Updated styles: “Avatar 100×100″ and “384×224 scenes + text” in the GroupShot generator now have selectable font options, including font palettes. Some of the Avatar 100×100 frames will adjust the text to be in a better or more accurate position. The Mega Man 1 boss square frame will put the font where it’d be in the real game and the Genesis box places the text closer to where a game logo would be. The “Boxes, Flyer & Posters 160×192″ now has an X-Box 360 style frame.
New characters:The Beast (with portraits, mini-logo and X-Men Vs. screen name tag)
Updated characters: Anakaris (new sprite & palette), Felicia (new sprites), Iceman (more sprites), Lord Raptor/Zabel (new sprite), Marian (old 2002 KoF-style edit added), Strider Hiryu (added sprites & palettes), Sentinel (improved Mango Sentinel palette). The IREM character section was temporarily removed and Thomas/Vigilante was moved to the “Other Games” list (but he got the Vigilante and Japanese Spartan-X mini-logos for his trouble). All of the original Darkstalkers now have their vs. portraits from the first game.

Custom Sprites – There is a brand-new gallery thanks to custom sprite donations from DNL. Check out his gallery, then visit his deviantART page to find even more work.

Mini-Logos – Spartan-X added to IREM section. Streets of Rage (title screen style) added to Sega section. Double Dragon (arcade title screen style) added to Technos.

Game Index – Final Fight 2 (SNES) added.

The original game font functions worked and the system was set up for multiple fonts, but it wasn’t flexible. Adding this forced me to clear out the clusterfudge I’d made of the old font system. It’s ridiculously plain right now as you only choose the font and palette through descriptions in a pulldown list with no previews of them. Still, it works and will hopefully make the font-using generators more fun.

Here’s a list of the fonts I have finished so far: Street Fighter Alpha 3 8×16 and 16×16 fonts, Streets of Rage 3′s 8×8 and 16×16 fonts, Final Fight’s 8×8 font, Pac-Mania’s 8×8 font (basically the classic Namco 8×8 font with lowercase letters and more characters), River City Ransom’s 8×8 font and Marvel vs. Capcom’s 32×32 font (seen above). Are there any other in-game fonts you’d like to see? Please leave a reply if there are and I’ll see if I can get it in there.

GFX Generators What’s new in addition to yesterday’s update.

Updated Characters: Yellowjacket sprite and Goliath mini-logo added to Ant-Man/Giant-Man character, Captain America (MSH GEM use pose), Hawkeye (new sprite edit), Hulk (new palettes, including Red Hulk), Iron Man (PROTON CANNON!!!). The Erik Josten version of Goliath (before he became Atlus) was added to the Other Villains character slot.

Custom Sprites: One new Yellowjacket (Pym) sprite, one new Hawkeye pose & improvements on Loki.

Mini-Logos: Goliath, Loki, Mandarin and Wasp. Those logos were added to their GFX Generator characters, too.

If this is the first update you’ve seen this week, check out this previous post to see the much bigger update with new things in it.

I hope you enjoyed these Avengers Week updates. I pretty much ran out of steam after my sinuses decided to explode on Thursday night, so I wasn’t able to make everything I planned to make. Have a good weekend!

Marvel Characters: Ant Man/Giant Man (separate character with new sprites), Loki (all-new), Hulk (redone “original Hulk” edit), Quicksilver, Wasp (new sprites and many new palettes). Bill Foster/Goliath added to the Other Heroes character slot. Mandarin added to the Other Villains characters slot.
Screenstyles: A brand-new scratch-made Hall of Armor background was added to the “384×224 scenes” and “Avatar 100×100″ screen layouts in the GroupMaker.

Wait, who is that guy hiding behind the Hulk? It can’t be. No one makes fan art from that game. It can’t be…

That’s right. It’s Ryu and Ko from Capcom’s Avengers. Yes, even the version from the flyer with the white shirt is in there.

Custom Sprites
Marvel Comics: new scratch-made sprites of Giant Man/Goliath/Black Goliath, Quicksilver, Mandarin and Loki. New outfit variations and shrunken sprites for the Wasp were also added.
Capcom: Ryu and Ko from the old Avenger beat-em-up.

Mini-Logos
Marvel Comics: Quicksilver
Capcom: Avengers

The Avengers movie, this Avengers update and most of the Marvel-related items you see on this website wouldn’t be possible without one man who always deserves credit and thanks.

If you’ve ever beaten Capcom’s Marvel Super Heroes game and wondered who Jack Kirby was, it’s time to learn. This post on Badass Hall of Fame says it all much better than I ever could, but let me give you the short version of it. Jack Kirby brought a sense of all-out action to comics. Most artists, good and bad, had poses that looked like you were about to see something happened or it already happened. Jack Kirby’s work is the pure happening. You can see that punch happening with the same brand of power you might see in some of your favorite sprites in video game attacks. Have you noticed how many games have animations where the Jab attack has the non-punching fist ready to deliver the next hit of the combo? You can find that in Jack Kirby’s fight scenes. While many people consider reality to be the end point of all creativity, Jack Kirby created a style and manner that is beyond reality nearly everything good about comics has a touch of that Kirby magic.

Take a bit of time to check out KirbyMuseum.org to see what I mean. Look at his fighting poses, then look at some of your favorite fighting game frames, especially Capcom CP2-era sprites.

I did a lot of quick work on almost all of the site’s pages before resurrecting it after the recent hack attack. Some coding got smooshed here and there and a bit of it was sloppy, even if you couldn’t see it on the page. The pages are still being improved and updated bit-by-bit and you might even notice that a section your browsing suddenly gets upgraded when you go to the next page. That’s just me shoveling new pages onto the server and freaking you out.

PLEASE let me know if you run into any broken pages, broken images, broken links, horribly slow pages (especially the pages with a crapload of sprites) or anything like that by replying to this post. It’ll help if you let me know which browser you’re using and its version number (usually seen in the “About Browsername” option on the Help tab).

I’ll be back in about a week with that Avengers-based update.

This isn’t really a content update (though a few new things probably slipped through), but I’ve made some adjustments to a lot of the site pages. Nearly every page on the site has been modified somehow. Some of it is that behind-the-scenes crap that only I could care about, but a few pages should look better and fit in better with the rest of the site. A few things (mostly images) are broken and I’ll try to fix them as I sort all this mess out. There are a few new things:

Sprites – New animations were added to the Magic Sword page (including an animated Black Orb). Crime Fighters and Vendetta now have separate gallery pages and the Vendetta page has a few new graphics.

The next content update will probably be on the week of May 5th. Yeah, you know where I’m going with this. There won’t be a ton of sprites, but the update will be very Avengers-centric. There will be another comic-related update after that and that Golden Age of Video Games update I mentioned months ago will hit at some point after that.

Thanks for coming back to the site!

I apologize for any inconveniences and problems this site has caused you and I thank you for coming back.

EDIT (April 19, 2012): Okay, it looks like the site access problems have been straightened out now.

The rest of this post is just edits about the speeds and the time they happen.

edit (Apr 16, 3:59 AM?): things are working, but the site seems to be running very slowly at the moment. Hold off on browsing the site for a few days. I’ll probably be altering parts as you’re trying to browse it and you could get stuck in a pothole. I’ll try to have the place fully ready by Wednesday, but it will hopefully be 100% before then.

edit (12:34 PM): Good news: the site got a clean bill of health and is off the blacklist. Bad news: ScrollBoss was at normal speed in the wee hours of the morning after I made that first edit, but now both ScrollBoss AND Illmosis (which was fine before) are moving slowly.

edit (12:55 PM): Now it’s just ScrollBoss that’s moving at the speed of a White Bronco. Okay.

edit (3:19 PM): The site seems to be moving at the speed of regular time again. I’ll try to keep track of this while I can.

edit (4:34 PM): Aaaand the site speed seems to be slow again, but not as slow it was before.

edit (2012 04 17, 2:53 AM): The Bad News part of the 12:34 PM update was the operating procedure for both SB and Illmosis until things just slowed down to a crawl. That crawl eventually turned into a K.O. for both sites some time after midnight on the 17th. A few things were reset and both sites are moving at regular speed for now.

edit (2012 04 17, 2:27 PM): The site was moving normally when I when I turned the computer off at around 5:30 AM. I’m just getting back on and the site is slow again. It now takes about 45 seconds to get from page to page.

edit (2012 04 17, 3:54 PM): The site slowed to a dead stop around 3:30 PM, lightened up around 3:45 PM and is back to normal speed at 3:53 PM.

The game will be developed by WayForward and digitally distributed by Majesco. This doesn’t seem to be a complete rehash and seems to be upping the 80′s factor on this one. Some of the art in that story I linked to up there looks a bit like Genzoman’s style, but I haven’t seen anything official on that yet. I’ve seen some user complaints about the game’s speed in the YouTube comments (I know, I know), but the Double Dragon series was NEVER a series for the twitch-freaks. Dig out your copy of Super Double Dragon if you think I’m BS’ing you. WayForward’s involvement with this gives me hope, so I’m definitely looking forward to this revival.

GFX Generators: Nothing big here, but I started a few modifications to the engine to streamline some of the older coding. Please let me know in the comments section if you run into any errors so I can work on those.

Characters: Heihachi added to Namco section. Trish, Yun & Yang (same character slot) added to Capcom section. Mature, Vice, Yamazaki and Wolfgang Krauser added to SNK section. A new Tiny Titans character slot was added to the DC section (though Tiny Titans sprites will be added to individual characters when applicable).

Screenstyles: KoF2002 Mexico (day), MvsC Bath House (left and right sides) added to the variable bg styles in the Group and Vs generators.

Custom Sprites – Heihachi (including a slightly animated version) added to Namco section. Trish added to Capcom gallery. Robin added to the DC Comics gallery.

Future updates are going to be smaller and farther apart for a while as I work on some other projects. One of them is project I’ve been teasing for years and it’s time for me to get back on that line art grind. Don’t think I’m slacking on the pixel mapping (and bad rhymes) because some of those future updates are going to be big. I’ve actually finished a few smaller things for some future theme-based updates. Tiny Titans Robin may have broken the comic book drought this place has had for a while, but keep an eye for more than one comic update. I’m also working on that Golden Age of Video games update, but I’m not exactly sure when that will drop. There will be new posts on this page with news, WIP updates, teasers and some theme-based request posts. Those request line posts will be limited-time offers, so be there and be vocal.

News:

Beta V 1.0 is out. I haven’t checked it out yet, but I’ve already downloaded it. Check it out just in case the bigger blabbermouth news sites cause a cease & desist or something. You know how this crap goes.

Elevator Action Deluxe owners should know that there is a new DLC stage pack available this week. Don’t forget to pick up any of the free DLC characters you missed from before. It’s great to see that Square and Taito continue to add things to this game, even though the later levels of this game are still too tough for me.

Last, but definitely not least, Dynamo has a new post on NXISTENCE.NET about the pain of dealing with younger video game fans who just can’t understand what we see in all of these old games. It’s well worth a bit of your time to read it and know that you’re not alone on that issue.

Graphic Generators – I just made a small character update.
Capcom: Ibuki added. Poison (new SF3-to-SFA-like edits and a new palette), Ryu (SFA3 portrait headband edit) updated.
Namco: Nina, Kazuya and Yoshimitsu make a invasion with new scratch-made sprites.
Taito: Dolls from Growl/Runark are now one sprite with multiple palettes (three arcade, three Genesis/Mega Drive)

Mini-Logos – A Street Fighter IV-styled Street Fighter logo added to Capcom section. 70′s and late 80′s Avengers logos added to Marvel section. Illmosis and ScrollBoss logos added to Illmosis section.

Custom Sprites – Scratch-made sprites of Nina (Tekken 5), Kazuya (1, 2 & 5) and Yoshimitsu (2 & 3) were added to the Namco page.

edit: I also re-sized the scratch-made sprites of the Dolls from Growl because I didn’t notice that they were too tall.

Elsewhere:
NXistence
Noise Factory:TMNT IV: Turtles In Time
Dynamo just posted a breakdown of his five favorite BGM tracks from TMNT IV and it’s worth a read. The man is uniquely qualified to make these posts since he thinks about games on a nuts and bolts level AND he crafts some fine music himself. He also makes a reference to one of my favorite musicians in the description of the #1 track. Look that name up on YouTube if you don’t recognize it when you get to it. You’ll be glad you did.