04-07-2024, 12:16 PM
December 30 has passed and now have been ripping for 17 years. Some of my rips here are getting closer to legal drinking age and many of them are older than some people who go on tSR!
For some stats and facts:
(Yes, I know we're getting into April now... My backlog is THAT behind...)
I can't remember why The Lucky Dime Caper was my first rip on here or why I chose it but there is a bit of background info. I used to play the game on my Game Gear and it was one of the earliest that I could get far on. For a platformer developed in the early 1990s it was unusually accessible; no time limit, health upgrades not too far away, slower paced, two forms of attack (sometimes games back then, if you had a weapon attack you couldn't jump to attack enemies), some stages even have alt routes. I did try to do a few sprite rips, the odd sprite or two for SMS Power and even tried contacted The Shy Guy Kingdom to upload a complete sheet. Since there was no reply and this was when the website was still active, posted on... gulp... Pixeltendo. For a vast majority of people who go on tSR now, Pixeltendo was the OG forum and tSR was a section on that forum. You pretty much had to have "balls of steel" to be on Pixeltendo but the tSR section was different. The rest was history. There were very few Master System/Game Gear rips in 2006, even less if you remove the Sonic games. Even then I was surprised that there were barely any Sega in general rips, many iconic series didn't have a single rip. No Alex Kidd, No Wonder Boy/Monster World, No Fantasy Zone, No Shinobi, not even Out Run and Space Harrier, I don't think there were many Streets of Rage rips either...
Then you're reading and thinking "what do you mean about the first rips having Yawackhary in them?". Aren't you Yawackhary? This is where it gets complicated. Before I was on tSR, I used to be on Sonic Vegemite and SV was one of the first communities that I was on. The name as it is, is based off yak, wacky, and the obscure game Zwackery because it was different than favouritething/character+numbers or name+the+animal as a typical username might be. You also had to have some persona when it came to the hoaxes, most people there had Sonic OCs as it was the case of the fan base back then. It started off as a recolour of Bin & Pin from Dynamite Dux and evolved from there. The Yawackhary sprites that you can see were edits from Sonic Advance (I can't remember which Sonic character it got edited from). There were a few more of them that are lost to time... Can recall one of them was an edit of Woody Woodpecker but not a sprite and sprite edits based off Land of Illusion. In my early years on tSR, I called myself Mr Yawackhary to differentiate between myself and Yawackhary Duck (the character). It was planned to be more than just something that appeared on SV and old rips; wrote ideas, characters and scenarios. Due to complete lack of talent, it never got anywhere and now the character is a relic from a different time. Saying that... Other people did have an interest in the character, he did appear in fan fiction (a prototype form before it evolved with Yawackhary having his own pals and rivals, saying that one thing did kinda happen a case of fiction becoming reality...) and fan art was drawn. It also when someone stole the character and tried to pass it as something else for people to draw fan art of him (look at the commissioner). That was when the Yawackhary dream died and became the man who sold the world...
This isn't just about stats, facts or old memories, it's about the rips.
Firstly The Lucky Dime Caper had an anniversary clean up, the title screen, Stage Select, Sega Logo and font have been added. The cutscene sheet is re-ripped as it was missing much of the ending and the game uses a programming trick! The misc sheet has been split up (Dialogue/Stage Icons, Items, Huey, Dewey & Louie, Scrooge is now in the cutscenes sheet) and will be retired, technically these have been re-ripped too.
C64
Warm Up
I think that's why top down racers (with a few exceptions such as the Micro Machines series) have gone out of fashion. Mainly because of control issues, handling and if they are too fast, it becomes more like having fast reaction times and memorization since the view is pretty restricted on what you can see. They are more like a dodge 'em up really. Even later Micro Machines games and games within that type (Mashed) could at least zoom in and out, they weren't top down either...
Kellogg's Tour 1988
More or less Milk Race 2 with joystick waggling... Now I just need a bowl and a spoon...
Arcade
Lucky & Wild
Was ripped nearly 5 years ago but forgot to upload it until now.
CPC
Classiques Volume 1
Did you know that Titus in their early days did clones of classic arcade games putting them in compilations before it became a thing? Strangely enough, they are actually fairly decent versions of the game even if Pac-Man runs too fast. I'm actually surprised but I think they might have got into some legal bother since the Amstrad only got 2 of these Classique collections while 4 was advertised overall. On the flyer, Centipede, Berzerk and Dig Dug were shown coming on Volume 3 that wasn't released on the computer. A later flyer showed off Q-bert and Frogger too. By the end, think only the Thomson computers got all 4...
Fruity Frank
Since the CPC didn't get Mr Do! (not even a modern homebrew port), this clone became famous especially for an early title. As per classic arcade graphic design, the graphics are designed around the black background. No... hacking the palette won't fix this...
Game Boy
Ferrari Grand Prix Challenge
Racing Damashii
Just a bit from the unofficial racing game project. Unofficial as in no thread but generally rip from racing games these days... GB wise see if I can do Lamborghini American Challenge and Roadsters (the sequel to Lamborghini). Maybe even some more from International Rally, Suzuki Alstare, Le Mans 24 Hours, V-Rally, the Top Gear Rally games and the F1 games. Possibly even Ethan Hunt from Mission: Impossible and that blooming Three Lions game for non-racing, fingers, toes and arms crossed. Bearing in mind that Suzuki Alstare, the Top Gear Rally games and Mission: Impossible have the sprites done in layers as a colour enhancing trick, similar to the MSX/MSX2. (This also means that I would have to re-rip the existing cars too in Top Gear Pocket to reflect this)
Game Gear
Last Action Hero
F1 World Championship Edition
Scratch Golf
Yet another golf game. Not keen on this one even though the name is interesting and the graphic style is quite nice for miniature size...
(As a footnote, the game can only count up to 9 as after the first 9 holes in a course, it resets back to 1 rather than 10. The manual says that there are only two courses in the game so...)
Currently working on Cliffhanger, Kawasaki Superbike Challenge, Clutch Hitter and Power Drive. Emulicious has problems with some of the games in particular the World Series Baseball games due to the unsupported RAM chip. I'll see if there's any more but from the sounds of things, that might be it for me for the Game Gear.
"King" GBA
Sega Rally Championship
A surprise! I expected this game to use models like some 3D GBA racing games but this uses pre-rendered sprites. Pre-rendered sprites that are only 16 colours! Even though some of them end up being broken and it's like this in all three versions of the game.
(It took longer than it should as by the time that I discovered a shortcut in YY-CHR to display the cars in their correct alignment to assemble it faster, the rips were nearly over with just the two bonus cars from the OG Sega Rally left. The shortcut involved making a layout that's 8x8, one that I'm not surprised offered as a default setting...)
Yes, I did also rip GAME OVER YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Smuggler's Run
Top Gear GT Championship
Another one with pre-rendered sprites but uses a single 256 colour palette. Originally started ripping this in the same layout as Sega Rally above but then decided to re-rip it via the shortcut. Sadly can only go so far because I don't know the names of the other cars in the ROM... Can guess the Castrol one is a Toyota.
I did look into some other GBA racing games that are not on the site and in terms of vehicles to rip from the ROM. Inspector Gadget Racing seem doable but will take a while. The rest are either compressed and don't seem to be the LZ77 one, is the LZ77 one but in pieces, use a completely different way of viewing the sprites like V Rally 3 or really do seem to be textures and models. Personally I can't see many more GBA rips coming from me. There's one from a certain actor known for appearing in movies that had Blu-ray releases from 88 Films, Eureka and Warner Bros that got himself a cartoon, said actor also had games that I previously sprite ripped a long time ago.
Oh and as for King GBA... In the past, GBA used to have the most rips and views on tSR. Also some of the earliest rips on the site come from the handheld, some that are nearly 20 years old!
As it stands right now:
- Have been documenting some stuff on the wiki. Anyone ripping might find these useful.
- Trying to get the Master System project as far down as possible. Already have Woody Woodpecker, California Games 2, Gangster Town (possibly dropped), Shadow of the Beast (possibly dropped) and Sensible Soccer as WIP. Not doing the SG-1000 mode games outside of the WIP Flashpoint, the title screen of Sherlock Holmes due to language barrier and maybe FA Tetris (also the only SG-1000 game that is still WIP is Monaco GP).
- Trying to get the CPC games down due to the recent news.
- The ripping list is going to get frozen soon just because of both lack of time and retirement from gaming all together. Yes I have mentioned some new games to rip but really getting to the point of having enough...
- There might be some DS getting ripped but have very low expectations... I have been checking the ROMs to a few games out of curiosity (Corvette Evolution GT, Ferrari Challenge, Touch Golf, PES 6, Race Driver: Create & Race). Also declared Ducati Moto, Burnout Legends, Tiger Woods PGA Tour and Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith to be undoable for me, especially having its own custom formats. Only a small amount of Point Blank DS can be done (the doors). Tinkle claims Tiger Woods to be 94% recognisable but that's a lie...
- Expect to see some Genesis and 32X stuff within the next 6 months. Again have low expectations...
- My progress is behind by at least a year due to health issues and struggles. Too many games, not enough time... It's making me stressed...
- The backlog on the C64 games is rather high so expect to see some in the future including some from a few acclaimed games (Grand Prix Circuit, Out Run Europa, Turbo Charge with the first two already extracted some sprites).
- Ripping tutorials of Commodore 16 and 64 are WIP.
For some stats and facts:
- My first game on tSR is The Lucky Dime Caper and this sheet is the oldest surviving on the site done around December 30, 2006. There was this version of Donald Duck in the archive but the one on tSR is newer. In the future, the oldest sheet will highly likely be Bugs Bunny from Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle (NES) around February 8, 2007.
- The first attempted rip was actually Dr. Robotnik from Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine on the Master System. My reasoning was because his character design resembled more like AoSTH compared to the Genesis version. AoSTH also happens to be one of my favourite cartoons.
- Nearly 3000 rips on the site (technically close or more if we count removed ones like the old Sonic rips) at the time. Now way over 3000.
- As a guess over 500 rips had to be abandoned at some point due to various issues
- At least 4 sheets are completed but have yet to upload on tSR (Super Monaco GP arcade rival, Fujiko from The Castle of Cagliostro, Ferrari 300 from Bburago Rally and the Referee from Blades of Steel C64). There are a few more but have to rummage through the hard drive.
- At least 120+ sheets are WIP
- There are enough rips in the backlog to cover 2024, maybe even 2025.
- According to tSR; the most games come from Amstrad CPC (259) while the most sheets come from the Genesis (715). The most genre ripped is Racing (231 games, 602 sheets) and will increase. When the retirement comes, there will be roughly 300 Amstrad games and the Mega Drive will still be somehow No.1.
- Least amount of rips are Visual Novels (just the one and it's an error message) while there are many systems with just the one rip (Virtual Boy, WonderSwan, PS1, Neo Geo, Micom Mah-jong, PS2 doesn't count as it was technically ripped by Dazz). PSP at the time of writing is 1 but is likely to increase.
- 1 sprite rip got lost when it nearly finished due to a computer crash. Speed Duel on the Spectrum. The game is cursed...
- The oldest game I ripped is Sprint 2 (November 2, 1976) and the latest game is Lupin the Third: Shijou Saidai no Zunousen (February 11, 2010).
- The earliest sheet that's still WIP is Simulador Profesional de Tenis on the Amstrad CPC. Any earlier sheets are lost.
- My earliest appearance on a tSR update was done by Toadkarter on January 4, 2007. My first name drop was later. While I cannot recall it happened on the older sites as it was usually Dazz and co posting lyrics or what happened in their life, the earliest known one is when the current site updated for the first time. You know, the one where Shade goes back in time every year... That one. For the younger members, believe it or not name drops were really rare. You had to do something really outstanding to achieve a name drop.
- In the old tSR pre-current design site, Yawackhary had never made it to the Top Spriter section. Personally I'm not bothered, I'm not that good
Even now, there are way better rippers.
- The first critique came from Dolphman regarding the Title Screen from SegaSonic the Hedgehog. (IMO it should really be re-ripped now...)
- There were a few co-rips. RTB and I helped out on The Simpsons arcade rips (he did most of the characters while I focused on Homer and Homer + Bart/Lisa/Marge). Misselaneous10 and I ripped Lucia from Psychic World on the Master System however... I may have actually ripped the entire sheet or re-ripped it and she just got credit. The memories are fuzzy but I believe that she started to rip Lucia, then there was some sort of issue. It was an attempt to teach someone to sprite rip but it didn't pan out... The others that are on tSR people just added on any missing sprites and are not co-rips or at least intentionally.
- Many of the anime/manga rips I was embarrassed ripping them, enough to use an alias. Also applies to the SD Valis rips as well.
- Most of the rips I used GraphicsGale in some form. The exceptions are any that got converted and the Zenigata PSP title screen using GIMP for the first time. Mainly because GraphicsGale seems to have some transparency issues. A majority of sheets are also compressed via PNG Gauntlet.
- My longest gap between starting the rip and finishing the rip is Bin from Dynamite Dux (arcade). Originally the sheet started when you had to take screen captures from MAME (as no ripping tools existed), then it got abandoned then completely redone when System 16 Graphics Viewer got made. Since the original WIP is lost, it is around 11-12 years. It's one of those sheets that was glad to rip from.
- My most stressful rips from what I can remember was during a period when I was ripping RBI Baseball 94 on the Genesis and Sailor Moon R on the SNES. Those were gaming development crunch levels of sprite ripping all down to something that was going to happen politically but it later didn't. Had Metallic Madness 1 from Sonic Mania on a loop... If anyone wondered why the comments were a bit strange on those sheets. Had to abandon a WIP sheet of Sailor Mercury and portraits from RBI.
- Multiple health issues affected various periods of ripping. At one point struggled to even rip 5 sprites from Fire & Forget on the Amstrad CPC.
- The very first rips you can tell because they have Yawackhary in them except the first ironically.
(Yes, I know we're getting into April now... My backlog is THAT behind...)
I can't remember why The Lucky Dime Caper was my first rip on here or why I chose it but there is a bit of background info. I used to play the game on my Game Gear and it was one of the earliest that I could get far on. For a platformer developed in the early 1990s it was unusually accessible; no time limit, health upgrades not too far away, slower paced, two forms of attack (sometimes games back then, if you had a weapon attack you couldn't jump to attack enemies), some stages even have alt routes. I did try to do a few sprite rips, the odd sprite or two for SMS Power and even tried contacted The Shy Guy Kingdom to upload a complete sheet. Since there was no reply and this was when the website was still active, posted on... gulp... Pixeltendo. For a vast majority of people who go on tSR now, Pixeltendo was the OG forum and tSR was a section on that forum. You pretty much had to have "balls of steel" to be on Pixeltendo but the tSR section was different. The rest was history. There were very few Master System/Game Gear rips in 2006, even less if you remove the Sonic games. Even then I was surprised that there were barely any Sega in general rips, many iconic series didn't have a single rip. No Alex Kidd, No Wonder Boy/Monster World, No Fantasy Zone, No Shinobi, not even Out Run and Space Harrier, I don't think there were many Streets of Rage rips either...
Then you're reading and thinking "what do you mean about the first rips having Yawackhary in them?". Aren't you Yawackhary? This is where it gets complicated. Before I was on tSR, I used to be on Sonic Vegemite and SV was one of the first communities that I was on. The name as it is, is based off yak, wacky, and the obscure game Zwackery because it was different than favouritething/character+numbers or name+the+animal as a typical username might be. You also had to have some persona when it came to the hoaxes, most people there had Sonic OCs as it was the case of the fan base back then. It started off as a recolour of Bin & Pin from Dynamite Dux and evolved from there. The Yawackhary sprites that you can see were edits from Sonic Advance (I can't remember which Sonic character it got edited from). There were a few more of them that are lost to time... Can recall one of them was an edit of Woody Woodpecker but not a sprite and sprite edits based off Land of Illusion. In my early years on tSR, I called myself Mr Yawackhary to differentiate between myself and Yawackhary Duck (the character). It was planned to be more than just something that appeared on SV and old rips; wrote ideas, characters and scenarios. Due to complete lack of talent, it never got anywhere and now the character is a relic from a different time. Saying that... Other people did have an interest in the character, he did appear in fan fiction (a prototype form before it evolved with Yawackhary having his own pals and rivals, saying that one thing did kinda happen a case of fiction becoming reality...) and fan art was drawn. It also when someone stole the character and tried to pass it as something else for people to draw fan art of him (look at the commissioner). That was when the Yawackhary dream died and became the man who sold the world...
This isn't just about stats, facts or old memories, it's about the rips.
Firstly The Lucky Dime Caper had an anniversary clean up, the title screen, Stage Select, Sega Logo and font have been added. The cutscene sheet is re-ripped as it was missing much of the ending and the game uses a programming trick! The misc sheet has been split up (Dialogue/Stage Icons, Items, Huey, Dewey & Louie, Scrooge is now in the cutscenes sheet) and will be retired, technically these have been re-ripped too.
C64
Warm Up
Car
I think that's why top down racers (with a few exceptions such as the Micro Machines series) have gone out of fashion. Mainly because of control issues, handling and if they are too fast, it becomes more like having fast reaction times and memorization since the view is pretty restricted on what you can see. They are more like a dodge 'em up really. Even later Micro Machines games and games within that type (Mashed) could at least zoom in and out, they weren't top down either...
Kellogg's Tour 1988
Cyclist
More or less Milk Race 2 with joystick waggling... Now I just need a bowl and a spoon...
Arcade
Lucky & Wild
Portraits
Was ripped nearly 5 years ago but forgot to upload it until now.
CPC
Classiques Volume 1
Invaders
Did you know that Titus in their early days did clones of classic arcade games putting them in compilations before it became a thing? Strangely enough, they are actually fairly decent versions of the game even if Pac-Man runs too fast. I'm actually surprised but I think they might have got into some legal bother since the Amstrad only got 2 of these Classique collections while 4 was advertised overall. On the flyer, Centipede, Berzerk and Dig Dug were shown coming on Volume 3 that wasn't released on the computer. A later flyer showed off Q-bert and Frogger too. By the end, think only the Thomson computers got all 4...
Fruity Frank
Frank
Enemies
Items
Since the CPC didn't get Mr Do! (not even a modern homebrew port), this clone became famous especially for an early title. As per classic arcade graphic design, the graphics are designed around the black background. No... hacking the palette won't fix this...
Game Boy
Ferrari Grand Prix Challenge
Car
Roadside Objects
Racing Damashii
Rider
Just a bit from the unofficial racing game project. Unofficial as in no thread but generally rip from racing games these days... GB wise see if I can do Lamborghini American Challenge and Roadsters (the sequel to Lamborghini). Maybe even some more from International Rally, Suzuki Alstare, Le Mans 24 Hours, V-Rally, the Top Gear Rally games and the F1 games. Possibly even Ethan Hunt from Mission: Impossible and that blooming Three Lions game for non-racing, fingers, toes and arms crossed. Bearing in mind that Suzuki Alstare, the Top Gear Rally games and Mission: Impossible have the sprites done in layers as a colour enhancing trick, similar to the MSX/MSX2. (This also means that I would have to re-rip the existing cars too in Top Gear Pocket to reflect this)
Game Gear
Last Action Hero
Jack Slater
F1 World Championship Edition
Cars
Roadside Objects
Scratch Golf
Course Type A #01
Course Type A #02
Course Type A #03
Course Type A #04
Course Type A #05
Course Type A #06
Course Type A #07
Course Type A #08
Course Type A #09
Course Type A #10
Course Type A #11
Course Type A #12
Course Type A #13
Course Type A #14
Course Type A #15
Course Type A #16
Course Type A #17
Course Type A #18
Course Type B #01
Course Type B #02
Course Type B #03
Course Type B #04
Course Type B #05
Course Type B #06
Course Type B #07
Course Type B #08
Course Type B #09
Course Type B #10
Course Type B #11
Course Type B #12
Course Type B #13
Course Type B #14
Course Type B #15
Course Type B #16
Course Type B #17
Course Type B #18
Yet another golf game. Not keen on this one even though the name is interesting and the graphic style is quite nice for miniature size...
(As a footnote, the game can only count up to 9 as after the first 9 holes in a course, it resets back to 1 rather than 10. The manual says that there are only two courses in the game so...)
Currently working on Cliffhanger, Kawasaki Superbike Challenge, Clutch Hitter and Power Drive. Emulicious has problems with some of the games in particular the World Series Baseball games due to the unsupported RAM chip. I'll see if there's any more but from the sounds of things, that might be it for me for the Game Gear.
"King" GBA
Sega Rally Championship
Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VII
Subaru Impreza
Toyota Corolla
Ford Focus RS
Peugeot 206 WRC 1999
Lancia Stratos
Lancia Delta
Toyota Celica GT-Four
Backgrounds
A surprise! I expected this game to use models like some 3D GBA racing games but this uses pre-rendered sprites. Pre-rendered sprites that are only 16 colours! Even though some of them end up being broken and it's like this in all three versions of the game.
(It took longer than it should as by the time that I discovered a shortcut in YY-CHR to display the cars in their correct alignment to assemble it faster, the rips were nearly over with just the two bonus cars from the OG Sega Rally left. The shortcut involved making a layout that's 8x8, one that I'm not surprised offered as a default setting...)
Yes, I did also rip GAME OVER YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Smuggler's Run
Backgrounds
UFO
Top Gear GT Championship
BP Kraft Trueno
Cusco Subaru Impreza
Daishin Advan Silvia
RE Amemiya MatsuKiyo RX-7
WedsSport Celica
Another one with pre-rendered sprites but uses a single 256 colour palette. Originally started ripping this in the same layout as Sega Rally above but then decided to re-rip it via the shortcut. Sadly can only go so far because I don't know the names of the other cars in the ROM... Can guess the Castrol one is a Toyota.
I did look into some other GBA racing games that are not on the site and in terms of vehicles to rip from the ROM. Inspector Gadget Racing seem doable but will take a while. The rest are either compressed and don't seem to be the LZ77 one, is the LZ77 one but in pieces, use a completely different way of viewing the sprites like V Rally 3 or really do seem to be textures and models. Personally I can't see many more GBA rips coming from me. There's one from a certain actor known for appearing in movies that had Blu-ray releases from 88 Films, Eureka and Warner Bros that got himself a cartoon, said actor also had games that I previously sprite ripped a long time ago.
Oh and as for King GBA... In the past, GBA used to have the most rips and views on tSR. Also some of the earliest rips on the site come from the handheld, some that are nearly 20 years old!
As it stands right now:
- Have been documenting some stuff on the wiki. Anyone ripping might find these useful.
- Trying to get the Master System project as far down as possible. Already have Woody Woodpecker, California Games 2, Gangster Town (possibly dropped), Shadow of the Beast (possibly dropped) and Sensible Soccer as WIP. Not doing the SG-1000 mode games outside of the WIP Flashpoint, the title screen of Sherlock Holmes due to language barrier and maybe FA Tetris (also the only SG-1000 game that is still WIP is Monaco GP).
- Trying to get the CPC games down due to the recent news.
- The ripping list is going to get frozen soon just because of both lack of time and retirement from gaming all together. Yes I have mentioned some new games to rip but really getting to the point of having enough...
- There might be some DS getting ripped but have very low expectations... I have been checking the ROMs to a few games out of curiosity (Corvette Evolution GT, Ferrari Challenge, Touch Golf, PES 6, Race Driver: Create & Race). Also declared Ducati Moto, Burnout Legends, Tiger Woods PGA Tour and Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith to be undoable for me, especially having its own custom formats. Only a small amount of Point Blank DS can be done (the doors). Tinkle claims Tiger Woods to be 94% recognisable but that's a lie...
- Expect to see some Genesis and 32X stuff within the next 6 months. Again have low expectations...
- My progress is behind by at least a year due to health issues and struggles. Too many games, not enough time... It's making me stressed...
- The backlog on the C64 games is rather high so expect to see some in the future including some from a few acclaimed games (Grand Prix Circuit, Out Run Europa, Turbo Charge with the first two already extracted some sprites).
- Ripping tutorials of Commodore 16 and 64 are WIP.