The 8th month is in its 9th day, and that’s the day this site pays tribute to a year unlike any other year: 1989. That year was so packed that I dedicated a small section of the site to it in 2009, the 20th anniversary of so many of this site’s favorite games that I just put it all in one update. In 2014, the 25th anniversary, I spent nearly the whole year doing updates with nothing but 1989-related content, because doing updates filled with Final Fight, the Revenge of Shinobi, Strider, Golden Axe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles kinda just looked like regular site updates here anyway. Now it’s a yearly thing here, where even non-game items from 1989 get in on the fun. Now we’ve got the info dump out of the way, let’s get on to what’s new to the site today!
Custom Sprites:
– Altered Beast (new gallery): redone Werewolf
– Bad Dudes (new gallery): Kunoichi
– Castlevania: Trevor f***ing Belmont
– Double Dragon: the annoying ninja from the NES version of Double Dragon II: the Revenge
– Final Fight: Abigail
– Jaleco: acrobat enemy from Astyanax (arcade)
– Mario series: Princess Daisy
– Mega Man (new gallery): Mega Man (scratch-made jump shot to match the MvC sprites), Heat Man, Wood Man, Bubble Man
– Sega: Ashra (Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle)
– Shinobi: redone Joe Musashi (RoS)
– Strider: redone Hiryu (all-new arcade sprite remake), Rascal
– Other games: Yuko (Valis series)
– Movies: the Joker (Jack Nicholson), Ah Jong and Li Ying (the Killer), Tina (Do the Right Thing)
Mini-Logos:
– Nintendo: Princess Daisy
– Telenet: Valis
– Human: Human, Fire Pro Wrestling: Combination Tag
– Spike Chunsoft: Spike Chunsoft
– Movies: the Killer (Hong Kong and English logos)
All the sprites and most of the logos have been added to the image generators so you can make your own fake screenshots and graphics. New to the main fighting-scale generator is a remake of the beginning of scene 2 from the arcade TMNT game.
Here’s a couple of reminders about recent games that just happen to be linked to 1989:
River City Ransom: Underground from Conatus Creative Inc., a revival of Technos’ English localization of Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari (1989), plays more like something fans like myself hope and dream for than something we’d actually get. It expands everything, from the combat system stats and storyline all the way down to lovingly crafted item descriptions., but adds enough of its own spark to make it feel fresh. Yes, it’s tough in the beginning, but so was the original River City Ransom when I played it, so their changing things up a bit actually makes it feel more like the first time of playing the old RCR than the hundredth. That’s not an easy magic trick to pull, but the crew at Conatus did it.
You’ve probably at least heard someone mention Fire Pro Wrestling World recently. and there’s a lot of reasons for it. Picking up where FPW Returns for PS2 (which I also own) left off means that it’s already deeper than any wrestling game you’ll find on the market now, even though it’s only in Early Access. It’s not your average wrestling game and takes a while to adjust to the timing-based play style, but search the internet and you’ll find enough info to help you get into the game. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to know what kind of Edit Wrestlers I’ve made for it so far (nothing good enough to upload yet).
That wraps up this year’s Revenge of 1989. I know I didn’t get around to a lot of games (I’ve still got a few sketches that I didn’t have a chance to turn into sprites yet), so I apologize for any of your favorite games being left out. Maybe I’ll get to some of those others (like Alpha Denshi’s Gang Wars) next year.