Currently I'm trying to find a program that operates similar to that of Macromedia or Adobe Flash to make animations with sprites like Super Mario Bros Z or any of the game related flash animations on newgrounds. And this includes being able to put in music and sound effects that play at specific moments within the animation and not need to put them in with putting the whole thing through windows movie maker or whatever.

I don't know what to search for and I really could use some help on this and would greatly appreciate it.

Synfig studio is a free (As in freedom of speech, but also as in free beer) drawing and animation program very similar to Flash. I don't remember if it can export swf files--which I think are required for sites like Newgrounds, but I know it can output various movie files which can be uploaded to Youtube. It's still in early beta and the user interface isn't very good yet, but it's slowly getting there. I'm actually really excited about the project because right now, there really isn't any free option for animation in the FOSS movement.

A lot of people swear by Anime Studio, but I haven't used it. It looks okay but when I already have Flash I don't really see the need to buy another drawing application. It's not limited to just anime, so don't fret there. It's much cheaper than Flash but still not free, I don't know what kind of budget you have so this may or may not be an option for you.

There are other options out there, just try searching animation software on Google, and see what comes up. If money is an obstacle, I think Synfig is the only option out there, but I could be wrong, I haven't looked into this in a while.

Thanks for getting back to me on this. I'll see what I can do from here. Hopefully I can get the hang of this stuff. I'll try and get back and let you know how it goes.

I don't think that any animation software would be better taht Flash MX..
It has the most simple program i ever seen..You can learn it quickly..Just by watching one
Youtube video..