title: How do sprites work?
body: <p>How do sprites work?</p>
  
  <p>I've seen sprites from old school games like Super Mario Brothers, and wondered how they're animated to make a game.</p>
  
  <p>They're always presented as one big image map, so how are they used?</p>
  
  <p>For Mario (as an example) are there precalculated image co-ordinates that outline mario, and are swapped between various mario sprites to produce animation?</p>
  
  <p>Or are sprites pre "cut" during game initialization using precalculated images co-ordinates and stored in memory somewhere?</p>
  
  <p>Obviously I know nothing about game development.</p>