We’re still in that month of foolery, April, so this update adds more pizzazz to the site’s image generators!

Custom Sprites:
River City Ransom/Kunio-kun 8-bit: Kyoko and Misako (Shin Nekketsu Kōha: Kunio-tachi no Banka uniforms), Spider-Man
custom Street Fighter Alpha/Zero 3 portraits: Terry Bogard (the portrait I teased in late March’s update) and a scratch-made Ryu Hayabusa (replacing the old edit).
Illmosis – ScrollBoss: Two sprites added to what I’m calling the “archetype” series for now. First is a brand-new “Bunny Costume” Lady and the second is an Undead Zombie. Zombie (o’, Zombie) was originally made in 2020 for some merch, but I made a few adjustments and added him to the site and the generator. These two are also helping to test out a new feature I’ve just added to the…

GFX Generator: A new River City Ransom/Kunio-kun ‘scenes’ screenstyle has been added to the Fake Screenshot and River City Ransom generator pages. So, yeah, finally some beat ’em up in-game shots (but no combat… yet). I’m starting it with 16 background/set-up shots from around the map and two “crossover” backgrounds that I’ll let you find for yourself. I also added standing sprites of the lower enemies from River City Ransom, along with Misako, Kyoko, Misuzu, Kumiko & Miyuki from River City Super Sports Challenge for the PC.

Today’s update adds a new feature that I’m currently calling “Extra Palettes” that are sub-palettes beneath the main palettes that only change a part of the palette. So in these special characters, you pick the main palette and then use pull down text menus below those palettes to change hair, skin color, outfit part colors, and so-on. It’s almost like I’ve added a palette editor to the generator.

Two Illmosis section characters in the main generator have these palettes so far: the new Bunnylady and the Undead Zombie (found in the “Monsters (Illmosis)” character). In fact, the Bunnyladies were almost in the March update, but I ran into the problem I had with the River City Ransom/Kunio-kun Variable Color character (more info about this in the full post). The Fake Screenshot (8-bit) section’s River City Ransom Variable Color and the RCR/Nekketsu drone enemies have this ability, too. If this works, I’ll be adding more options to these characters along with adding these functions some other sprite sets where it’d make sense. I feel like there’s a specific 8-bit platforming character who could benefit from extra color options.

BTW: I’m going to be part of this Saturday’s Retro Roundtable on the Dire and Bette YouTube channel! I’m not sure if I can say what the theme is yet, but it’s a game subject that I like A LOT.

edit: here’s the roundtable stream!

(more…)

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:)


– RCR NES edits/customs, game chars: Pit (Kid Icarus classic)
– RCR/Kunio-Kun NES customs, media: Batman

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!

The ScrollBoss site is 17 years old today, but the celebration will go on for more than a day! For now, let’s deal with today’s newness:

Custom sprites
Golden Axe: the Bad Brothers
Streets of Rage: Onihime & Yasha SoR/BK3 (stand and crouch sprites), Abadede SoR/BK2
Crime Fighters series: Faust
Nintendo: Bowser
Kunio-Kun: Yamada
River City Ransom: Slick (Yamada’s counterpart)
Sega: Dr. Eggman/Dr. Robotnik (classic game style)

All that newness is also in the main GFX Generator, where you can make screenshots just like the one at the top of this post!

It’s been a while since I uploaded a video, so I put another short clip compilation, but finally with the real ScrollBoss theme (for better or for worse, that’s up to you).

Be ready for another update tomorrow!

Beating River City Ransom: Underground this week kept me in the mood for spriting more characters in the original NES game’s style. I’m still trying to find a balance between sticking in that original game’s look and trying more unique things like RCR:U did. Today’s batch features do-overs for sprites I’d edited from RCR sprites years ago (the Lee Bros. and some Street Fighter stalwarts), other teenage characters (including five with attitude), a few clownish characters (including my own character, Nutroll) and one man who will pity these fools.

also, one character that I thought I’d done for the Megaman NES style finally gets his turn:

You can now have such a thing as Thunderball Fists!

They’ve been added to the River City Ransom custom sprite page and, of course, the Fake Screenshot generator.

The Mega Man NES Boss Intro and Boss select screens now work in the new GFX Generator engine, and the Fakeshot (8-bit) generator has been update to use the v.2 versions, including the Shops from the separate River City Ransom Shop generator that was upgraded last week. New Mega Man-stype edits: Hawkwoman/Hawkgirl (DC Comics), Dr. Octopus (Marvel Comics), Doctor Emmitt Brown (Back to the Future) and Doctor Detroit.


The River City Ransom Shop generator was updated, too! Two new shops have been added: Good Burger, Daddy Green’s Pizza. New sprites include Ed (Good Burger), Lester Oakes (dissatisfied Good Burger customer), Daddy Green (the Last Dragon), the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (they heard a new pizza place was available!), Paul (River City Ransom: Underground), Scott Pilgrim and Ramona Flowers, Batsu and Hinata (Rival Schools).

Those new sprites have been added to the Mega Man NES and River City Ransom custom sprite galleries

That’s not all! X-Men: CotA portraits of Jubilee and Gambit (made from Jim Lee art) have been added to the X-Men:CotA and main image generators!

Also: the part of the GFX Generator where you enter text now has a border for each entry and description so you’ll know exactly what’s what. Well, in the generator, not life itself.

Also: I’ve got FOUR commission slots open! Check out the Illmosis.net commissions page for all the details on how you can get me to make a sprite or two for you!

Two new single image generators have been added: X-Men:Children of the Atom vs. screen and River City Ransom shops (newly added to the GFX Generator engine). Of course, there’s some new pixel art for you to have fun with in both of them!


Custom Sprites:
Marvel Comics: Phoenix/Jean Grey (MvC3 stance) and Mystique (Konami arcade stance)
River City Ransom: NES-style sprites of Provie, Bruno, Glen and Lilly (shop keeper) from River City Ransom: Underground, Ash Williams in S-Mart gear, the Merchant (RE4), and an improved Abobo (the old version was in the generator, but I didn’t like it enough to add it to the gallery).

Along with those sprites and the new generators, new CotA portraits made from art by Jim Lee and Alan Davis for Mystique, Jean Grey (redone), Phoenix, Rogue, Nightcrawler, Forge, Captain America and the Black Panther. The standalone CotA generator only has characters with all the necessary portraits and name graphics for the screen, but you can still use the one in the main image generator, even if the characters don’t have all the CotA goodies (though a few secretly have name graphics).

River City Ransom: Underground is finally on Steam! In honor of the game’s release, here’s a few new things for the site:

Kunio-kun: new separate gallery
River City Ransom: new separate gallery with new sprites of old-school Alex and Ryan and an improved sprite for RCR:U’s Bruno
Both new galleries also include the River City Ransom NES-style edits done for the River City Ransom shop maker in the old Fake Screen generator.

Mini-logos: new Conatus Creative section added with River City Ransom: Underground logo.

All of that newness has been added to the fight-scale GFX Generator.


One project taking up my time now is something I don’t think I can mention yet, but I’ll plug the bejeebus out of it once I can. It’s for something happening a few months from now, but deadlines like that can sneak up on you if you’re not careful, said the guy who can’t believe it’s almost March already.

Another thing I started working on is a new gallery system for the site. It’s so early that it’s not even in the galleries yet, but it’s already the framework for the new routine choosing the pics these headers. I also redid nearly all of the “corner box” images for them, and you’ll definitely spot some new ones shuffled into the mix.

Today is the eighth month’s ninth day, which mean this site celebrates 1989, the greatest year in video game history*!


This site even has a sub-section dedicated to the year for reasons you’ll see mentioned there. Then again, you’ll probably figure out why once you see all the stuff I’m celebrating (and there’s still a lot left out). Everything in this update is linked to that magical year when many of this site’s favorite games, series, consoles and more debuted. Unfortunately, there’s so much stuff that I couldn’t even fit it into 3 screenshots, so, as a first, the sprite preview is a video!

Custom Sprites:
Capcom: Quick Man added to Mega Man section.
– – Final Fight: two new scratch-made Cody sprites!
– – Strider (new separate section): (a new Tom Pooh sprite (and redone colors on the hand-up pose) in the Strider section

Nintendo: Tatanga (Super Mario Land)

Sega: scratch-made E-SWAT’s police ICE armor and enemy unknown/File 96 enemies
– – Golden Axe: resprited Tyris Flare fight stance
– – Shinobi: new scratch-made Pink Dragon and redone Kasumi sprites

Sunsoft: Tuff Turf’s heroes and lady added.

Technos: new standing sprites for Kunio, Riki, Hasebe, Alex and Ryan

Games(other): Prince of Persia (original) added.

DC Comics: the Joker in the 1989 NES Batman stance
Music: new gallery starts with new Chuck D (Public Enemy) sprite and older sprites and sprite edits.
Toys ‘n Toons: Marge, Lisa and Bart Simpson. The Simpsons cartoon started in 1989!
G.I. JOE: Snake-Eyes in his version 3 (1989) outfit
TMNT: Krang (in his standing pose from the 1989 beat ’em up)

Mini-Logos: Prince of Persia (Jordan Mechner), Public Enemy (Music) and the Simpsons (Television) added.

The new custom sprites and mini-logos have been added to the GFX Generators.

My apologies to any fans of 1989 games who were left out, like Mendel Palace/Quinty, Double Dragon 2(NES), Astyanax, Crime City, and dozens more. There are too many good 1989 games to celebrate and many of my older sprites needed to be redone. Let me know about your favorite 1989 games and characters in the comment section!

* – 1989 being the greatest game year is hyperbole mostly for fun, but also designed to drive disagreement-induced hits, but at least this website admits 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.)

Most of you probably know by now that Mighty No. 9, Shantae: Half-Genie Hero, and River City Ransom: Underground have all been funded (and RCR:U will still be open until Wednesday, October 9th). Those who missed out will have a bit of time to help out with stretch goals and/or pre-order the game on the River City Ransom.com Paypal page and Shantae: HGH page. It’s very satisfying to see these games funded by the fans who really want to see more games like this.


This is the last small update to celebrate those three games and get a few things ready for Halloween. I’m still working on a commission project, so I couldn’t do as much as I wanted as that project has to come first. There won’t be any updates until close to Halloween.

Custom Sprites
Technos: Slick (original RCR look) and Bannon (from RCR:U) in the same NES-like fighting scale sprites last week’s sprites were in.

Graphic Generators
– Fake Screenshots: “NES/GB – other games” gets Arthur (G’nG, armored and unarmored) and Splatterhouse: WG Rick gets new palettes, “RCR/Kunio-Kun SD NES style edits” gets Rick from Splatterhouse
– Vs. Maker and GroupShot: RCR:U and RCR – Enemies (with Slick sprite) added. Shantae’s palettes were tweaked (blue eye/gem color added, not seen in sprite galleries yet).


Back to commission work for me. I’ll be back in time for Halloween!