Technique · rendering

Metasprites

An object drawn from several hardware sprites placed by a table of offsets, with one such table per animation frame.

stubAlso: metasprite, sprite mappings, sprite frames, animation frames, sprite assemblyUpdated 2026-10-23

Console sprites are small, so a character is built from several. A metasprite lists each piece’s tile, its position relative to the object, its palette, and its flips. A game animates by stepping through a list of metasprites, and flips the whole set to face the other way.

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Games

Every claim about this mechanic, by game (1)
Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels 1986The sprite drawing code (DrawVine through DrawSpriteObject) is Super Mario Bros.'s with these changes: DrawPowerUp draws every mushroom from tiles $D8, $DA, $DB and $FF where Super Mario Bros. uses $76-$79, and gives the poison mushroom, a fifth row, palette 3; EnemyGfxHandler's tile table takes up $76-$79, and the handler also flips the upside-down piranha plants and colors the jumpsprings green on world numbers 2, 3 and 7; RenderPlayerSub plays the skid sound; FlagpoleGfxHandler's score table gains the 1-up; GetYOffscreenBits has two of its tables' halves swapped, its instructions unchanged; DrawBlock uses a renumbered metatile. 12 regions, PlayerGfxHandler among them, differ only in their addresses, and five, DrawSpriteObject among them, are byte for byte the same.Code