March 31st, 2025

Back in 2021, I posted the third and fourth Superhero Sprite Showcases in a single video, mostly because I couldn’t make new video clips the usual way as Anime Studio stopped working (long story) and I had to cobble together a bunch of new ways to make clips in Blender and Magix Vegas. Batman got his solo Showcase a while back and now it’s time for Iron Man to get his. And to make up for it, I’ve added a lot of new and updated clips. That video hit the YouTube Channel last Friday, and here’s the site update with some of the new stuff made for the video:


Custom Sprites: Marvel
Iron Man: all-new War of the Gems idle stance, improved Data East Avengers 1 idle
War Machine: improved taunt sprite and added the early version without the uni-beam port. Remember: this armor is from before the movie, it’s not an arc reactor.
Black Widow: new variants of her debut panel pose
villains: all new sprites of the Crimson Dynamo v.1, Madame Masque, and the Melter (in his Iron Man & X-O Manowar idle stance)

Mini-logos – Marvel: Crimson Dynamo and Madame Masque added.

All new custom sprites and mini-logos were added to the GFX Generators, where you can make your own graphics like the one at the top of this post!

And now, check out the Iron Man 2025 Sprite Showcase!


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March 27th, 2025

If you can read this and are wondering why the site is taking so long to load, Dreamhost is still working on the issues that are currently slowing down sites that they host, and that includes ScrollBoss and the rest of my illmosis.net sites. I mentioned this in last week’s mini-update, but I figured it’d have been fixed because Dreamhost usually gets stuff like this sorted out by now. But it’s still going.

While it’s still possible to upload to my account, Dreamhost’s status page says “Content restoration from our backup servers is still underway. Most hosted sites are online, but some users may experience intermittent slowness as the restore continues. We will continue to provide updates as the restoration progresses.” That might mean that the old backups could overwrite whatever I add to the site before Dreamhost’s work is done. So I’m going to wait until that work is done before I add the update.

But the 2025 Iron Man Showcase will still hit the ScrollBoss YouTube Channel some time this weekend. It’s done, but I might work in a few more clips if I have the time. There are sprites I didn’t have time to do, so I might just try to work them into the mix while waiting for the sites to be fixed.

Thank you and sorry for the inconvenience.

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March 20th, 2025

Sprites:
Captain America and the Avengers: animated flying sprites for the heroes, some enemy drones, partial Giant Robot (Sentinel), and a few more pickup items added.

ToyBoss: I just got the Billy Lee from Syndicate Collectible’s Double Dragon line of 7-inch action figures and took some photos, including some size comparison pics. Updated my Jada Toys Street Fighter roster pic, now that I have Dhalsim and Guile. Now I only need Dee Jay to be 100% caught up on regular figures.

Dreamhost (where my sites’ accounts are hosted) has been doing maintenance all day (and possibly before), so things may be running slowly or not at all. But I uploaded the update a few hours ago just so I could say that I updated on Wednesday like the old days. Maintenance is still going on after midnight and previews for WordPress posts won’t work, so I’m posting what I have now and fix it when everything’s running at full speed again.


Last year I teased a logo for a solo version of a Superhero Sprite Showcase that I planned to just update a little bit, but a rough last half of 2024 kept that (and a lot of other plans) from happening. To make up for being so late with it, I’ve added much more than I’d have done last year and you’ll see that video on the ScrollBoss YouTube Channel next week. A few of those sprites, including some new villains, will be added to the Custom Sprite gallery and image generator. Here’s a preview:


If you need an extra clue, this hero had a sprite added in this week’s update.

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February 26th, 2025

Here’s a game-focused update for Black History Month 2025!

Custom Sprites:
Guardians of the ‘Hood: not only did I redo both of Tanya’s old sprites, but I also made her win pose, and they all match. This game also got a solo gallery.
Streets of Rage: I made improvements on my sprites for Adam and Skate, but scroll down if you want to see even more.
Raging Justice: redrew the head for the Nikki Justice sprite I made in 2018, plus gave the game its own gallery.

All custom sprites for this update were added to the main GFX Generator, where I made the pic at the top of this post!

Taking it back to the old days of the site, I’m updating some of the sprite galleries. That’s right, the galleries with sprites from real games.
Sprites:
Riot City: Starting the gallery with idle, walk, and taunt .GIFs of heroes Paul and Bobby, including one of the greatest walk animations of all time. I thought I posted these sprites years ago, but I only had the rips sitting in .MNG files and versions done for that “beat ’em up heroes” video clip.
Streets of Rage: captured and added .GIF of the idle loops for Adam, Axel, and Blaze

Finally, I had to quickly change plans and make an update to my 2023 Black History Month-themed video, with nearly every clip updated and new character profile moments. All the new custom sprites show up in this, and you’ll also get a look at the newly animated Adam Hunter and ‘Skate’ Hunter sprites!


The Arcade Quartermaster celebrated its 17th birthday on Feb. 24th by adding shrines for Tekken 2 and DBZ fighting games!

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February 12th, 2025

We’re in the middle of Black History Month, so I’m hitting you with some new sprites of Black characters from comics and toys!

Custom Sprites:
Marvel: the Falcon
DC Comics: Bumblebee (’00s cartoon and ’80s comic versions)
M.A.S.K.: Hondo MacLean in his v.1 outfit and Blaster mask

Mini-logos: Bumblebee added to DC Comics.

all new custom sprites and mini-logos were added to the GFX Generator, which is what I used to make the graphic at the top of the post.


Just a heads up: I’m now working more hours at the day job, so I have less time (and energy) to work on this stuff and commissions. I’ll do my best to keep it moving, though! Also, unless we talked about it before now, I won’t be taking on any more commission work until further notice.

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January 29th, 2025

For the first update of 2025, and it’s more than me just adding sprites (but there are sprites)

Custom Sprites
Ganbare Goemon: Goemon gets a sprite based on his design mostly famous for its 16-bit era. Officially the “long overdue” sprite of the update.
Captain Commando: Mummy Commando gets a scratch-made idle sprite. 3/4ths of the team done!
Shao-Lin’s Road: Wanpyou, the hero, in his famous GUTS! victory pose.
Marvel Comics: Black Widow gets a sprite in the same pose as her first full panel appearance in Tales of Suspense #52, drawn by the late great Don Heck. Included styles: ToS #52 green dress, ToS #64 black fishnet outfit, classic black suit, and 80s gray suit.
Illmosis Network: My character Nutroll seems to be up to something with his new sprite, making the whole update look weird. I can’t be mad at him, I made him up and he’s BEEN weird. I almost didn’t add this to the site today, but I figure maybe he’ll have a more fun sprite later if I post this now. Never can tell with him, but it’s worth a shot.

Mini-logos
Konami: Shao-lin’s Road

ToyBoss
– pictures: new Mega Man villains pic (Elec Man and Cut Man were my first figures of the year), updated and separated Super Mario rosters (just got a regular Koopa Troopa), X-Men Genesis/Mega Drive roster, and Brotherhood of Mutants (comic). Also: a quick pic of Jada Toys Street Fighter II Cammy, which just arrived from BigBadToyStore this morning.

Game Index
– added Shao-lin’s Road (arcade)

Logos
– added Shao-lin’s Road (arcade)

All new custom sprites and mini-logos have been added to the main GFX Generator, where you can make graphics and fake screenshots like the one at the top of this post!


I also dropped a quick ScrollBoss channel ident to the ScrollBoss YouTube channel a few days before this update.


Making their first public appearance are the chunky lo-res sprites that represent the words Scroll and Boss. I also updated the clip that zooms out to show a bunch of my scratch-made sprites, making the zoom distance longer and adding more sprites, including that brand-new Goemon sprite. That’s not the clip’s final form, I’ll be adding more and more to that as time goes on.


July 19th, 2025 will be the 25th Anniversary of the day I started this site. I can’t believe it, and I don’t know where the time went, but at least I’ve got something to show for it. Thanks for stopping by and making it even more fun to know I’m not alone in liking this stuff, back in the days when pixels weren’t fashionable. I don’t know if I’ll be doing anything big to celebrate, but I’d like to try.

I’ve got non-anniversary plans, though I’m not sure how much commission work will eat into that like it did last year, so I’m going to cool it with the teases for now. But I’m going to try and finish some of that stuff I teased before and didn’t get to complete (specific things in this update were made for that).

I’m not feeling 100% right now, so the updates may be small for a while as I try to get better. But I’ll try to keep at least a small update per month going until I can grab some health item from a Castlevania brick or Metro City garbage can and get back in the game. See you in February!

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December 30th, 2024

Time for the Wrap-Up, including a dip back into the Revenge of 1989!


Custom Sprites – Final Fight: new sprites of Cody (a redone fight stance), Poison, Rolento, and Sodom have been added.

Of course, all the new sprites were added to the GFX Generators, where you can use menus to make a pic like the one at the top of this post!

Finally, it’s time for the Wrap-Up video. But it’s not just that, it’s a recap of 2024’s updates and videos, a mini Toy Haul with 3 displays, and another show of Final Fight clips that’s basically a preview for a larger Final Fight showcase in 2025.

That’s all for 2024. Thanks for visiting the site and I hope you’ll have even more fun in 2025!

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December 24th, 2024

Shake a hand, shake a hand, it’s Christmas time again and that means it’s time for the Toyhaul! The 2024 Toyhaul site update has new pixel art to celebrate two franchises celebrating their 40th anniversaries and one celebrating its 50th! The first, obvious one was planned, but the other two just happened to work out that way!

Transformers: a new Optimus Prime sprite to celebrate the 40th anniversary. I think I’ve finally got a style together that I like for making Transformers sprites, so keep an eye out for more next year.

Princess of Power: The line gets its own gallery for the 40th anniversary! a new and more powerful She-Ra sprite takes the sword from the sprite I made of her years ago, and she’s joined by friend Frosta!

Microman/Micronauts: Takara’s Microman toyline, known in the United States as Micronauts, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year! Microman M121 Mason (and the 3 other variants of his subset of figures) gets a sprite in the same pose he strikes in his portrait in Takara’s DreamMix TV World Fighters for the PS2, the Hudson/Konami/Takara crossover fighting game that also stars Convoy/Optimus Prime. Believe it or not, I was supposed to have this done for last year’s toy haul but ran out of time, but I did finish (and didn’t post) the Microman mini-logo then. Speaking of which…

Mini-logos: … I added that Takara Microman logo and the Mego Micronauts toy logo
.

The new sprites and logos were added to the GFX Generators where you can make fake screenshots like the one at the top of this page. Just warning you ahead of time that Optimus is too tall for the MvC ending screen.

ToyBoss: A batch of new photos were added, including group shots of some 1:12 scale game heroes and villains, TMNT heroes and villains roster pics, Marvel Legends Avengers figures I have now, and a G.I. JOE classified Cobra “blue uniforms” group shot. But my favorite is a comic/toy team-up pre-fight pic that I experimented with earlier this year with plans of a 3rd obvious character joining that fight.


The “Trick or Beat ‘Em Up” project has been heating up with a lot of new info lately, including news that Megan McDuffee will sing for the horror brawler if the Ko-Fi campaign is successful! More info about that here and the game’s Ko-Fi page is here.


Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year to those of you who won’t be back until next year. If you’re still sticking around the internet, get ready, because next week is… THE WRAP-UP!

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December 16th, 2024

A bigger update is coming, but I just wanted to give an earlier heads-up about what’s happening. Here’s what’s in today’s update:
Sprites: Fixes and improvements to all the Final Fight galleries.
ToyBoss: A new Marvel Legends group pic of the playable Captain America and the Avengers line-up with the recent do-over of Iron Man’s “Neo-classic” armor (but with the later John Romita Jr. space boots). The retro carded figure from a few years ago is that exact version, but that mold was from when MLs were a bit smaller, making him look odd if he stands next later figures.

Due to a lot of offline things that have been going on for months, the main December update (not this one) will not be that big this year, or at least as big as I planned. In fact, I can say that about a lot of the past year. Even though I need a break to give my drawing hand some rest, I was able to finish some of the static sprites I planned for the site and some animations you’ll see on video before 2025 starts. Here’s a preview of what’s on the way:

There will be a small toy-themed update next week, and then the Wrap-Up will happen a few days before the new year starts.


Reminder: Rob “Dire51” Strangman’s books about video games (and more) are available again on Lulu.com!

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November 29th, 2024

A bit more Karnov’s Revenge is added to the site in honor of Karnovember!

GFX Generators: Added the real Karnov’s Revenge/FH Dynamite sprites, portraits and characters for Feilin, Mizoguchi, and Zazie to the generators, along with Feilin’s KR/FHD stage to the background options to the screen styles that fit. I also added the Theater Lobby – horror background to more screenstyles, and added sprites and palettes to Q.Bee.


This update was supposed to be added much earlier in the month, but due a lot of the usual offline issues, commission work, and a worn-out drawing hand slowed me down a lot in November. I still have a bit of irritation when moving my hand, even when I type, so I’m going to keep this short.

This December will have a toy update, but probably not its own video. There will be an Unfinished Business update, with that and the Toy update possibly being part of the yearly Wrap-Up. The one definite thing is that there will be a Final Fight update to celebrate the 35th anniversary. That’s all for now, see you in December!

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