Oh, drat. Sorry, yes; I forgot there is a universal "background" palette entry, shared by all tiles, and generally output "outside" of the rasterized portion of the screen.

If the background layer is always behind the sprite layer, then how do you get this: (

As I understand it, they're placing sprites containing those background tiles overtop of the sprites which they want to look like are behind the tilemap. So, back to front, tilemap -> mobile sprite -> background impostor sprite.

As I understand it, they're placing sprites containing those background tiles overtop of the sprites which they want to look like are behind the tilemap. So, back to front, tilemap -> mobile sprite -> background impostor sprite.

There is a bit in the sprite order that delegates the sprite to either in front of or behind the background.

I don't know why I didn't think of the blocks in Mario as a better example.

... huh. Completely didn't know that one. Cool.