Ive thought about using that too, but the problem is it will end up taking up huge amounts of video or system memory. Doesnt seem plausible in a game where the map has to be anything larger then a screen or two. Perhaps you could only save one screen at a time, then depending on which direction you moved, load the appropriate new part of the screen. for instance draw the entire screen once, save the back buffer, if you are moving right draw all the new tiles/objects in the new column thenblit the old backbuffer with an offest of -movement rate, then blit the new tiles

Just a though
Lep

You only need 4 screens, 9 for better loading times.
That would be 800x600x9 < 4300k
Is that too much?