The Beat ‘Em Up Showcade is ready! Okay, the video has been up since yesterday, BUT STILL. I originally planned to have Showcase videos for Double Dragon and Bad Dudes last year, but *shrugs* 2020. You know what I mean. Trying to make them in 2021 didn’t work out for better reasons, so I decided to make a Showcade filled with beat ’em ups. Nothing with an outside license (TMNT, Punisher, X-Men) is in the vid, because the straight-up game content felt a little neglected here lately. Let’s watch the video first, then I’ll break down what was added to the site.

Once again, mad thanks to Wizzy for allowing me to use that amazing BGM track for the video. I’ve had it stuck in my head since I picked it for the video, and it makes me feel like kicking doors open and throwing oil drums at people all day. AVPboy’s music does the same for me, and the added pressure of trying to do justice with their music in the videos pushes me to work harder.

Now for the newness that was added to the site itself!

Custom Sprites:
– Crime Fighters: Sledge, Hawk and Boomer from Crime Fighters 2/Vendetta finally get fight stance sprites, Hawk gets a redone taunt to match, and Boomer’s taunt gets a size fix. CF2/Vendetta knife thugs were also added.
– Double Dragon: Linda’s earlier two sprites completely redrawn, an extra variation of the taunt was added, and are available in arcade, NES, and DDII designs. The Billy and Jimmy Lee “JPN arcade flyer” poses were updated to fit the newer style Lee Bros. sprites I started adding months ago.
– Final Fight: Maki (FF2 fight stance, select pose edited to match newer sprite), Mike Haggar – Saturday Night Slam Masters gear (also added to the Slam Masters gallery)
– Growl: Jetgun
– Kung-Fu Master: All Five “Sons of the Devil” (a.k.a. the Bosses) get new sprites, and Silvia gets a sprite, too.
– Kunio-kun: Kunio (Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun flyer pose)
– Renegade (new separate gallery): the Renegade/Mr. K, Sabu
– Rushing Beat: Wendy Milan (taunt)
– Streets of Rage: Barbon and Jet(SoR/BK 2) added, Skate Hunter updated (made shorter than the 2020 sprites)

All new sprites are now in the image generators, where you can make your own sprite scenes, fake screenshots, etc.

Filed under: ScrollBoss Updates, Site News, Updates by PrimeOp
Tags: Double Dragon, Final Fight, Growl, Kung-Fu Master, Kunio-Kun, Renegade, Rushing Beat, Sprite Showcade, Streets of Rage, Vendetta
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Sometimes it feels like the forces of evil are growing in number and gathering strength. This update… probably won’t help to fight that feeling.

Golden Axe: New Heninger and improved Longmoan
Streets of Rage: New Donovan (SoR2) and improved Galsia (SoR1 and 2)
Strider: completely redone Ton Pooh, Sai Pooh and Pei Pooh sprites.
Kung-Fu Master: Gripper and Tom Tom

All of the new sprites have been added to the main GFX Generator, the image generator I used to make the screenshot at the top of this post!

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Things will be be a bit slow while I continue to work on commissions and new line art for new prints. Prints are still on sale (my Illmosis site has more than game-related prints), but the sale will end next week. If you see something you like and have the money, pick it up while you can!

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The All-AmeriCon convention hits Youngstown, Ohio’s Covelli Centre on July 8th and 9th! The special guest list is ridiculously solid (I based that Iron Man Hall of Armor background on the version that Bob Layton drew) and I’ll be in Artist’s Alley there! Come through, as I’ll be selling prints (including some small pixel art prints), sketching line art for sprites and I’ll have previews of pixel art that isn’t on the site yet

You can get more info at the Facebook page and these links here and here for the event!

edit: there’s an ad on YouTube now!

Filed under: ScrollBoss Updates, Site News, Updates by PrimeOp
Tags: All AmeriCon, Capcom, Golden Axe, IREM, Kung-Fu Master, Sega, Streets of Rage, Strider
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You’re just in time to witness pure, unadulterated evil in pixel form!

Custom Sprites:
– Golden Axe: Longmoan
– IREM: Giant (Kung-Fu Master)
– Rare: the Dark Queen
– Streets of Rage: Mr. X (all-new, sprited from scratch) and Nora

All these sprites were added to the GFX Generators (the old GroupShot and Vs generators).

You know, I’m still waiting for that Sonic sprite from Tuesday’s update to show up. Maybe he’ll be in tomorrow’s wrap-up post…

Filed under: ScrollBoss Updates by PrimeOp
Tags: Battletoads, Golden Axe, Kung-Fu Master, Streets of Rage
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The site will be going on a short pause for a while, but this update is here to give you a taste of what you’ll be seeing this year.

More games and game series will get their own custom sprite gallery pages, like Streets of Rage did in this update. Axel, Blaze, Max and Electra have new sprites to kick off that new gallery page. Meanwhile, Kung-Fu Master’s Thomas’ new scratch-made sprite and Jose from Ninja Baseball Bat Man hit the IREM gallery. I doubt that I’ll be able to have ALL the old sprite edits replaced with scratch-made work this year, but I plan to come close to it. These things, along with two IREM-related minilogos, have been added to the GFX Generators.

I have a lot of things to work on during the site pause. I have a commission assignment I’ve been working on, a new version of the GFX Generators (see this Tumblr post for details), and more things like this:

I plan to finally knock the dust off of the ScrollBoss YouTube channel this year and part of my January has been spent working on material.

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Zweifuss, sprite ripper and creator of that massive Street Fighter III: Third Strike site, needs help renewing the site for another year. Please donate to the cause if you can, especially if the site has helped you. Any SFIII stuff you see on my site, including sprite edits that started as SFIII sprites, come from his rips

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Shout out to Jessica for the feedback https://quitday.org/ and http://www.ffsonline.org for the link help!
(edit: links deactivated, don’t seem to be what they used to be anymore)

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I’ll still be active on Tumblr and Twitter, posting stuff like this:

To quote Guru, “Peace out. We’ll be back. Stay tuned.”

edit: I was going to save this clip until later, but, as ol’ Jack Burton says, what the hell…

Filed under: ScrollBoss Updates, Site News, Updates by PrimeOp
Tags: Kung-Fu Master, Ninja Baseball Bat Man, site business, Streets of Rage
2 Comments »

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!

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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.

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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.)

Filed under: ScrollBoss Updates, Site News, Updates by PrimeOp
Tags: Batman, bionic commando, Castlevania, Contra, Double Dragon, Kid Icarus, Kirby, Kung-Fu Master, Mega Man, Memoirs of a Virtual Caveman, Metal Gear, Metroid, Ninja Gaiden, Nintendo Entertainment System, River City Ransom, Shatterhand, Strider, Super Mario Bros., Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Guardian Legend, the Legend of Zelda, Wrecking Crew
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This update is 100% old-school with games from 1985 and earlier. This is the second such update after the one in February with Pooka, Ms. Pac-Man and others. Oddly enough, that was before I even knew that Wreck-It Ralph even existed. Thanks to delays due to commissions and other projects, this update was pushed back to the month that the movie hit theaters. In other words, this is a really good time to celebrate the title and characters that built the foundation of video games. Besides, this site really needs more content from this era.

GFX Generators
New characters: Berzerk (Evil Otto and Robot), Centipede, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior, Dig Dug, Flashgal, Frogger (and Lady Frog), Fygar, H.E.R.O., Kangaroo, Luigi, Mr. Do, Pitfall Harry, Q-Bert, the Wizard of Wor.
Updated: Ghost Monsters (Gloved sprite, new palettes), Mario (new sprites & palettes), Pac-Man (two new sprites), Pooka (new palettes), Space Invaders (new palettes)
New backgrounds: A few new backgrounds were added to Create-a-scene, box tribute and Avatar 100×100 options, but the most important is the scratch-made arcade scene.
Updated screenstyles: Silver Atari 2600 box added to Box Tributes in the GroupShot. Ninja Warriors (arcade) 16×16 font added to the “Create-a-Scene 384×224 + text” in the GroupShot generator mainly because it looks like a big version of the typical font for old games.

Custom Sprites – The following galleries were updated:
Activision: H.E.R.O. and new Pitfall Harry sprite
Atari: Centipede
Data East: BurgerTime’s Peter Pepper
IREM: Mr. X from Kung-Fu Master
Konami: new sprites of Frogger and Lady Frog
Namco: New sprites added of Dig Dug, Fygar, Pac-Man and the Ghost Monsters
Nintendo: Donkey Kong, Donkey Junior, Mario and Luigi sprites
Sega: Pengo and Flashgal
Taito: Space Invader (cabinet art version)
Universal: Mr. Do

Mini-logos: Berzerk, Burgertime, Centipede, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior, Frogger, H.E.R.O., Kangaroo, Lady Bug, Mr. Do!, Pengo (in-game), Pitfall, Puckman, Stern, Sunsoft, Q*Bert, Universal, Wizard of Wor.

This really brought back some good, old memories, like the days when I’d go to Lawson’s to buy comics and candy after playing the Star Castle or Mario Bros. coin-op machine. There will be at least one more update like this (though not as big) like this in 2013 to help fix the balance of 70’s-early 80’s material on this site, but I plan to mix in more classic material like this into future updates.

December will have one more themed update to pay tribute to some 1987 games celebrating their 25th anniversaries. There will probably be a small update or two with random stuff in them, too. Be sure to stop by the Illmosis site to see new art projects and pixel art gallery pages with those “work progress” animations that show some of the things I did to make the sprites. Enjoy the update and the rest of your extended play weekend!

Filed under: ScrollBoss Updates, Site News, Updates by PrimeOp
Tags: Berzerk, BurgerTime, Centipede, Dig Dug, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior, Flashgal, Frogger, gfx generators, H.E.R.O., Kangaroo, Kung-Fu Master, Lady Bug, Mario Bros., Mr. Do, Pac-Man, Pitfall!, Q-Bert, Space Invaders, Super Mario Bros., Wizard of Wor
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