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)

Mini-logos: Peacemaker added to DC Comics.
portraits:
Street Fighter Alpha 3 Vs.: Blaze Fielding (Streets of Rage)

All these new pixel-things were also added to the GFX Generators where you can make fake screenshots, scenes, and other graphics.


Arcade Quartermaster also updated today with new shrines: Street Smart (SNK) and Aquajack (Taito)!

The fear is here once again! Here’s the first update:


Custom Sprites:
Monster Party: new separate gallery with a redrawn Mark
Ghosts ‘n Goblins series: PrinPrin and Unicorn
Horror: Rosemary (Demoni/Demons)
Golden Axe: improved the 2019 Skeleton sprites and gave them their own gallery. You’ll see why later.


The Dire and Bette channel recently had a live roundtable about the Ghosts ‘N Goblins series hosted by Dire and featuring Sotenga, ArcnarenthJim, and Dain


Next time, on the horror thon…

The coding work to get this site (along with Illmosis and Beans vs. Cornbread) for the Dreamhost server update is FINALLY done, but I promised to have an update to the a ToyBoss section before that happens and here’s that update!

new:
– Jada Toys’ excellent Street Fighter Ryu and Fei Long figures.
– Golden Axe: added shot of Storm Collectibles Tyris and Gilius.
– X-Men (LJN) – playable heroes.
– Spider-Man and the X-Men get their own revenge of Arcade.
– an Articulated Icons/Fwoosh parts-swapped custom made to look like Ryu Hayabusa. They have pre-orders up for a reissued (and from what I’ve read, slightly retooled) Crimson Fury, the dark red ninja.
– The Marvel Super Heroes (Capcom) heroes team, with a work-in-progress custom figure of Psylocke!

updated group shots:
– Captain America and the Avengers (Data East) – heroes – added new Sky-cycle Hawkeye and a recently re-acquired Neo-classic Iron Man (retro card version).
– X-Men (Konami) – villains – includes a customized VHS Mystique and more added characters.

BTW: Articulated Icons/Fwoosh is still having a sale on “Sakit (Martial Artist)” and the “Arms/Hands/Wraps Pack (Red)” pack ($3.99!) and also put up have pre-orders up for a reissued Crimson Fury, the dark red ninja.


The big coding update will hit this site within the first few days of September, so if you really need something from the site I suggest you get it before then, because I really won’t know if everything works until it’s uploaded and tested. The site may be temporarily closed until it’s all complete, but it shouldn’t take longer than a day.

Oddly enough, I made a new header for the Toy section, but the coding is connected with the updated version of the site, so you won’t see it until then.

Today this site celebrates 22 years of platformer appreciation, beat ’em up boosting, pixel art positivity and more!

Custom Sprites:
Adventure Island: Master Higgins
Battle Circuit: Pink Ostrich
Mega Man: Fire Man
Karate Champ: Judge
Street Fighter: Cammy – Super Street Fighter II fight stance
Marvel: six of the suit-wearing thugs from Capcom’s Punisher arcade game
Illmosis Network: Upski Daisy (Beans vs. Cornbread)
Kirby: King Dedede

Sprites:
the Punisher: added Jigsaw and Hawke. Just checked the file properties and it looks like I had some of those sprites ready in 2009 and forgot to add them to the gallery.

As usual, all these new things have been added to the main Image Generator, where you can make (and right-click save) your own images like the one at the top of this news post!

ToyBoss: photos of the amazing Storm Collectables Tyris Flare have been added. I’m still in a bit of shock that official Golden Axe figures are even being made, but even more shocked that I have Tyris. If the Gilius Thunderhead is still available when I get my money back up again, I’ll get him, too. I bought mine at BigBadToyStore, but Entertainment Earth has them, too.

BTW: just in case you haven’t heard, Jada Toys recently teased new lines of Street Fighter and classic Mega Man action figures, and samples will be shown at San Diego Comic Con. No news about the scale of these figures yet, but I’m hoping they’ll be in 1:12 scale to fit in with Marvel Legends and G.I.JOE Classified. Funko made a nice Mega Man and fully on-model and poseable Dr. Wily a few years ago and I hope the new figures fit that same scale, too.

This Revenge of 1989 update, celebrating the year that many of this site’s favorite games were released, may not have a lot of new sprites, but it definitely has big sprites to make up for it!


Custom Sprites
Final Fight: Completely redone sprites of Mike Haggar, fight stance and hands on hips, in a hopefully better style added.
Golden Axe: Red Dragon, Blue Dragon (and Tyris Flare riding both) and Chicken Leg (edited from the 2018 Chicken Stinger sprite) added, along with adding sub-galleries for many characters

All new custom sprites were added to the GFX Image Generators!

Also updated

Sprites: Golden Axe gallery (GA1 arcade beasts, heroes on beasts and items)

Getting the new computer finished a few months ago made me want to experiment with different ways of making sprites, and the main new sprites were originally drawn in Clip Studio (instead of the pencil-paper-sometimes ink scans I usually make) before being shrunken to sprite size. Had to make adjustments to the ride/bizarrian Dragon after shrinking, but it’s pretty close:

I also wanted a better, unified set of sprites for Haggar for September’s Beat ‘Em Up Showcase (preview here), so I used Clip Studio trace my old sprites of him at 1000%.


I made changes after I shrank and made pixel art of the first two poses, along with drawing the head at pixel size, so I’ll bring those new sprites into the CS file, adjust the lines to fit the sprites for reference for future sprites, like Haggar’s arms up pose from the old Final Fight artwork.

I’ve done other experiments, but I’ll post about them later.

1989 wasn’t just a good year, it’s a year that changed entertainment in a lot of permanent ways. Thing is, you pretty much had to be there, or maybe been alive long enough to get a at least a minor lay of the land before it to see how things changed after. The arrival of multiple Genre-changing beat ’em ups, the 16-bit invasion of America with the Genesis and Turbografx-16, handheld gaming changing forever (thanks to Nintendo’s Game Boy and the Atari Lynx), mutant mania hitting video games (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and X-Men), are just part of why 1989 is so amazing, and that’s why this site celebrates that year on August 9th. Without further yapping, here’s the new content:

Custom Sprites
Crime City: Mayor (tied up)
Crime Fighters: Final Boss/Mr. Lee
Final Fight: Cody (new FF JPN flyer pose), Poison (Street Fighter V stance with FF, SFV, and FF marquee outfits), Andore (stand), Jessica (kidnapped, red dress)
Golden Axe: Skeleton (redone), Ax Battler, Tyris Flare and Gilius Thunderhead (MD cover art poses)
Shinobi: Hayate Musashi (Shadow Dancer arcade)
Wonder Boy: Leo and Purapril (Wonder Boy III:Monster Lair)
TMNT: April (kidnapped, cinema pose)
Literature: Chu Liuxiang (Master Chu and Drukard Hu/the Chu Liuxiang series by Gu Long)
DC Comics: Batman (1989 NES title screen/movie still pose),Robin/Tim Drake (debuted in 1989)
edit: couldn’t help it, decided to add:
Kunio-Kun/River City Ransom: Downtown Nekketusu Monogatari/River City Ransom NES style sprite of Freddy Krueger from Nightmare on Elm Street 5 (1989) added.

GFX Generator: all the new content that fits in the generator have been added, and the main generator gets a remake of the Electoric store in the second stage of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.The Marvel vs. Capcom 1 Ending option in the main generator and standalone MvC 1 generator now has more backgrounds based on and/or from Final Fight, Pac-Man games (Pac-Land debuted for the PC Engine in 1989), DC Comics (including the Batman 1989 stage remake I did years ago), Friday the 13th (LJN for NES remake), and all the arcades.

edit (Aug. 10, 2019): added Sunsoft blue top NES box to “Boxes, Flyer & Posters 160×192” in the main generator. “Hey, that background in the Crime Fighters box isn’t in the generator!” That’s one of the many unfinished things that didn’t make it in this time, and is also why there’s three tied-up sprites in the update.

I hinted at not having something ready for the 19th Anniversary update and it was this: the complete version of ScrollBoss Sprite Showcade’s episode 000!

This episode is basically a test of the main template of the show’s format of three separate showcases, and each showcase has:
1.) a gallery mode that shows single or groups of sprites by character.character type (usually with a “character select” screen theme)
2.) sprites in scenes (done in Anime Studio Pro 10), usually with multiple characters grouped together.
3.) work progress .GIFs that show many of the steps I saved while making some of the sprites.

The showcases in this episode are Golden Axe (stars in the original ScrollBoss banner pic), Final Fight (series I’ve made the most fan sprites for), and Castlevania (already had lots of sprites, backgrounds and I wanted a platformer with a different theme).

The biggest thing for me was getting permission to use a remix from the CPS2 sound maestro, WizzyWhipitWonderful, to use for the Castlevania showcase. I don’t know how he does it (my remixes for the Golden Axe and Final Fight section prove that), but he can make BGM tracks that sound like Capcom never stopped producing CPS2 Vs. fighters while managing to tap into character and setting vibes to create themes perfectly fitting any character or theme he’s paying tribute. That’s not even his only musical style, either. His Poison Mind remix is so dope that I added and extended clips just so it’d have more of the hype part of the song!

I’ve got ideas for the future of Showcade, and I’m checking feedback on episode 000 to figure out what to change for future eps. One hint I’ll give you is that if you look at what’s missing from the game select screen, you may be able to figure out one of the other ideas I have. Feel free to let me know what you think of the episode or format and which games you’d like to see in future Showcades!

I put up a poll on Twitter without saying what it was for and it was won by Shinobi, so here’s a mostly Shinobi update!

All-new sprites of Joe Musashi (O.G. Shinobi gear), Masked Ninja/Nakohara, Mongo and Crawler were added to the Shinobi gallery and new Zubaroka amazon sprites were added to the Golden Axe galleries. As usual, all these things were added to the GFX Image Generators where you can make screenshots like the one at the top of this post!

Well, that’s all for thi – – you know what? No. That’s not all. That’s not all at all.

I’ve had this idea in my head for a long time and it’s time to give you a taste. People, here’s the first segment of… episode 000

Later this summer, you will see the full Episode 000 of the ScrollBoss Sprite Showcade.

I’ll be at the Youngstown Comic-Con on July 7th (sorry, Sunday only this year). Come through both days, because they always have a great artist’s alley and lots of game-related stuff there!

I’ve been working on a secret project (both pixel and drawn art) for someone else lately, but I couldn’t let this day pass without the Revenge of 1989 rising from its grave once again, even for a small update. The sprite count may not large, but most of the sprites are big enough to make up for it!

Custom Sprites:
Double Dragon: Mysterious Warrior (DD2 NES)
Golden Axe: a new Death Adder sprite
Strider: a new Solo sprite

All new sprites have been added to the GFX Generators, where you can make your own graphics and fake screenshots like the one above!


I also made progress on the next Horror vs. Horror print. The new sprite of Jason Voorhees was shown a while back and you’ve seen previews of the select roster (everyone from the original print returns!), but now it’s time to show you a bigger hint of what’s coming your way. Let’s roll that hastily made promo vid.


Looks like we’ve ended up with more questions (and question marks) than answers. Stay tuned for more horror as it develops.

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!