tokumaru wrote:
If sprites are completely in front of the background, they'll appear to be walking on air. But it might just work if they are displaced outwards a little (less than half their depth, I guess), so that they can still stand on background tiles. What might still look weird is when background sprites are used for masking foreground sprites (i.e. the "?" blocks in SMB3).
No solution will work for all games, clearly. But I think for games like Mega Man, etc it would help the effect. And I agree, you'd have to displace each layer by 1/2 or so, so everything still kinda overlaps. It would just add some depth where its needed.