Technique · rendering

Shadow OAM

A copy of the sprite table kept in RAM, filled during the frame and copied to the video chip in one transfer at vertical blank.

stubAlso: OAM buffer, sprite buffer, sprite DMA, OAM DMA, sprite RAMUpdated 2026-10-23

Shadow OAM is a page of RAM laid out like the sprite table. The game writes its sprites there during the frame, and a DMA copies the page to the video chip in vertical blank. Entries a frame doesn’t use are moved off screen so old sprites don’t linger.

See also