It’s the 24th Anniversary of the site, so I’m here with a variety of newness! It’s all game-related, even the comic and cartoon characters are game-specific. Beat ’em ups, platformers, and fighting games are all repped here.

Custom Sprites:
– Double Dragon: Abobo (victory pose)
– Fighter’s History: new sprite of Fighter’s History series hero Liu Yungmie
– Metroid: Mother Brain
– Popeye: Popeye the Sailor Man (finally, I know, I know)
– Marvel: the Punisher (new pose), female ninjas from Capcom Punisher game

All new custom sprites added to the image generators, except for the really tall Mother Brain sprite, only the shorter version is in there since it seems to work in most big scene situations.

Sprites: the Punisher (more sprites)

Also added or updated in the generators: Akuma/Gouki (Cyber-Akuma sprites)

ToyBoss: I just got my pre-order of the 52Toys Baby Commando figure from HobbyLink Japan in the mail this week and took a picture of the whole squad still on the cards. I’ll be opening them up soon and taking more pics, and I can’t wait because they all look amazing. For now, I’ve added a pic of the crew to the Toyboss page.

I found a comic book article that talks about the really early plans for Data East’s “Avengers in Galactic Storm” and even has pictures of an earlier 3D character model for Captain America in a different style. I put it in a blog post with scans large enough for you to read. You’ll find a lot of interesting info like the earlier roster plans, more confirmation that Iron Man’s home game rights interfered with how he was used in arcade games for years, and the original genre-bending plans for the Story Mode.

Thank you for visiting the site and extra thanks for the people who reply here in the news posts and elsewhere on the internet! Due to offline reasons I didn’t get to do all the things I’d planned (Cadillacs and Dinosars, more SNK stuff in the generators), but I’ll try to work them into future updates. I just want you to know you’ve been heard!

There are a few things that still need to be done (better scans for the Avengers article and putting Popeye’s mini-logo in the gallery, I’ll work on that over the weekend.

added July 20th, 2024:

Street Fighter Alpha 3: All of the standard Vs. portraits have been added from the arcade, Playstation, and SFA3 Max PSP versions. I can’t guarantee the PSP rips 100% because I had to fill them in with ripped tiles.

“So what did you do all month?”

Some of it was spent working on things you’ll see through the rest of this year.

I also spent a lot of time trying to get better at using Blender. A background you may recognize from this site’s image generators is coming to life in 3D and I’m taking the chance to get used to doing real UV textures.

So here’s the thing. I made a quick Marvel vs. Capcom video to celebrate the news of the upcoming collection and posted it to Twitter and Instagram. I was going to upload a slightly better version to YouTube but didn’t want to risk it with the copyrighted song and used the MvC1 end credits when I posted it there. Chicken? Maybe. Still, here’s that version:

I had way more ideas for a longer version, so maybe I’ll save the R&B classic soundtrack for that instead.

Mr. Q just put up another combo-heavy preview for the “Fight Forever” project!

Speaking of Final Fight, I’ve seen pics going around of insane scalping of 52Toys’ Final Fight action figures, including someone trying to sell all 3 for over $300! Don’t feed the scalpers! Two places I’ve bought from before still have them for pre-order.
– BigBadToyStore has all three for $34 each and a shipping minimum of $4.
– AliExpress has them straight from 52Toys where they’re $35 each, $99 if all bought at the same time, and free shipping.

Stay tuned for July 19, the birthday of this website!

Custom Sprites
– Marvel Comics: New sprites of Archangel, Beast, Cyclops, Magik, Rogue, Goblin Queen, Magneto, Mister Sinister, Toad.
– Portraits – X-Men:Children of the Atom: Mister Sinister
mini-logos (Marvel): Magik and Minster Sinister

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

edit May 27th, 2024: it’s late, but there’s now a little video to go along with this update, and you’ll even see a few sprites that aren’t on the site:

Chris Baker of the SUPERHEROdotVG channel and author of “WRONG! Retro Games, You Messed Up Our Comic Book Heroes!” has a recent video about some of the X-Men games that never made it to store shelves, including a deep dive and brand new footage of one I’d never even heard of before this. As always, it’s well-researched and definitely worth your time!

I’ll be showing off a few Mutant Mayhem sprites before the update hits this website and I’m starting off with one of my favorite characters, the Beast:

The Beast

May 21st:

Cyclops

The CRT screen effect was done with CRT View created by Mattias Gustavsson. Stay tuned for more!

I’m done with commission work for a while, so I’m back with a few real updates!

The ToyBoss section was updated with more new photos and up-to-date roster photos. One is a quick shot I took yesterday of my still-carded Captain Commando figures by 52Toys, now that I just got my Ninja Commando from AliBaba. Still waiting on my Baby Commando pre-order at HLJ, so I think I’ll hold out on opening them until I get the whole crew. The three figures I have look great and I haven’t even uncarded them yet, and I’m definitely keeping the cards for the artwork once I open them all. Speaking of complete crews, I managed to get the other three Target-exclusive “Pizza Club” Ninja Turtle figures by NECA. This is the first set of Turtles I gotten since the original Playmates figures from the 80s. I was going to (and still may) get all the Loyal Subjects BST AXN Turtles (I only have Raph for now), but I saw these announced months ago and plotted to get them. The BST AXN Turtles are still good, but I think the NECA Turtles themselves scale better when next to other toylines.

Speaking of toy line crossovers, I also added a new “Scale Wars” section with a few photos of figures from different lines standing next to each other to show how they scale. Some of these may help if you’re thinking of mixing and matching toylines or trying to figure out sizes for cross-line toy fodder.

With X-Men hype at a fever pitch again after the 10-episode run of X-Men ’97, there will be some new mutant-related sprites hitting the site next week!