19th Anniversary

In the year 2000 AD, the first version of this website was cobbled together with a some brief game reviews, a few tips and some sprites. Now it’s pretty much just a lot of sprites. But how many sprites are really enough? There’s never enough! So here we go with the 19th Anniversary Update!

– Final Fight: Maki (scratch-made FF2 fight stance)
– IREM: Ryno (Ninja Baseball Bat Man)
– Metroid: Ridley (classic)
– NuChallenger: Lisa Santiago (new pose, better style than my 2014 sprite)
– RAK Graphics(new page): Chakan the Forever Man
– Marvel: The Kingpin, Nick Fury (scratch-made “Punisher” Capcom fight stance in three versions)
(added July 20th)


– Denjin Makai: Amazoness, Silf, Valkyrie

Ryno was done for EddieMountainGoat, one of the main people I know who want to see the NBBM team finished! The female acrobats from Denjin Makai were added for SKB, another friend of the site!

By the way: I’ve had a chance to meet Robert A. Kraus, the creator of Chakan, a few times at events in the area this year and I was able to give him a printout of the Chakan sprite (and mini-logo) at the Youngstown Comic-Con a few weeks ago. Not only is he a great indy comic creator, writer and artist, but he’s a toy customizer and just a really cool person to talk to if you find him at a convention. If you’re like me and always wondered what the Chakan comics are like, check out the RAK Graphics site for a look at the Forever Man and more. There’s a mix of horror with sword & sorcery/fantasy and I’m glad I’m finally getting to read it.

Mini-logos: the Kingpin (Marvel gallery), Chakan (RAK Graphics gallery), Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe (Midway/Williams gallery and DC gallery)

GFX Generators: Various improvements and bug fixes were made to the main engine, including allowing you to change text and font on the Picture Modification screen. I added that part a few days ago, but needed to make a few more fixes to it. Please let me know if you run into any problems with this.

the new sprites, mini-logos and more have been added, along with…
– other updated characters: Mega Man, Cammy, Chun-Li, Sakura, Vega, Apocalypse, Iceman, Rogue
– idle/fight stance added: Adon, Balrog, Blanka, Sagat, Blackheart, Captain America, Colossus, Gambit, Magneto, Juggernaut, Omega Red, Sentinel, Silver Samurai, Spider-Man, Shuma-Gorath, Storm (Marvel), Thanos
– fighter-sized screenstyles: Marvel Legends updated with X-Men Sauron-series box.

Here’s possibly the biggest part of the site update: Marvel vs. Capcom 1 endings have been added to the Fighter sprite generator (edit 2019-07-23: or just go to this separate generator page I just added that’s specifically Marvel vs. Capcom)!


Choose up to five characters, pick a background (65 so far), sprite layout (mostly based on actual endings) and frame, add your own text.
edit 2019-07-21: added MSHvsSF and SFA/Z3 looks (still MvC1 layout and character limits) and over a dozen SFA3 backgrounds to MvC 1 ending

ScrollBoss Shop: All prints are on sale for the rest of July! 8×10 and 8×11 prints are $4.00 each!
11 x 17/11 x 14 prints $8.00 each! Sale prices are also in effect for the main Illmosis print page, which has more than game or pixel-related prints.

I may add more to the update through the weekend, so don’t be surprised if this post changes. There’s one more thing I’ve got, but I may not have it ready before the day is over, but I’ll add it here once it’s done. It’s about 95%, but I’m waiting on a gift from a guest contributor you should recognize.

Whether you’ve been here before or this is your first visit, thank you for stopping and I hope you enjoy this mess of a site!

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Show and Provie

Today’s update has brand new sprites of Black video game heroes, including a couple of new favorites, the return of a ScrollBoss original, and lots of new content for her section of the site!

Custom Sprites
– Illmosis Network: Vernacula (one new pose added, 2 earlier updated)
– Combat Core (new separate gallery) Squaz added
– Mortal Kombat: Jax
– Mystic Warriors (new gallery): Brad
– River City Ransom: Provie from River City Ransom: Underground
– Marvel Comics: Misty Knight (improved sprite)

By the way, I’m mad late with this, but huge congrats to MABManZ on Combat Core hitting the Nintendo Switch. Any fan of 3-D arena combat fighters like Power Stone should check it out on Switch or PC. River City Ransom: Underground, of course, remains dope and highly recommended to beat ’em up fiends.

As usual, all new sprites have beed added to the main GFX Generator, where you can make your own pics with a bunch of game and custom-made sprites and graphics.

Info Center – Irritated at the current state of the sections with which she shares a name and also has to help maintain, Vernacula threatened insisted that the section got some updates this time. New definitions have been added (amazon, arcade, console, Neo Geo, parallax scrolling) and many definitions were improved (crowd control, fighting game, mega crash, palette swap, pro-wrestler, sprite edit), including a few getting new main pictures and support for animated main pics. I also made some improvements to the Info Center code itself and I’ll keep working to streamline it more so I can move more site sections to that format.

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2018 Wrap-up and Unfinished Business

One last update in 2018 with a bunch of unused stuff and to set the stage for 2019!

Custom Sprites:
Final Fight: Carlos, Lucia
Marvel Comics: Daredevil, Taskmaster, Mockingbird
DC Comics: the Question

Thanks to actress/martial artist/cosplayer Kimberly Root who came up with the pose during Free Comic Book Day at All American Comics (Warren location)!

Mini-logos: Mockingbird added to Marvel gallery

The Daredevil and Question sprites are in honor of two comic book greats we lost in 2018: Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.

My plan to have more videos didn’t work out the way I’d hoped (though the really short Black Panther video turned out nicely), but I’ve put together a video with some unfinished work, including something I’ve shown teasers for in TWO year-end videos.

That third part of the video is a big reason why there weren’t that many new sprites added to the site this year. I spent a bit of 2018 working on animations you haven’t seen yet and, let’s be real, if I show them on this site before I put them in a video, they’ll be in someone else’s video before mine (with no credit). Not that I’m bitter or anything. Truth is, getting ripped off is part of what inspires me to want to make videos. Let’s see if 2019 is the year that I finally start finishing some videos!

Public plans for 2019:

  • Animation (and showing it this time) and video. I didn’t show everything in that Unfinished Business video, so some long-percolating animation and video projects will show up in 2019.
  • The Revenge of 1989: 30th anniversary edition!
  • Bring back the missing Crossup Beatdown
  • More prints, including the upcoming custom print program where you get to pick what goes into a one-of-a-kind print. Imagine being able to choose who’s in the 2018 Horror Fighter print, including a customized roster.

    More info on that next year!

That’s enough of all for 2018! Thank you for coming through to check out the site and I hope you have a Happy New Year!

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Beat ‘Em Update: Bad Dudes 30th Anniversary and more

The Beat ‘Em Up genre is really proving its naysayers wrong this year. As someone running a fan site in honor of those games for almost 20 years, I thought this would be the perfect time to gloat celebrate this new wave of appreciate of digital side-scrolling brawlers. This site has seen beat ’em up-themed updates over the years, but I think I need to do more to rep the genre, so expect to see more updates like this in the future. Today’s newness is dedicated to the 30th anniversary of Data East’s Bad Dudes, but you’ll find a 90’s brawler in her newest outfit, a character from a new beat ’em up, some superheroes, and some characters from Capcom’s Beat ‘Em Up Bundle!

Custom Sprite gallery updates:
– Bad Dudes: Blade and Striker (fight stance), Dragonninja, Mini, Kunoichi (finally got a good standing sprite!)
– Captain Commando (new separate gallery): Ninja Commando and Brenda & Carol
– Other Games (independent): Nikki Rage from Raging Justice
– Streets of Rage: Blaze Fielding (Streets of Rage 4)
– Marvel Comics: Spider-Man and Namor (both scratch-made and in their Spider-Man: the Video Game fight stances)


Reminder that the new Horror print is now in the shop!

Kickstarter alert: Bushinden: a combat platformer with beautiful pixel art!

Arcade Quartermaster just added three new shrines: Taito’s PU-LI-RU-LA, Data East’s WIZARD FIRE, and Athena’s CASTLE OF DRAGON!

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Up in Pixels

Time for a mini-update! New Kunio-kun/River City Ransom style sprites of Mary Jane Watson, Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong have been added to the custom sprite gallery and the image generator. Shout-out to artist the Dopest Robot for the idea! I also added one of the most important shopkeepers of all time: Fred G. Sanford, owner of the Sanford and Son Salvage empire.

BTW: there was an update a few days ago with some Superman-related sprites.

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For Wakanda

Celebrating the release of the live-action Black Panther movie with an update featuring T’Challa, his friends, and his foes I know, some have been both friend and foe, but this isn’t the time for that argument, I’ve got an update here.

Custom Sprites: the Black Panther, the Dora Milaje, Klaw, and Nightshade were added to the Marvel gallery. T’Challa, the Dora Milaje and Nightshade have multiple sprites, so be sure to check out their mini-galleries!

mini-logos: Klaw and Nightshade
**edit** added Jungle Action-era logo for the Black Panther

The new stuff has been added to the GFX Generators, where you can make your own graphics!

Last, but not least, this is the short (and kinda rushed) version of an idea I’ve had for almost two decades now. One of the sprite sets I wanted to make for M.U.G.E.N. was the Black Panther and I even had an idea for a fancy intro storyboard for it. I never got around to making a whole sprite set, but the intro (and the perfect theme song to use for it) has been stuck in my head ever since. Again, this was rushed (outside issues ate up a lot of time I’d rather spend working on this), but consider this a down payment on the full version I want to make some day.

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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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That’s enough of 2017

I hope you enjoyed this year’s offerings for the site, even if I didn’t get to finish some of the things I teased for it. There were a lot of sprites…

… and not all of them are even in that pic. I’ve added two more in this update.

Storm was in the X-Men print, but not on the site (until now) and the Chainsaw Boss from Crime Fighters was done during the DangerTerrorHorrorThon, but I didn’t really feel like he completely fit the theme for some reason.

edit: As much as I want this year over as soon as possible, I’ve got to add some stuff here.

The Steam Winter Sale is still going strong and I want to recommend some of my personal favorites:
River City Ransom: Underground (a worthy successor to the original), Fire Pro Wrestling World (the legendary series finally hits PCs with more customization than ever), Combat Core (in Early Access, a fun arena brawler for those to still miss Power Stone), Mercenary Kings (easily one of my favorite recent run ‘n gun games), and Owlboy (a pixel art masterpiece 10 years in the making, and it shows).

Most of 2017 was crappy for me, but some of the few good things I was able to experience this happened because of this site. Those pixel art commissions made up for the loss in day job hours and, fortunately, everyone I worked with was incredibly cool and paid me to sprite things I enjoyed making. The biggest event was being asked by Cuddly Rigor Mortis to make a print for the Gallery1988 Mattel show, and the limited edition print sold out! I finished a lot of my own personal wish-list sprites (the Capcom Aliens vs. Predator crew, completing the Mega Man 2 Robot Masters, the Last Dragon, Konami X-Men, Dr. West from Re-Animator, too many others to list). Lots of behind-the-scenes work was done on the site, and I’ve got another chunk almost done that will change and add a lot of sections in 2018. I want to thank you for the feedback and extra encouragement I got throughout the year, because it helped me get through the rough spots. See you in 2018!

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GFX Generator: Marvel Legends and fixes

I still have a small toy-related update planned for later, but here’s a little something I figured I’d add to the site right now:

The recent Marvel Legends boxes have been added to the main GFX Generator. I posted teasers for this in different places months ago, but I just finished a few things that made ’em ready for the site. There are more box set-ups, including some that let you choose a mini-logo for the bottom of the box. I’ll add more if people like how these turn out.

BTW: I got hooked on Marvel Legends again thanks to the Spider-Woman, Captain America (with Capwolf head) and Whirlwind (because of that Avengers beat ’em up). They became ridiculously hard to find around here back in the Toy Biz days, so I gave up on ’em, but ended up getting into Hasbro’s smaller Marvel Universe line. Between their becoming easier to find and using classic designs again, I’m buying more ML’s. I hope they keep putting out that Marvel Retro line, too (I still need that retro Iron Man, since he has the armor from the Data East beat ’em up).

Other things in the update:
1.) Improved the sprite of G.I.JOE’s Grunt
2.) fixed “the Holograms” (of Jem and the Holograms) so it shows up in the GFX Generator’s Toys & Toons section. It’s only Kimber for now, but she may have some company in a few days.

Fellow pixel artist Mr. Gilder has a brand-new site with his work, including those beautiful wooden pixel sprites. Please give that site a visit if you’re a fan of pixel art!

Yes, I saw the Street Fighter V trailer with Cody in it. Believe it or not, I was working on something appropriate when the news hit the internet:

You’ll see what that’s about either right at the end of the year or early 2018.

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Justice and Punishment

The Karnov/Bad Dudes update from a few days ago wasn’t all I had for show and tell for this week. Shamelessly timed with their live-action premieres this week, it’s time for visits from the Justice League and the Punisher!

Custom Sprites:
– DC Comics: Green Arrow, Zatanna, Hawkman, 90’s Superman Red & Blue
– Marvel Comics: the Punisher

All new sprites were also added to the GFX Generator.

Shameless plug reminder: I’ve got a Justice League pixel art print with the old-school line-up in the ScrollBoss Shop


pixelart Justice League – v.1 (10×8 & 11×14 inches)

Heads-up:

Zvitor’s “Justice League United” OpenBoR game hit last week and is available at zvitor.com (of course). I played through it, but don’t expect me to spoil anything for you! Here’s Zvitor’s promo vid for it:

River City Ransom: Underground is on sale for $9.99 on Steam until November 20th, 2017! I’ve been disappointed by a lot of video game comebacks, but I’ll never pass up a chance to praise RCR:U. There’s a character for just about every play style and has the depth of a one-on-one fighting game. If you need a story as an excuse to have a good time, don’t worry, there’s a story in there, too. If that isn’t enough for you, they’re getting ready to make the game moddable. It’s easily one of the best beat ’em ups to hit the streets in years and well worth a buy.

Not all the new things this week are bleak or hostile. This Wednesday was the debut of Tiny Bird Garden, a mobile game by Super Retro Duck that lets you befriend the cutest crew of birds you’ll ever meet. If that sounds fun to you, check out the game’s site and give the game some love!

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