Custom Sprites: Friday the 13th – LJN game heroes (Crissy, Debbie, George, Laura, Mark, Paul) redone Halloween – Michael Myers (choking Bob added) Music – Scarface/Brad (Geto Boys) in the cane, the black suit, and the Diary of a Madman. Halloween fell on a weekend, had to do it.
7:00 PM
One last thing: a short horror-themed video! It’s just over a minute, either brand-new and updated clips!
Elsewhere…
Arcade Quartermaster updated with new shrines for Sinistar and Missile Command! A gigantic howling demon-faced death star flying at you is considered horror in my opinion.
The biggest game site surprise of the year: Dire has resurrected the West Mansion Splatterhouse site! One of the earliest fan sites to haunt the web, the site is so legendary that even Namco acknowledged it! Check out the link to see Dire’s message about what he’s been up to and the future of the site.
The DangerTerrorHorrorThon 2021 begins with… a host segment?
October 29th, 2021
3:00PM
Custom Sprites: Horror Elvira – new Movie Macabre couch sprite, celebrating her 40th anniversary this year! This sprite is in the same style seen in the Horror print from a few years ago, and I’ll eventually redo her earlier sprites to match that style. the Last Drive-In – Joe Bob Briggs and Darcy the Mail Girl of “The Last Drive-In” added
The Beat ‘Em Up Showcade is ready! Okay, the video has been up since yesterday, BUT STILL. I originally planned to have Showcase videos for Double Dragon and Bad Dudes last year, but *shrugs* 2020. You know what I mean. Trying to make them in 2021 didn’t work out for better reasons, so I decided to make a Showcade filled with beat ’em ups. Nothing with an outside license (TMNT, Punisher, X-Men) is in the vid, because the straight-up game content felt a little neglected here lately. Let’s watch the video first, then I’ll break down what was added to the site.
Once again, mad thanks to Wizzy for allowing me to use that amazing BGM track for the video. I’ve had it stuck in my head since I picked it for the video, and it makes me feel like kicking doors open and throwing oil drums at people all day. AVPboy’s music does the same for me, and the added pressure of trying to do justice with their music in the videos pushes me to work harder.
Now for the newness that was added to the site itself!
Custom Sprites:
– Crime Fighters: Sledge, Hawk and Boomer from Crime Fighters 2/Vendetta finally get fight stance sprites, Hawk gets a redone taunt to match, and Boomer’s taunt gets a size fix. CF2/Vendetta knife thugs were also added.
– Double Dragon: Linda’s earlier two sprites completely redrawn, an extra variation of the taunt was added, and are available in arcade, NES, and DDII designs. The Billy and Jimmy Lee “JPN arcade flyer” poses were updated to fit the newer style Lee Bros. sprites I started adding months ago.
– Final Fight: Maki (FF2 fight stance, select pose edited to match newer sprite), Mike Haggar – Saturday Night Slam Masters gear (also added to the Slam Masters gallery)
– Growl: Jetgun
– Kung-Fu Master: All Five “Sons of the Devil” (a.k.a. the Bosses) get new sprites, and Silvia gets a sprite, too.
– Kunio-kun: Kunio (Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun flyer pose)
– Renegade (new separate gallery): the Renegade/Mr. K, Sabu
– Rushing Beat: Wendy Milan (taunt)
– Streets of Rage: Barbon and Jet(SoR/BK 2) added, Skate Hunter updated (made shorter than the 2020 sprites)
All new sprites are now in the image generators, where you can make your own sprite scenes, fake screenshots, etc.
It’s finally here: the first all-Beat ‘Em Up Showcade video is now on the YouTube channel:
I’ve been slowly working towards doing this for years, and it feels good to finally have it done. You’ll see a lot of brand-new sprites and I’ll be adding them to the site over the coming days (there are possibly a few that didn’t appear in the video. I’m so tired now, I don’t even know). Stay tuned, the site updates will be coming soon after you see this!
Happy Birthday to Mike Haggar, Mayor of Earth (formerly Metro City)!
I’ve redone the “raised fists” pose sprite (based on the official art from the first game) in the new style of the two Haggar sprites I added in August and added it to the sprite gallery and image generator! I still need to make some adjustments to all of them, and that’s when Haggar’s optional palettes will return in the image generator.
You’ll see more of the mayor, his friends and more belt scroll legend later this month, because the Beat ‘Em Up Showcade is still on the way!
Expect some all new sprites along with some more do-overs:
So, until then, be good, because Haggar is watching you…
Custom Sprites: Double Dragon: Abobo and some variations of that sprite were redone, along with Abobo getting a sub-gallery.
Marvel Comics: Avalanche, Batroc, and the Controller.
All these sprites have been added to the main image generator (Avalanche and Controller are in the Marvel Villains character slot).
I took the 2017 sprite, increased the size by 400%, put it in Clip Studio, traced it with a 5px. brush, and exported it at 25%. Clean-up work seems to take a while, but this process is still an experiment for me. I originally used the original NES-ish angle of the head, but decided to draw a forward-looking head alt head to use instead. BTW: this is why I still haven’t finished a spriting tutorial, because my process never stops changing.
A similar process was used to redo some linework I’d drawn and scanned of Avalanche and the Controller, along with remaking Batroc from scratch, and all of them are now in the Marvel gallery. Nearly all the Marvel villain Capcom-based sprite edits I had from the old days. Also made some headway on a Marvel video that I’ve wanted to make for over a decade:
Remember, the first Beat ‘Em Up Showcade video will strike this September, so stay tuned if you want to see more pixel art remakes based on Double Dragon, Final Fight, Streets of Rage, and more!
This Revenge of 1989 update, celebrating the year that many of this site’s favorite games were released, may not have a lot of new sprites, but it definitely has big sprites to make up for it!
Custom Sprites
– Final Fight: Completely redone sprites of Mike Haggar, fight stance and hands on hips, in a hopefully better style added.
– Golden Axe: Red Dragon, Blue Dragon (and Tyris Flare riding both) and Chicken Leg (edited from the 2018 Chicken Stinger sprite) added, along with adding sub-galleries for many characters
Sprites: Golden Axe gallery (GA1 arcade beasts, heroes on beasts and items)
Getting the new computer finished a few months ago made me want to experiment with different ways of making sprites, and the main new sprites were originally drawn in Clip Studio (instead of the pencil-paper-sometimes ink scans I usually make) before being shrunken to sprite size. Had to make adjustments to the ride/bizarrian Dragon after shrinking, but it’s pretty close:
I also wanted a better, unified set of sprites for Haggar for September’s Beat ‘Em Up Showcase (preview here), so I used Clip Studio trace my old sprites of him at 1000%.
I made changes after I shrank and made pixel art of the first two poses, along with drawing the head at pixel size, so I’ll bring those new sprites into the CS file, adjust the lines to fit the sprites for reference for future sprites, like Haggar’s arms up pose from the old Final Fight artwork.
I’ve done other experiments, but I’ll post about them later.
I used to say that it never feels like I’ve been doing this for more than 10 years, but after a year as crappy and time-distorted as 2020, it feels like I’ve been going for 15 years now. You may notice that this update is heavy on beat ’em up (a.k.a. belt scroll), and you’ll see why in a bit. For now, here’s the newness:
Custom Sprites
– Bad Dudes: new sprites of Animal (+ Zombie Animal) and Hage Ninja
– Battletoads (new separate gallery): Pimple (finally completing the playable trio)
– Double Dragon: redone DDA stance Billy and Jimmy Lee (replacing the ones from the 20th ScrollBoss anniversary), classic stance Billy, Jimmy and Jeff
– Kunio-kun: Misuzu (SD style)
– Mega Man: new scratch-made MvC style Mega Man in Rockman Famicom cover art pose.
– Rushing Beat: New Lord J taunt, and improved fight stance sprite, improved Douglas Bild stand sprite
– Streets of Rage: new Max Thunder sprite (back turned) in SoR 2 and 4 designs
– Undercover Cops: The Zan (Claude) sprite I teased in the gallery icon since January is done and in the gallery, along with Matt, completing the playable crew!
– Marvel Comics: Black Widow (semi-remake of an old sprite edit pose), Crossbones (boss in DECO’s Captain America and the Avengers), Firestar (assist char in Maximum Carnage, but not in this outfit)
– DC Comics: Green Lantern Hal Jordan (scratch-made remake of the edit-based pose I made for him 20 years ago)
– G.I.JOE: all-new Baroness fight stance (referencing her old sprite edit pose from the early days of this site)
Mini-logos
– Marvel Comics: Crossbones (Captain America #363 cover), the Defenders
– Capcom: Shadaloo (SCRI logo) and Street Fighter x Tekken
All new sprites and mini-logos have been added to the Graphics Generators, along with the brand-new (and long overdue) Beat ‘Em Up arcade background!
The “Memory Lane” page was updated for the first time in almost 10 years, mainly trimming a few things down and adding info on the image generators and videos.
Thanks to an incredibly kind Ko-Fi donation, I put enough money together to buy the latest version of MOHO (Anime Studio)! For the first time in half a year, I have access to all that old work I did for videos again, so I can get back to those video Works-in-Progress. Being without AS Pro 10 had one positive effect, because it forced me to dig deeper into using Blender (even if it’s the pre-2.80 version with the old Blender engine) and building the clips inside Vegas (instead of just using it as a clip assembler). All of those things will be used for the next Sprite Showcade:
