Two or three years of high school (or a year of college-level)Computer Science courses should be enough to give you a general understanding of C++. As far as creating sprites for a game, check out articles online to learn about artistic techniques (someone covered Capcom-style sprites, which was incredibly useful). After that, check out Game Programming in 21 Days, like Erunama suggested. It covers DOS-based game programming, but it contains all the info you can handle about 2D games, sprites, and animation. I read it as much as The Zen of DirectX Game Programming, which is great for learning to produce code to support your sprites. It''s nice and modern. Good luck!