The Revenge of 1989 – 2019 edition

1989 wasn’t just a good year, it’s a year that changed entertainment in a lot of permanent ways. Thing is, you pretty much had to be there, or maybe been alive long enough to get a at least a minor lay of the land before it to see how things changed after. The arrival of multiple Genre-changing beat ’em ups, the 16-bit invasion of America with the Genesis and Turbografx-16, handheld gaming changing forever (thanks to Nintendo’s Game Boy and the Atari Lynx), mutant mania hitting video games (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and X-Men), are just part of why 1989 is so amazing, and that’s why this site celebrates that year on August 9th. Without further yapping, here’s the new content:

Custom Sprites
– Crime City: Mayor (tied up)
– Crime Fighters: Final Boss/Mr. Lee
– Final Fight: Cody (new FF JPN flyer pose), Poison (Street Fighter V stance with FF, SFV, and FF marquee outfits), Andore (stand), Jessica (kidnapped, red dress)
– Golden Axe: Skeleton (redone), Ax Battler, Tyris Flare and Gilius Thunderhead (MD cover art poses)
– Shinobi: Hayate Musashi (Shadow Dancer arcade)
– Wonder Boy: Leo and Purapril (Wonder Boy III:Monster Lair)
– TMNT: April (kidnapped, cinema pose)
– Literature: Chu Liuxiang (Master Chu and Drukard Hu/the Chu Liuxiang series by Gu Long)
– DC Comics: Batman (1989 NES title screen/movie still pose),Robin/Tim Drake (debuted in 1989)
edit: couldn’t help it, decided to add:
– Kunio-Kun/River City Ransom: Downtown Nekketusu Monogatari/River City Ransom NES style sprite of Freddy Krueger from Nightmare on Elm Street 5 (1989) added.

GFX Generator: all the new content that fits in the generator have been added, and the main generator gets a remake of the Electoric store in the second stage of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.The Marvel vs. Capcom 1 Ending option in the main generator and standalone MvC 1 generator now has more backgrounds based on and/or from Final Fight, Pac-Man games (Pac-Land debuted for the PC Engine in 1989), DC Comics (including the Batman 1989 stage remake I did years ago), Friday the 13th (LJN for NES remake), and all the arcades.

edit (Aug. 10, 2019): added Sunsoft blue top NES box to “Boxes, Flyer & Posters 160×192” in the main generator. “Hey, that background in the Crime Fighters box isn’t in the generator!” That’s one of the many unfinished things that didn’t make it in this time, and is also why there’s three tied-up sprites in the update.

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Criminal Minded

Free as a bird to fly about on stage. Here’s the newness:

New scratch-made sprites of Final Fight’s Poison (USF4 and Final Fight style),Roxy, Axl & Slash, two jail-breakers from Crime City and those hated little thieves from Golden Axe are now in their galleries and in the GFX Generators that use fighting game sprites.

In case you haven’t heard, here’s the idea for the Fine Young Capitalists’ game project:

“We took five women that had never made a game before and said they could make any game they wanted. We would help them create a pitch and in some cases a demo so they could sell their idea.”

Check out the Fine Young Capitalists website and Indiegogo campaign. The worst part will be choosing only one game to vote for. The platformer fan in me wants to see Lux (especially with those game play mechanic ideas), but Afterlife Empire calls out to that part of my soul that was obsessed with Beetlejuice. I hope they find a way to get all five games made eventually. Help them out if you can!

The work I planned to do for this site is still being slowed down. Moving into a different apartment caused the months-old injury to my left arm and back to ache and randomly stop working again, so it’s uncomfortable to sit and work on this stuff as much as I usually do. Still, the September updates will make up for these chumpy August updates. I feel much better and should be able to sling many more pixels next month. BTW: there will be an update at the main Illmosis site soon that includes new fan art of a classic 1989 game character!

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Crime City Fighters

Custom Sprites
– Konami: Crime Fighters hero added along with mohawk and domme enemies.
– Capcom: Final Fight’s heavyweights added.
– Taito: Tony Gibson (Crime City) added.

Mini-Logos
– Astro City: Astro City, Samaritan
– Marvel: Captain America (’80s)
– Sunsoft: Tough Turf
– Taito: FairyLand Story
– Illmosis Network: The Revenge of 1989

GFX Generators – The new mini-logos were added to their proper characters (Capt. America, Ptolemy, Samaritan) and the following characters were added:
– Konami: Crime Fighters and Crime Fighters – Enemies (with two drone enemies)
– Capcom: Wong Who, G.Oriber, Bill Bull added to Mad Gear thugs
– Taito: Tony Gibson (Crime City) added

Bad News: those portrait/s I teased on Tumblr over a week ago aren’t in this update.
Good News: I saved them for a semi-themed update for next week. They’ll appear along with a very timely sprite. You’ll also see a better version of the sprite in this post added to the site then, too.

Breakin’ News

Treachery in Beatdown City, the tactical beat ’em up with an 8-bit look, has been relaunched on Kickstarter, so help out if you can!

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The Return of the Revenge of 1989, part 1

I made a quick group of articles in late 2009 called, “The Revenge of 1989” to talk about game-related things of that year. 2009 was the 20th anniversary of that year and, even then, I was plotting to make sure I’d have something decent to show for the 25th anniversary. There will be multiple updates this year to do just that and this update starts with a revamp of the original articles and a little something extra.

Why am I celebrating this year so much? That video is only a hint at how many of the things this site celebrates just happened to have been made in 1989. So consider the next ten months a party as, from this day until December 31st, 2014, this site will try to give 1989 some long overdue respect. New articles will be added (including a series of awards), new sprites will be made of that year’s characters (I think it’s time I finally sprited the rest of the original Mad Gear gang) and more random crap that I can’t hint at. There will be still be non-1989 themed updates, but those games will be the focus of the year. Here are the other things you can find in this week’s update.

Custom Sprites – Kunio-Kun added to the Technos gallery. Grandmaster Meio added to the Capcom gallery. Raymond Broady (Crime City) added to the Taito gallery. Alex Kidd and Kasumi (the Revenge of Shinobi) added to the Sega gallery.

Game Index
– Added: Mega Man 2 (NES)
– Updated: Crime City (arcade)

Sprites – Crime Fighters gallery updated with a lot of sprites and a few minor animations.

Mini-logos – the Revenge of Shinobi added to Sega section, Crime City added to Taito section.

GFX Generators – Guy and Cody were updated with a few SFA sprites and sprite edits. Here’s how the new scratch-made sprites look.

Alex Kidd, Grandmaster Meio, Raymond Broady were added to the Vs. and Group generators, Kasumi’s sprite was added to the Zeed/Neo Zeed char slot and Kunio was updated with his new sprite. Check out the goofy thing I just added to the Vs. generator, though:


It’s the Janken battle stage from Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle. Now you can set up your own Rock-Paper-Scissors battles. I’ve made all three Janken poses for Alex Kidd, but you’ll have to use your own memory to figure out the other characters who, like Ken, have win poses similar to rock, paper or scissors.

That’s all for this update. While some of these updates might be far apart, know that some I’m putting extra time into this while working on some other neglected projects. Feel free to leave a comment about your own favorite video games from 1989.

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