CSS - Sprites?

Web Designers are always trying to find new and innovative (read:easier and better) ways of creating web sites. Today I stumbled across two sites that really push this.

Remember back in the VB 6 days, or even the C and C++ days where you used Sprites? If any of you ever looked at old NES, SNES emulated games, you would see the graphics were all sprites.

Now you can do this with CSS... well you've always been able to do it, but now it's been shown to really work.  Take a roll-over button for example. Instead of creating 2-3 images for this roll-over, why not have 1 image and you just use a bit of CSS (pseudo classes)  and you're done. This is explained on WellStyled.com very well.

Another great example of this was found on A List Apart.

Gone are the days of creating massive images for everything. Aren't the old ways always best?