kun SD NES style edits (separated category with new edits, including Abobo, Wendy Milan (requested by my niece), Gilius Thunderhead), NES – other games (I’m too lazy to list them, so see for yourself), Custom 8-bit sprites (new, with the Dragon’s Crown sprites that don’t fit any other game’s style).

Special note: the “RCR SD NES variable colors” char selection has edited RCR/DNM sprites with the same large palette collection. There are a lot of different combinations of skin and clothing colors. Have fun with it, but beware that the palette selection page might take a while to load. More color combos might be added even after this update post.