Today is the 20th anniversary of the original ScrollBoss website. Starting on Tripod with a template and some miscolored PC screenshots and sprites from a Sega compilation, this site started as a place for me to talk about old action video games, especially the ones that didn’t have much presence on the internet back in the year 2000. It eventually grew into a place for me to do the same thing but now I’m making most of the sprites that I’m adding to the site, and I never would’ve believed it if you’d told me that decades ago.
This hasn’t been the easiest year for most of us, and the last few weeks have been really irritating for me, but working on this site and seeing your reactions to the pixel art has done what it’s always done for me, help pull me through some tough times. Thank you for that and I hope this place can do the same for you, even if it’s just for a few moments of browsing the galleries and messing with the image generators. There will be multiple updates throughout the week, along with some visitor participation moments (more on that in a bit), so stay tuned!
Custom Sprites: new sprites (and new galleries) include…
– Bionic Commando (NEW separate gallery): Radd Spencer (NES design) in MvC3/MvCI fight stance
– Double Dragon: Billy and Jimmy Lee (DD Advance fight stance)
– Dragon’s Crown(NEW separate gallery): Elf, Wizard
– the Legend of Kage: Kage
– Metroid: Zero Suit Samus
– Rushing Beat: Kazan (Brawl Brothers/Rushing Beat Ran select screen pose)
– Streets of Rage: Cherry Hunter
– Sunset Riders (NEW!): FINALLY, right? Standard gunfight stance remakes for all four heroes kick off the new gallery.
– NuChallenger: : Brad Steel (completing the hero team from Treachery in Beatdown City)
All newness has been added to the GFX Generators where you can make your own graphics like the examples up there!
The print company I work through, Perfect Posters, reopened a while ago, so prints are once again available for sale in the shop! Also, I’ve set up a page on RedBubble with some original pixel art available mostly as stickers, but it’s on a few other products, too.
I pay to keep my sites hosted with my own money, so any sales puts a little money back into my pocket and helps support my Maruchan Instant Lunch habit!
Later this week, I’ll put together a special arcade background for the image generator based on YOUR votes. The Twitter post is here and the Instagram post is here, but I’ll repeat the set-up here. Leave a reply with up to seven games you’d like to see based on this list. NOTE: if you choose “Capcom Big Blue (Capcom’s late 80s to late 90s arcade games that worked on the CPS or CPS2 system)” or “Neo Geo”, please mention WHICH games for that you want (“Capcom Big Blue – Captain Commando” or “Neo Geo Metal Slug 2 and Samurai Shodown”). Here’s the list (click to see the full sized version):
Happy Scrolliversary!!
These are some great sprites in this update (no surprise really, coming from you), and I can’t wait for part 2!
Billy Cool (is that surname only in the Sega version?) is my favorite member of the Sunset Riders; and Billy Lee is one of my favorite video game characters EVER, so it’s nice to see them both make an appearance. No, I don’t have a thing for the name “Billy”. I have a thing for the colour blue.
As I’ve said before, we need more video game characters who fight with guitars, so thanks for including Cherry! I also like that Legend of Kage sprite (just an FYI though, great sprite, but he must’ve accidentally got left out of the write-up!).
I think it’s gonna take me some time, narrowing down my vote to just seven of those games, so I’ll check back with that one!
Congrats on twenty years of bringing videogaming goodness to the interwebs!!
Thank you, Eddie, especially for your replies and help with site mistakes over the years!
Billy from MMPR fits that Billies in blue crew, too! I’ve only seen Billy’s “Cool” surname in the Genesis port, and other things I’ve read mention that being the source of it, too.
I was hustling until the last minute to get the right balance of sprites for the update (and keep it a games characters-only update), and Kage (one of the last sprites I finished) was left out. Thanks for the heads up on that!
Part 2 will probably be on Tuesday, but will definitely have a comic book theme!
Okay, me again, but it’s the next day and I worked out my top seven picks. I know you didn’t say we need to put them in order, but I ordered mine anyway, from highest priority to lowest:
1. Double Dragon [No surprises there, I guess];
2. X-Men (6 plr);
3. Joust;
4. Q*bert;
5. ESWAT;
6. Ghosts n Goblins;
7. Dig Dug.
Samus thought she could sneak in and I wouldn’t notice, but I did!! Good stuff, as usual!!
And again, congrats on the anniversary, and many thanks, from a fan of your work!
Thanks for the votes, Eddie!
Samus really did sneak in, because I was looking at what I had in the update and it felt like it needed an extra kick. I needed another female character and I needed something sci-fi, plus I needed a popular character and Samus fit all those categories.