Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-1490123-20141015022233/@comment-5334617-20141016193346

I don't use them myself because I have yet to write a sprite-based game. And, there's nothing that you can do with sprite variables that you can't do with arrays, so if you feel more comfortable going with arrays, there's nothing wrong with that. But, if I wrote a game in which I had sprites representing enemies, I might well put each individual enemy's hit points and mana in sprite variables for that individual's sprite. Maybe even a bit more status information: if the enemy is resting, alert (perhaps if the player makes too much noise near him), or pursuing (if he recently had sight of the player, and how much patience he has left for pursuing).

For sprite asteroids, I might put the velocity in sprite variables, so each asteroid whizzes along on its own trajectory. Basically, any value whose significance is closely related to the entity represented by the sprite, is a good candidate for sprite variables.