ScrollBoss spending December celebrating how insanely magical 1989 was for video games. The December 27th update was my favorite despite the ridiculous amount of sleep I lost working on it. I’ve never kicked out so many sprites from scratch at once and the Death Adder sprite is probably the best pixel art I’ve done yet. The updates may have looked big but no one would believe all the unfinished stuff there is for this including sprites, articles and even a theme song. I’ll save some of that for the 25th Anniversary of 1989 if I’m still working on the site by then.

Twofold month on Illmosis with a preview of the Twofold #1, Twofold’s sprite. and new logo

The Halloween update on ScrollBoss with Castlevania:SOTN sprite edits and a Alucard sprite from scratch, the Altered Beast werewolf and Rick from Splatterhouse. Plus, that Morrigan sprite edit turned out better than I thought it would.

A nice chunk of the Art Redemption List got some justice this year by drawing much better versions of things that I did a horrible job on the first time.

Art that turned out to not be crap:

The Vs. Maker Graphic Generator. It’s an experiment that has taken on a life of it’s own. It’s always fun to see people come up with team-ups and fights that I never would have thought of. Those custom mini-logos are fun to make, too.

The restart of Nutroll: the Illness that mainly got stopped (again) by the malfunctioning computer I was using. I almost literally flipped out due to all the computer freezes while trying to color the first page. Page One will be fixed before I get back to work on it in early 2010.

My favorite thing of the year is the reaction to this picture. This was just one of those crazy things that pops into my head a lot and figured it just needed to be drawn. I’d like to thank everyone who took time out to say how much they liked it because you made my 2009 a lot better than it would’ve been otherwise. As Brawn once said, “Mushy, but true.”

Alright, it’s time for me to get back to work on stuff for 2010. I’ll be working on a comic page tonight and I’ll have some announcements to make here in the coming weeks.

The biggest thing for me was finally making a Twofold sprite that didn’t look like complete crap. That’s not a sprite made from a pre-existing sprite but was made from scratch. Instead of just posting it to Illmosis, I added Twofold to the Vs. Maker generator. I just added a few other things like new logos for the other characters you see in the screenshot. Yes, Balrog’s logo is supposed to look a bit familiar.

Final Fight: Poison vs. Billy

There’s a new ScrollBoss:Minus World section article on how some female characters were replaced with males in some 16-bit video games. The article is called Sidbillies for reasons that get explained early on. For the record, I didn’t even notice the “wardrobe detail” in the last character mentioned until I looking at the screenshots I took for the article. Everything right before that “ellipses” crap I pulled was what I originally had before I saw… well, you’ll see it. It was also pure luck that it turned out to be all about a ninja character.

I also put up a preview of the new Vs. Mode that I’m still working on. I used the old characters (but mostly new sprite edits) of characters from the “2002 Superninjas” tournament. It was an old series of polls in which the choice with the lowest vote got removed. The version that I plan to have ready in 2010 will be like no other poll you’ve wasted your time on just because you didn’t vote for Link, Squall or Master Chief.

And that’s what I’ve been up to. Sorry for all these posts about my sites but I’m not doing much of anything else right now Sad, isn’t it?

I can change the transparency, color and size ratio on the shadows and there are 3 new screenstyles that use them. New characters include Adam Hunter, Mr. X (Streets of Rage), Joker, Lex Luthor, the Flash, Martian Manhunter, Solomon Grundy, Star Sapphire.

Sprite Edits – Additions to the DC Comics page:

Flash’s pose looks like a transition sprite before running but it’s also based on this cover. Luthor has the twin pistols from JLU episode, “Destroyer” but I’ll probably make later variation where he has some crazy 70′s weapon with him. Joker’s sprite is an alternate angle of that Carmine Infantino pose that Mego used on his toy packaging. Solomon Grundy is just being crazy.

Also started a brand-new Toys and Cartoons page with two headliners from the 80′s. You’ll have to go there to see those two.

Other stuff: New additions to the Mini Logo page include Edi.E, Metamorpho, Mr. Fantastic, Mr. X, Lex Luthor, the Question, Scarlet Witch, Star Sapphire, Solomon Grundy, the Thing, Tyrant (Resident Evil) and the Vision. I’m also hosting some old MUGEN stages done by some friends of mine including some G.I.JOE, MOTU, DC and Marvel based stuff. You can find those here.

1.) Company Index: Like a hub page for a company’s content on the site. This area will mostly be ignored because it’s not sprites.

2.) Sprite Edits: Hey, sprites! Mario and Sonic done from scratch just to mess with the heads of those that think I don’t like the characters. Dammit, the internet is full of GOOD Mario and Sonic sites! That’s why I also made sprite edits of characters like Damnd from Final Fight, Rick Norton and Kazan from Brawl Brothers and Thomas from Kung-Fu Master. They don’t get enough fan love so I try to be there when I can. Also: sprite edits of Haggar, Solid Snake and multiple Batmans.

3.) Vs. Maker: Look, it’s more sprites! Still no update to the engine but a lot of characters got added. Batman is finally in there and is the only DC character to have a portrait so far. See? That makes him more special so that should make you happy.

4.) MugenBoss: I fixed and added more things that no one cares about except that it looks better. Here’s one cool thing donated by Kiwi and Shin Otaru:

I still can’t get over how Kiwi make the graphics from scratch. You can see the whole pic and more by checking out his deviantART page. If you have the MUGEN fighting game, you can download the real stage here.

EDIT:
I should have linked to the 7th and 8th Anniversary posts. Consider it done.

I’ve been mentioning it in posts since March 2007 and even linked to a cruddy beta test. It finally has an official spot on the ScrollBoss site after two years of scattered work and a huge scripting rewrite last week that allows more features like screens with four characters. There are still a few things I need to add before I can call the engine 1.00.

More graphics, characters, styles and companies will be added even when the engine isn’t updated. Obvious missing characters like Batman, the rest of the original 12 Street Fighters and SNK as a whole are at the top of the to-add list. The ability to make message board sigs and avatars will be added later. If you dig it or don’t, please let me know what you think in the comments section here.