On the Amiga it was definitely hardware, the Denise chip, which could do all sorts of weird and (debateably) wonderful things in addition to the straightforward

On the Amiga it was definitely hardware, the Denise chip, which could do all sorts of weird and (debateably) wonderful things in addition to the straightforward use case you describe. Hardware sprites being at the useful end of the scale, HAM being at the not-so-much one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_Chip_Set#Denise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_Chip_Set#Denise