Time for a little 1989 Boss Rush update!

Custom Sprites:
Mega Man: Alien (Mega Man 2) added
Strider: new Strider Hiryu pose (based on the Famicom ad from the unrealeased game) and Tong Pooh pose (and sub-gallery) added
Shinobi: Shadow Dancer boss (from the Revenge of Shinobi)
Marvel Comics: White Queen Emma Frost (appeared in the 1989 NES Uncanny X-Men game and 1989’Pryde of the X-Men’ cartoon pilot)

The new custom sprites were added to the Fight-size generator.


I’ve mostly been chipping away at getting this site ready for the server upgrade, but I couldn’t let August 9th go by without a little Revenge of 1989 recognition to honor a year that brought a lot of the games (and other things) that led to the creation of this site. That’s a literal statement, because the first version of this site were Sega Smash Pack shots of Golden Axe, Revenge of Shinobi, and Altered Beast for the Sega Genesis, all games that hit the U.S. in 1989. So here’s the newness:

Custom Sprites:
Final Fight: Andore (Final Fight wait pose)
Gang Wars: new gallery, starting with the heroes Mike and Jackie.
Shinobi: all-new Kasumi (the Revenge of Shinobi)
TMNT: NES 1989 game stance (with and without weapons) for Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo.

All new custom sprites were also added to the the main GFX Generators, where you can assemble your own fake screenshots and group pics.

The Revenge of 1989: A new timeline page was added, various adjustments were made to the articles, including the confirmation (thanks to an interview with Time Extension magazine) that Konami’s Crime Fighters was indeed their template for later games like Ninja Turtles and the Simpsons.


As I mentioned at the start of this post, I’m working on an all-around behind-the-scenes update of this site, using a hard drive copy of it that simulates the server update. I’ve got a lot of the site working and even the image generators are over 70% working before I stopped to do this update. This is some heavy work, and it’s costing me extra site host fees to run on the older server, so I won’t be doing much other than that until it’s done, trying to finish it (and fixes to my other sites) before the site hosting charge hits my wallet again in September. I started a separate post about that in this link to keep track of where I am in the upgrade project.

Despite that, there will be an update to the ToyBoss section this month because I’ve got that main page working with new code that works on its own and I’ve got some roster pics to update (especially since I got that new camera).

For the first time in the year 2020, THE NEWNESS IS ON!


Custom Sprites:
Sonic series: Tails
Shinobi series: Karasu (the Revenge of Shinobi)
Spawn: Spawn (original outfit)
Marvel Comics: Spider-Woman
DC Comics: Starfire

BTW: the last three galleries are linked in the looong-overdue Comic Books Custom Sprite gallery hub.

Mini-logos: McFarlane: Spawn, Sega: Tails

All new sprites and mini-logos were added to the image generator, along with two Image Comics covers added to the 88×136 pixel option (even though the Spawn sprite is way too tall to fit in the cover).

Finally, here’s a short video teaser for some of the things I’ve been working on for the site, future videos, and more.

What the things in the video mean will be explained as I get to them, because it’ll be a hell of a lot easier to show you than explain. In the words of Guru, “Peace out, we’ll be back, stay tuned.”

I put up a poll on Twitter without saying what it was for and it was won by Shinobi, so here’s a mostly Shinobi update!

All-new sprites of Joe Musashi (O.G. Shinobi gear), Masked Ninja/Nakohara, Mongo and Crawler were added to the Shinobi gallery and new Zubaroka amazon sprites were added to the Golden Axe galleries. As usual, all these things were added to the GFX Image Generators where you can make screenshots like the one at the top of this post!

Well, that’s all for thi – – you know what? No. That’s not all. That’s not all at all.

I’ve had this idea in my head for a long time and it’s time to give you a taste. People, here’s the first segment of… episode 000

Later this summer, you will see the full Episode 000 of the ScrollBoss Sprite Showcade.

I’ll be at the Youngstown Comic-Con on July 7th (sorry, Sunday only this year). Come through both days, because they always have a great artist’s alley and lots of game-related stuff there!

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.

This site spent most of 2014 celebrating the 25th anniversary of 1989, my favorite year for video games, and the updates were filled with many sprites based on those games, like Final Fight, the Revenge of Shinobi, Golden Axe, Strider, and more. That theme comes back for today’s mini-update because the date is the eighth month’s ninth day.

Custom Portraits: new Street Fighter Alpha/Zero 3 Vs. portraits of Joe Musashi, Poison (and Roxy), Damnd, and Haggar (replacing the horrible one I made two years ago).

The new portraits have been added to the GFX Generators along nine new palettes for Poison (based on Ultra Street Fighter IV) and five for Haggar (based on the Slam Masters/Muscle Bomber series).

The next update will return to the early 1980s with more new sprite remakes of classic characters!

There’s no space for introductory yammering, only for the newness!

Custom Sprites
Atari: Thyra the Valkyrie, Merlin the Wizard (three versions of each) from Gauntlet
Capcom: Amazons and Kuniang M.A. Team (Strider), Metal Man (Mega Man)
Final Fight: brand new Two.P and J (fighting stances)
Konami: Bayou Billy West
Sega: Joe Musashi (new RoS fight stance), the evil amazons from Golden Axe (arcade and Genesis/Mega Drive versions)
Taito: the Priest from Cadash
Technos: Riki (Kunio-Kun series), Billy and Jimmy Lee (new scratch-made sprites)
Games (other): Gogan from the Legendary Axe
Toys & Cartoons: Captain N (!)
TMNT: Bebop and Rocksteady

Mini-logos – Believe it or not, it’s another A-to-the-mothereffin’-Z mini-logo update with the entire alphabet representing!


– Atari: Thyra, Thor, Merlin and Questor
– Capcom: Hugo (USF4 style)
– Epyx: Epyx
– Kaneko: DJ Boy
– Konami: S.P.Y. Special Project Y, Ultra Games
– Marvel: X-Men, The Uncanny X-Men
– Movies: RoboCop
– Nintendo: Captain N
– Sega: Alex Kidd (High Tech World style), Yamato (Shinobi), Zeed
– SNK: Ikari III, the rescue, Guerrilla War
– Taito: Fighter (Cadash), Mage(Cadash), Ninja(Cadash), Priest (Cadash), Violence Fight
– Tecmo: Ninja Gaiden (NES box), Wild Fang
– Technos: Billy (Lee), Jimmy (Lee)
– Victor: Legendary Axe


GFX Generators – All those new sprites, characters and logos were added to the generators.
– Groupshot Generator: box 160×192 gets four new TurboGrafx-16 set-ups
– Backgrounds: Three Ultra Street Fighter IV backgrounds, one Double Dragon Neon background and a remake of Final Fight 1-1
– Updated characters: Poison (blue palette from Mighty Final Fight)

Minus World – the “Run, Woman, Run!” article was updated.

Game Index – added: the Adventures of Bayou Billy.

I hope that made up for the poot-butt, small updates from the past few months. There won’t be any updates this gigantic for a while, but this Revenge of 1989 theme still has some surprises in store. No promises, but there might be an additional update later this week, including tune-ups of earlier content and things I didn’t have time to work into this update.


“Hey, why are there Gauntlet characters in a 1989 update?” Besides the fact that there was a good port of Gauntlet 2 for the Commodore Amiga, there’s a new Gauntlet game coming out this month!


BTW: the Boy and his Pup Kickstarter is almost done, so help out if you can!


Edit (September 20, 2014) Besides making a few fixes here and there, the following things have been added:
Mini-logos: Rolento (Ultra Street Fighter IV), Bebop and Rocksteady (TMNT Classics)
Custom sprites: Kunio-kun (Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari cover pose)
GFX Generators – All new content was added to their characters in the generators, fixes were made to a few characters (Andore/Hugo, Thyra the Valkyrie), the Lee Brothers new palettes were improved to include Double Dragon 1 sets (with the gray boots) and the “Mego: WGSH” has three new “head bubble” sets.

Okay, that’s enough for now.

I made a quick group of articles in late 2009 called, “The Revenge of 1989” to talk about game-related things of that year. 2009 was the 20th anniversary of that year and, even then, I was plotting to make sure I’d have something decent to show for the 25th anniversary. There will be multiple updates this year to do just that and this update starts with a revamp of the original articles and a little something extra.

Why am I celebrating this year so much? That video is only a hint at how many of the things this site celebrates just happened to have been made in 1989. So consider the next ten months a party as, from this day until December 31st, 2014, this site will try to give 1989 some long overdue respect. New articles will be added (including a series of awards), new sprites will be made of that year’s characters (I think it’s time I finally sprited the rest of the original Mad Gear gang) and more random crap that I can’t hint at. There will be still be non-1989 themed updates, but those games will be the focus of the year. Here are the other things you can find in this week’s update.

Custom Sprites – Kunio-Kun added to the Technos gallery. Grandmaster Meio added to the Capcom gallery. Raymond Broady (Crime City) added to the Taito gallery. Alex Kidd and Kasumi (the Revenge of Shinobi) added to the Sega gallery.

Game Index
– Added: Mega Man 2 (NES)
– Updated: Crime City (arcade)

SpritesCrime Fighters gallery updated with a lot of sprites and a few minor animations.

Mini-logos – the Revenge of Shinobi added to Sega section, Crime City added to Taito section.

GFX Generators – Guy and Cody were updated with a few SFA sprites and sprite edits. Here’s how the new scratch-made sprites look.

Alex Kidd, Grandmaster Meio, Raymond Broady were added to the Vs. and Group generators, Kasumi’s sprite was added to the Zeed/Neo Zeed char slot and Kunio was updated with his new sprite. Check out the goofy thing I just added to the Vs. generator, though:


It’s the Janken battle stage from Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle. Now you can set up your own Rock-Paper-Scissors battles. I’ve made all three Janken poses for Alex Kidd, but you’ll have to use your own memory to figure out the other characters who, like Ken, have win poses similar to rock, paper or scissors.

That’s all for this update. While some of these updates might be far apart, know that some I’m putting extra time into this while working on some other neglected projects. Feel free to leave a comment about your own favorite video games from 1989.