Sprite Limitations for SNES and GBA

[Raccoon Sam]

This isn't strictly true.

256x224 resolution

This is nitpicky, but... Mostly yeah. The games released in the PAL region were 256 x 240. Compare the Super Mario World US and Europe versions' title screens:


The SNES also supports "Pseudo High resolution mode" and "High resolution mode" which effectively doubles the resolution either horizontally, or in total. Kirby's Dream Land 3 uses Pseudo High Resolution mode, and it's evident in the foreground trees:


RPM Racing is to my knowledge the only game that uses the "True" High Resolution mode this extensively, and it looks pretty cool indeed. Mind you, this looks like an early Windows game but it is still running on a real SNES.

the game is shit though

15-bit color

SNES 4bpp graphics are indeed "15-bit", but in the ROM, they're 16-bit with the first bit ignored, so that's five bits for blue, five for green, five for red.
0BBBBBGG GGGRRRRR. This is the most straightforward guide. There are eight 16-color palettes available to sprites.

16 colors per sprite

16 colors per 8x8 or 16x16 sprite, yeah. These can be "stacked" à la Mega Man (NES) too, though. The SNES can handle only 128 sprites onscreen at once.

If background has 1 layer, 16 colors a 16x16 tile.
If background has several layers, 4 colors a 16x16 tile

Kinda I guess. The SNES operates on graphic Modes. Most of us are only familiar with the fabled Mode 7, but our friend wiiqwertyuiop from SMWcentral explains the whole mess pretty well:

Well I'll start with mode 7, since its the most talked about one and most overrated one.

Mode 7 - Allows you to stretch, move, and rotate a image on layer 1. Note that you ONLY get layer 1 and the sprite layer in this mode, unless you mess around with the EXTBG in mode 7. This layer also has 256 colors.

Mode 6 and 5 - In Mode 5, you have one 16-color BG and one 4-color BG, and in Mode 6, you have only one 16-color BG, and its has offset-per-tile functionality. They also both activate true hires by default.

Mode 4 - In Mode 4, you have one 256-color BG and one 4-color BG. This too has offset-per-tile functionality.

Mode 3 - In Mode 3, you have one 256-color BG and one 16-color BG. I also believe you can do some fancy things with the direct color mode.

Mode 2 - In Mode 2, you have 2 BGs of 16 colors each. In this mode, the 'tile data' for BG3 actually encodes a (possible) replacement HOffset and/or VOffset value for each tile of BG1 and/or BG2.

Mode 1 - Nothing special about Mode 1, its the one your used to.

Mode 0 - In Mode 0, you have 4 BGs of 4 colors each.

Most of this stuff is from regs.txt

Maybe I'm missing something but that's all that comes to mind right now.