I’m taking a 96% pause from fan art to be added until the SOPA/ProtectIP crap rolls through, so I’m concentrating on sharpening up a few site-related things.

GFX Generators – Sprites now have a “Direction” option. Default is the direction that the screenstyle wants the sprites to face (like a Vs Screen with P1 facing normally and P2 having a horizontally-flipped sprite).

sprite direction demo

Default is how the screen suggests the sprites should be pointed. Normal had the sprite facing its original direction and Reverse flips the sprite horizontally. Screen Opposite causes the sprite to face the opposite direction that Default would make it face.

The Minus World – The Bootleg Wrestlers feature just got a big update with a better design, added wrestler references and more. I was supposed to do this last year, but it got lost in the shuffle.

Tutorials – The article I made in 2008 about browsers’ forced anti-aliasing turning sprites into pixel diarrhea has been rewritten and moved to the tutorial section. You can find it right here. I also replaced the game sprites with my own pixel art so the page can stay up after any of those IP bills become law.


A new site has been added to the Quick Links on the side navigation: NXISTENCE.NET. Anyone who wants to read articles about gaming but don’t want the annoying schmucky smarm or baseline idjitry of commons sites need to check them out. The site is run by good people, so go give that place some love!




Custom Graphics: 2001-2011

A Friendly reminder: ScrollBoss will be shut down if any of those bass-ackwards IP bills become law here in the U.S., so download the pack before this stuff is gone from the internet.

(Updated Dec. 18th, 2011)

Do you enjoy fan art, game graphics, screenshots, game mods, sprite edits, tribute videos, game walkthroughs and anything of that nature? If so, time may be running out for you to do so. There are two bills currently being discussed in the US House Judiciary Committee that claim to be about fighting internet piracy, but many experts say that companies would gain the power to block US citizens from visiting sites they claim to be offenders of copyright law.

Who are these companies? You can find a list of them on the page called, “Who Wants To Break The Internet?” Viacom, one of the companies in the list, tried to sue YouTube for allowing videos from Viacom’s channels (like MTV) to be placed on the site, even though Viacom possibly uploaded some of those videos themselves. Yeah, Viacom lost. Universal, also on the list, had a celebrity endorsement-laced MegaUpload support video yanked off YouTube for featuring an unauthorized artist… who isn’t even in the video. A news show talked about that video, so Universal had the news show’s video yanked, too. Hell, these music companies have ordered the removal of videos posted by their own artists (and not just in the U.S.). For those who haven’t been irritated enough, here’s a story about how media companies somehow have the power to kill off public domain videos.

How would the U.S. government handle things? ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security) shut down five websites on the claim that they were counterfeits and bootleggers. As reported by TechDirt and the New York Times, one site was Dajaz.com, a site that provided downloads to songs purposefully leaked by the record companies for promotional purposes.

The abuse I’ve mentioned is what they can do without SOPA or Protect IP, so imagine what they’ll get away with if this bill passes. They already have the Chappellian “Shoot first, sprinkle crack on the corpse later” method down to a science when it comes to using the DMCA and site-specific kill switches. The fact that I’ll have to shut down this site if the bill passes isn’t the main reason I’m bothered by this. Many of us have turned to the internet because we don’t like what most media companies are pushing in our direction. Creative people and independent reporters are using it to avoid dealing with the same shady companies that have been spending money to push these bills and own the news channels which won’t tell you the same stories I’ve linked to here. Piracy may be hurting them, but their biggest problem is how the internet is giving us options. No, it’s not a c-o-n-spiracy as much as it’s the kind of typical corporate dick-move you’ll see happen when groups think a form of technology, like VCR’s, will threaten their money flow. They’re paying a lot of money to screw up the internet in the hopes that you’ll run into their open, greedy arms after they close off every other option you have now.

More about the topic:
Mozilla: Protect the Internet
BoingBoing: stories about SOPA
GameRanx – How SOPA Affects Gamers: SOPA Will Pass Unless You Help
Kotaku – The Stop Online Piracy Act and You: A Primer
Next Web Insider: 29 Tech Companies who back SOPA through a front group

Just in case you haven’t heard elsewhere, the man behind these graphics…

… and this incredible MUGEN stage for the classic Tower of Omens from ThunderCats

… finally has his own pixel art website with a very appropriate title.

2D Will Never Die

You’ll find some beautiful pixel art, tutorials, tips, links and some excellent articles about 2-D gaming. Those who are as inspired by Kiwi’s work as I am (hint: A LOT) should bookmark the new site and follow the site’s account on Tumblr to see pixel art from Kiwi along with many cool pixel art reposts. Those of us who know Kiwi have been hoping that he’d make a site like this for a long, long time and we knew he wouldn’t disappoint. He did a great job and I can’t wait to see what else he has planned for this site after an amazing start like this.

Here’s the final update for the tenth anniversary year:

Games Index – Black Tiger and Magic Sword (Arcade) were added. Final Fight (Arcade) and Golden Axe (Arcade) were modified.

Sprites – Black Tiger sprites and cinema scenes added.

Custom Sprites – Storm Shadow added to the G.I.JOE page.

Game Logos – Black Dragon, Black Tiger, Magic Sword added.

Mini Logos – The G.I. JOE, Cobra, He-Man and Thundercat mini-logos from last week’s GFX Generator updates from Christmas are now in this gallery.

MugenBoss – There’s no new content but I added List Index pages for Magic Sword and Kirby.

That’s it for 2010′s updates and I hope you liked some of the new stuff and changes that the 10th anniversary brought. I’d like to thank everyone who gave me feedback about it because you helped make things better here. I hope this place brings back memories about games you forgot about, introduced some new games to those who are just getting into the scene or let you know that you weren’t the only fan of that one game your friends scream on you for liking. It’s even more important now that many of these games can be downloaded and played again for just for the first time ever on a console like Konami’s X-Men. The updates in 2011 will be a bit farther apart but I still plan to bring the love of these games to the table and maybe finish one of those long-term projects I’ve been working on in bits and pieces. No promises on that. See you next year!

MugenBoss – I’ve been promising to improve MugenBoss’ look for years but never came up with anything I liked until now. There will be a few more things added in July but I really wanted to get the basics out there now to see how they look. Honestly, MugenBoss had been ugly long enough.

Vs. Maker Seeing as how I almost burnt myself out working on this last week, this update is really small. Thor got another sprite and another color set while Strider Hiryu’s palette was modified to include his helpers (options) which let me add another win pose.

Time for another two-color preview sprite:

You’ll see that whole sprite along with other scratch-made sprites, sprite edits and much more when the Anniversary updates kick in starting on July 19th.

edit: oddly enough, the hit counter was at 99500 when I originally posted this update and it went by twenty by 8 PM EST. I’m curious if the 100000th hit will be before or after July 19th. “Hmmm. I wonder. Oh well.”

Majesco Entertainment announced that there will be a “Data East Arcade Classics” game for the Wii that will feature 15 games for $19.99. The current game list from the press release says: “BurgerTime and its sequel, Peter Pepper’s Ice Cream Factory, Bad Dudes vs. Dragon Ninja, Burnin’ Rubber, Heavy Barrel, Caveman Ninja, Magical Drop III, Side Pocket and many more.” Caveman Ninja is the other name for the game Joe and Mac. The ESRB listing also mentions Street Slam and Secret Agent (a.k.a. Sly Spy). It also mentions the jiggle-action in Magic Drop III. It’s good to see an arcade compilation that has so many platformers and side-scrollers along with a beat-em-up even in that incomplete list. See Majesco’s press release here.

Just in case you haven’t heard, M.U.G.E.N 1.0 New Release Candidate 2 was released this week and has fixes for many of the problems from RC1. Elecbyte has been using the feedback and testing info of users and programmers to get the new M.U.G.E.N as backwardly compatible as they can. Get the new version at their site and remember to keep your older versions, too.

(Archive of post originally from Sat, 03 October 2009 04:22:35 by PrimeOp)

This update isn’t big but it’s important. It’s the first full update from the NewNew Computer that doesn’t freeze or spontaneously restart. It’s also a crossover update with my Illmosis art/comic site for the last update for Twofold month. He’s one of my original characters (please dont steal lolololol) and I devoted most of this month to working on stuff for him. He’s a ninja so I decided to celebrate here by making this update full of

Game Index – Beats of Rage, the Ninja Kids, Ninja Gaiden (arcade) and Ninja Warriors (SNES) added.

Minus World – An all-new article was added to the Minus World section. One word: Sidbillies. There are ninjas in that too!

Vs. Mode – You may want to check out the Vs. Mode index page. The poll fight feature isn’t back, but it’s much closer than it’s ever been since 2002. It should be ready by early 2010 but future teasers and tests for it will make it clear why it’s taking a lot of work. There’s a test of the “Fight Archive” page using the old Superninja 2002 battle.

MugenBoss – The miscolored pixels on the log in the “Karate Champ Alpha – Stage 4″ stage finally got fixed. There are no ninjas in it but the stage is compatible with most ninja characters in MUGEN. Also, in case you haven’t heard, Elecbyte, the creators of MUGEN, are back. Fo’rilla. Check out their new site and see what they’ve been up to.

Sprites – Along with a redesign for the Final Fight sprite hub page, sprites, animations and cinema pics were added to the Final Fight 3 page. A few Samus sprites and items from the NES game were added to the Metroid page. Strider Hiryu’s fighting stance and taunt were added to the Marvel vs. Capcom page. One sprite of each Ninja Kid from the Taito game was added to the Taito page.

Custom Sprites – New sprite edits of Kazan and Wendy Milan (Rushing Beat series) and Kunoichi (Ninja Warriors) were added to the Game Related page along with improved versions of Kazan and Wendy’s earlier edits. Lex Luthor jumpsuit sprite updated on the DC page and in the Vs. Maker generator.

Logos – various versions of Caveman Ninja (arcade), Kid Niki (arcade), Kirby Super Star, Mirai Ninja, Ninja Kids, Ninja Gaiden II (NES, Ninja Gaiden Trilogy, Ninja Spirit, Ninja Warriors (SNES & SF), Spider-Man and the X-Men and Super Metroid added.

Minilogos – A group of great Wrestling minilogos made in the 64×26 format have been donated by Sage Freehaven along with new minilogos for Balrog, M.Bison, Martian Manhunter.

Graphic Generators

The Vs. Maker Balrog and Bison finally get their own logos and Martian Manhunter gets a more recent one. Not much of a surprise if you’re reading these in order. Here’s a surprise thought: my character, Twofold, was added with an all-new sprite made from scratch along with a portrait and minilogo. How’s that for a site crossover?

Updates will be back to almost every two weeks again now that the new computer is all sorted out and the programs are working. Thanks for stopping in and I hope you enjoy the update.

(archived news post)

ScrollBoss will be updated along with my Illmosis site this Sunday. There will be a tiny bit of content crossover with the ninja theme along with… well, you’ll see.

This won’t be a big update but it will still include new sprites, sprite edits, Game Index entries, minilogos, links (BTW: Elecbyte is back!) , a MUGEN stage fix or two and some additions to the Vs. Maker generator.

If that isn’t enough, a long, lost section from the early days of the site makes a bit of a return before it’s full-on comeback in 2010. All this nonsense and more drops this Sunday.

MugenBoss – I’m guest-hosting some stuff that guys like Kiwi, Magus, WarmachineX (of the very cool Warmachine Madness board) and others did back in the day.

There’s nothing new here but the new stages include some stages based on Marvel and DC Comics, G.I.JOE and Masters of the Universe. There’s a page just for them in this link.

These stages and the ThunderCats Cat’s Lair stage that Kiwi and Shin Otaru did lead me to put together an index for stuff related to toys and cartoons. There are only three stages in that index now but I’m sure there’ll be more. Check out the page in this link. The Items Index page got a slight redesign and now links to the company-specific MUGEN indexes too.

Vs. Maker – New engine update includes… oval shadows:

Fancy, ain’t it? It’s not? Whatever. It works but only a few new test screenstyles use it since that part of the system still has a big rewrite coming.

New characters include Adam Hunter, Mr. X (Streets of Rage), Joker, Lex Luthor, the Flash, Martian Manhunter, Solomon Grundy, Star Sapphire.

Sprite Edits – I had to make at least two non-G.I.JOE sprite edits for the Toys and ‘Toons graphic used in it’s MUGEN index so I made He-Man and Lion-O. Those are on the brand-new Toys and Cartoons custom sprite page. The Flash, Joker, Lex Luthor & Solomon Grundy added to DC Comics page.

Mini-logos – Edi.E, Metamorpho, Mr. Fantastic, Mr. X, Lex Luthor, the Question, Scarlet Witch, Star Sapphire, Solomon Grundy, the Thing, Tyrant, Vision added.

Articles – The Game List was updated for the first time since last December. Along with some random stuff, I bought the first Midway and SNK compilations which will help in a future article I plan to write about why I love game compilations and why they’re great even in a DLC world.

Last week’s Illmosis update had an early version of something that you’ll see in the Minus World section sooner or later: Poison vs. Billy. Computer problems kept me from getting this fully colored and also slowed down work on everything else in this update. Unfortunately, the updates will continue to be small until things get fixed.

Attention: Shin Otaru fixed a minor error in the Cat’s Lair ThunderCats Mugen stage.

Please go here and download the new version for improved Thundarian technology.

(Archive of post originally from Fri, 31 July 2009 05:25:52 by PrimeOp )