Technique · rendering

Metatiles

Background blocks built from several tiles, so a level is stored and drawn in units larger than the hardware's tiles.

stubAlso: meta-tiles, blocks, super-tiles, macros, map16Updated 2026-10-23

A metatile is a block of background tiles stored as one number. Levels store metatiles instead of tiles, which shrinks them. A metatile can also carry its palette and its collision type, so the picture and the tile collision map come from the same number.

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Games

Every claim about this mechanic, by game (3)
Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels 1986The background renderer, the metatile tables and the area palettes (RenderAreaGraphics through the palette data) are Super Mario Bros.'s with the metatiles renumbered: The Lost Levels inserts new metatiles, so ReplaceBlockMetatile compares against shifted numbers ($56, $4F, $5C and $50 for Super Mario Bros.'s $58, $51, $5D and $52), and MetatileGraphics_Low moves some entries and adds others. The palette data region also holds two new messages. RenderAttributeTables is byte for byte the same, and RenderAreaGraphics and ColorRotatePalette differ only in their addresses.Code
The area parser and its object builders (AreaParserTaskHandler through GetBlockBufferAddr) are Super Mario Bros.'s, with most changes in the metatile numbers they write, which shift with the renumbered metatiles (bridges, flagpole, coins, bricks, cannons, stairs, blocks, water pipe). Beyond those: the object jump table gains entries, the wind on and off commands among them, so three offsets into it change; ScrollLockObject_Warp picks the warp zone's destination by world, level and area; the third ledge style uses metatiles $8A-$8C and draws no stem, where Super Mario Bros.'s mushroom ledge uses $19-$1B with a stem (and RenderUnderPart drops its stem checks); the vertical pipes place a piranha plant through a shared SetupPiranhaPlant, with no exception for world 1-1; Jumpspring places nothing when no enemy slot is free. IncrementColumnPos, AlterAreaAttributes, KillEnemies and the object position helpers are byte for byte the same.Code
Mega Man 2 1988Mega Man 2's _scrolling_vertical follows Mega Man's _scrolling_up_down: the same name table and attribute address math and the same loop writing four 8x8 tiles per 16x16 quarter. Mega Man 2 computes the 32x32 block's address from the screen number, where Mega Man looks the screen up in a pointer table and checks _special_blockset_collision for a block the disassembly labels removed; some of its RAM moved too. The rest of each region is different code.Code