It’s time again.
The DangerTerrorHorrorThon lives again, but not for long if these participants have anything to say about it!
Custom Sprites
– Castlevania: Death (Castlevania NES and Symphony of the Night designs)
– Ghosts ‘n Goblins: Skeleton Murderer
– Gauntlet: Death
– Kid Icarus: Grim Reaper
– Night Slashers: Boss 6
All sprites have been added to the GFX Generators
The HorrorThon continues tomorrow when things get wild!
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:)
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!
Halloween is here and there’s a bonus surprise in the Halloween DangerTerrorHorrorThon wrap-up! Let’s see all the new things that appeared this week…
Custom Sprites:
– Capcom: Zombie (Ghosts ‘n Goblins, Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts versions)
– Castlevania: Simon Belmont (new CV1 NES stance from last year’s Trevor sprite & improved taunt), Grant Danasty, Carmilla (Rondo of Blood)
– – Konami: Silent Hill Nurse
– Namco: Biggy Man (Splatterhouse)
– Nintendo: Medusa (classic, big)
– Wayforward: Rottytops
– Games (other): Julie and Zeke (Zombies Ate My Neighbors), the Pumpkin boss from Monster Party.
– DC Comics: Solomon Grundy (uploaded on a Monday)
– Movies: Tarman (Return of the Living Dead), Chucky, Michael Myers/The Shape, Ghostface (Scream), Leatherface
– NES-like 32×16 and 32×3: Altered Beast werewolf
Mini-logos:
– Capcom: Ghosts ‘n Goblins
– Konami: Silent Hill (movie)
– LucasArts: Zombies Ate My Neighbors
– Movies: Chucky, Leatherface, Scream, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (thanks to Christopher B. for the Atari 2600 idea)
All fighting size custom sprites and mini-logos have been added to the GFX Generators so you can use them to make your own spooky fake screenshots and pixel graphics!
Don’t forget that I still have that Horror legend vs. screen print in the ScrollBoss Shop for $6 + S&H!
I was a bit cryptic in Friday’s update on whether the theme was over. Well, I had one more sprite to make. Ladies, gentlemen and screwheads, meet Ash Williams.
Be sure to check out VGJunk’s Halloween Spooktacular reviews, including today’s review of Capcom’s Vampire Savior! You’ll find a lot of far more obscure games lurking in his Halloween tag, so roll through it to find new picks for your own Halloween game list.
JustinGameDesign made a fun group of 8-bit sprites for the spooky season, with characters from a wide array of sources. He even put them into a nice deviantART gallery so you can see them all in the same spot!
NOW I’m done with the Halloween updates. Happy Halloween!
The DangerTerrorHorrorThon ends with something created by devious minds long ago to end as many lives as possible. That’s right, I’m talking about Boss Rush Mode. Let the slaughter begin!
Custom Sprites:
– Castlevania: Carmilla (Rondo of Blood)
– Namco: Biggy Man
– Nintendo: Medusa (classic, big)
– Sega: Zamza (Streets of Rage/Bare Knuckle)
– Games (other): the Pumpkin boss from Monster Party. Please don’t pick on him.
Mini-logos:
– Konami: Silent Hill (movie)
– LucasArts: Zombies Ate My Neighbors
– Movies: Chucky, Leatherface, Scream, Texas Chainsaw Massacre
As usual, all new items have been added to the GFX Generators so you can use them to make your own fake screenshots. Also, Leatherface was updated with an Atari 2600 palette, thanks to a suggestion from Christopher B. Thanks!
Well, that’s all for this Halloween’s DangerTerrorHorrorThon!
… or is it?
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.)
This year is the 25th Anniversary of many great games and this update pays tribute to a few of them. I planned to have separate updates for them, but that big commission a few months ago forced me to condense them into this chunky tribute. To make it worse, a cold I caught right before Christmas robbed a few more days of work out of this update as well. Still, between this and the Mega Man NES-style screenshot generator I posted a while ago, I hope this is a worth tribute to 1987.
Graphic Generators – For those who missed the debut of the new Fake Screenshot generator and its NES-style pixel flavor,
Fake Screenshot: Rush, Eddie, a new Mega Man edit based on an MvsC win pose were added I also added more edits since the December 17th update.
Vs. Maker & GroupShot: Dr. Light, Dr. Wily, Eggplant Wizard, Pit, Wonder Momo added. Abobo (new sprite), Joe Musashi (Shinobi 1 sprite added), Marian (new Double Dragon 1 sprite), Mega Man (new palette and re-sized NES sprites), Radd Spencer (new sprite) updated.
Custom Sprites – this update’s additions are:
Capcom: Dr. Light, Dr. Wily, Bionic Commando (arcade version)
Namco: Wonder Momo
Nintendo: Pit, Eggplant Wizard and Monoeye from Kid Icarus
Sega: Joe Musashi (original Shinobi uniform)
Technos: new Marian sprite, new scratch-made Abobo sprite (to replace that crappy Hulk edit), slightly-modded/improved Lopar and Williams.
Sprites – Kid Icarus (sprites and animations from the original NES/Famicom game added).
Fake Screenshots – “Rokman (title screen)” was added. No, that’s not a typo.
Mini-logos – Dr. Wily, Dr. Light and Dr. Right added to Capcom section.
I’d like to thank everyone who has been enjoying the site this year, especially the those who have given feedback. Most of this year has been okay for me, but I’d randomly get some really good feedback right when I was feeling like a wet food stamp. You made me feel better and that caused me to push myself to make updates bigger (especially that Halloween update). I’d also like to thank those of you have been digging the Tumblr account I’ve used to show off weird things that didn’t quite have a spot on the site just yet or game-related thoughts that were rolling around in my head at the moment.
What’s up for 2013: I’m not going to talk a bunch of smack only for it to not happen, so I’m going to stay quiet on it. All I’m going to say is that I’ve been working on a bunch of things I’ve wanted to show you for YEARS, huge chunks of it were finished in 2012 and, time willing, 2013 might be when some of it is done enough to show. Besides the fact that people will pretty much swipe anything that you post on the ‘net if you preview it before the main project is done, it really is better if you see some of this stuff in action first. For now, continue to have Happy Holidays, including a Happy New Year!