This site has spent most of this year celebrating the 25th anniversary of 1989, easily one of the most llama butt-whipping years in the history of video games. It’s so dense with digital greatness that I couldn’t give dap to all things to which dap is due, even with nearly a year to work on the theme. The clock is winding down and this update is an attempt to strengthen the custom sprite galleries (and image generator banks) of those games.




Custom Sprites – The following changes were made to the galleries:
Data East: Karnov (new scratch-made sprites in outfits from Karnov, Bad Dudes, Sly Spy and Trio the Punch)
Capcom: Crash Man, Strobaya (Strider)
Final Fight: Damnd and Jessica Haggar
Konami: Strongwoman from S.P.Y.: Special Project Y
Sega: Joe Musashi (1 new sprite, 1 improved sprite), Yamato, Neo-Zeed Leader, Queen of the Oasis
Golden Axe: new gallery page with new Gilius Thunderhead sprite
Tecmo: Ryu Hayabusa, Irene Lew
TMNT: Raphael

GFX Generator – All new sprites were added to the proper characters (they’re at the top of the “Update” character list). There’s also a new background: the 1989 arcade!


YouTube user Cralfer put together a video that showcases many of the multi-plane beat ’em ups released before Final Fight was in 1989. You’ll see a lot of obscure titles in here!


That’s all for this update, but don’t be surprised to see a bit more newness added to the site before the year is out. Also, even after the year-long 1989 theme is over, I’ve decided that every August 9th (1989) will be dedicated to 1989’s Revenge. Take care and I hope your holidays are happy!

My big plans for the Halloween update were cut short by commission work. One of the sprites that you’d have seen in October would have been Jason Voorhees, inspired by the fact that NECA went crazy and made a SDCC exclusive glow-in-the-dark figure colored like the NES sprite. The weird part is that someone e-mailed me to ask if I had a Jason sprite without knowing I’d planned to do one. Unfortunately, I ran out of time, so I didn’t do it. Then I decided to check and see if there was a Friday the 13th before the year was over and, sure enough, there is. So instead of just having Jason show up on Halloween, he’s here on his own special day. If that wasn’t enough, I’ve got new sprites of other hockey mask-wearing characters, including a new Rick Taylor sprite. This is Splatterhouse’s 25th anniversary year, so things just worked out just right.

GFX Generators
New Characters: Jason Voorhees (pt. 3 sprite, two palettes), Casey Jones (TMNT), Ninja Gaiden enemies (the hockey mask-wearing enemy with multiple palettes)
Updated Characters: Rick Taylor (new scratch-made Splatterhouse 1 standing pose), Jennifer (improved sprite, brown palette)

Custom Sprites – Splatterhouse’s Rick and Jen were added to the Namco page, Jason was added to the new Movie-related gallery, Casey was added to the TMNT page and that hockey mask guy from Ninja Gaiden was added to the Tecmo page.


Breakin’ News


The U.S. Playstation store has quite a few Capcom games and items on sale on the cheap tip. The Dungeons and Dragons compilation, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and Marvel vs. Capcom Origins are $7.49, $3.49 if you have Playstation Plus. Spelunky has the same $3.49/$7.49 price scheme, too. The PS3 and Vita versions of Dragon’s Crown, my favorite game of the year, is on sale for $29.99, too. Jump on that while the gettin’ good.

EDIT: News hit this weekend that Capcom will be de-listing Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and all MvsC3 and Ultimate MvsC3 items (DLC) from PSN and X-Box live very soon. You only have until the next PSN Store update to get those things and Live users have a bit longer. Read about it on Capcom-Unity.

Good Old Games (gog.com), home of non-DRM computer gaming, has a gigantic sale going on that I’m not even going to try and list. You just need to check it out A.S.A.P. if you’re interested.

It’s the last of the comic book updates! This issue has a lot of Superman-related characters to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of his (and Lois’) first appearance. There will be another chunk of Superman sprites later this year to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the arcade game by Taito.

GFX Generators
New characters:
DC Comics – Bizarro, Braniac, Lois Lane, Zod
Data East – Chelnov/Atomic Runner
Updated characters:
Marvel – Storm (new punk rock sprite, 2 palettes added), Iron Man (Heroes Return era mini-logo added)
GroupShot: X-Men vs. Street Fighter (Capcom Secret Files) added to the 88×136 comic cover styles

Custom Sprites – The sprites added to the generators have all been added to their respective Marvel, DC and Data East galleries.

Mini-Logos – Bizarro (’80s), Brainiac (’80s), Despero (’90s), Lois Lane (original, early ’70s), Mera (’80s) added to DC. Iron Man (Heroes Return) added to Marvel.

BTW: Data East’s Chelnov is celebrating its 25th anniversary so I thought it’d be nice if Data East’s superhero made his way into this update, too.

That’s the end of comic book week for this year. All of the update posts from this week will be merged into a Trade Paperback post tomorrow so those who weren’t following can see all the newness at once. Thanks to everyone who checked out the new things here and extra thanks to anyone kind enough to repost or like these updates on the various places I posted them. Be sure to look at the other updates if this is your first time back, especially if you didn’t know about the new MUGEN stage I added on Thursday. The site will be back to more game-related updates, but comic heroes and villains will be sprinkled in here and there, just as they’ve always been on this site. Have a good weekend!

This year’s Free Comic Book Day hits this Saturday, ScrollBoss is having multiple updates this week. Each update will be filled with comic book-related things, including a few items that I promised a while back. This update isn’t purely comic stuff, but I think there’s enough for a comic fan to enjoy anyway.

Sprites
TMNT – TMNT arcade and Tournament Fighters (SNES) sprites and animations added.

Game Logos – TMNT Tournament Fighters (various versions) and Batman: Return of the Joker (NES) added.

Game Index – Captain America and the Avengers (Genesis), Spider-Man & the X-Men (SNES), TMNT IV (SNES) and Trojan (NES) added.

Vernacula-X – A few more terms were added and a few more terms were expanded. 1-UP, Versus Mode and Palette Swap were the most improved and now have small sprite or screenshot galleries.

Custom Sprites – Sprites were added to the following galleries
TMNT – Master Splinter and Shredder (’80s cartoon versions)
Marvel – Spider-Man edit (black costume)
Snow Job – Snow Job v.1

GFX Generators – All 12 TMNT Tournament Fighters (SNES) stages were added to the “Boxes, Flyer & Posters 160×192,” “Avatar 100×100,” and “Comics 88×136 pixels” styles in the GroupShot Generator. Spider-Man and the G.I.JOE:G.I.JOE team characters were updated while Splinter and Shredder were added as characters.


There will be an update tomorrow, including a scratch-made M.U.G.E.N. stage that I’ve wanted to make for a long time and something that quite a few of you asked to see once I added a version of it to the GFX Generators last year.