You can see these limitations guiding the designs of actual retro games if you know what to look for.
Example: In CAPCOM's Mega Man (1987), the famous “Yellow Devil” boss fight plays the way it does because only the moving chunks of the Devil's body are composed of Sprite tiles. When one of those chunks reaches the opposite side of the screen, that part of the Devil's body becomes drawn with Background tiles instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RbPqqPrL_M
This is also why the Devil, Dragon, and Wily boss fights (anything larger than a regular Robot Master) take place entirely in a black void — the Background layer is exhausted drawing the bosses and there's nothing left over for actual play-area background.
― person who has never attempted to program for a specific retro system.
Peep the graphics hardware limitations of the Nintendo Famicom/NES, for example: https://noelberry.ca/posts/nes/index.html
You can see these limitations guiding the designs of actual retro games if you know what to look for.
Example: In CAPCOM's Mega Man (1987), the famous “Yellow Devil” boss fight plays the way it does because only the moving chunks of the Devil's body are composed of Sprite tiles. When one of those chunks reaches the opposite side of the screen, that part of the Devil's body becomes drawn with Background tiles instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RbPqqPrL_M
This is also why the Devil, Dragon, and Wily boss fights (anything larger than a regular Robot Master) take place entirely in a black void — the Background layer is exhausted drawing the bosses and there's nothing left over for actual play-area background.