How do you flip a sprite 90 degrees?

Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I've been sitting here for the last 15 minutes flipping the four pieces of a sprite horizontally and vertically, trying to figure out how to get it to turn to its side.

It's quite the brainteaser and my head hurts. I've come to the conclusion there doesn't seem to be a way.

It's also my understanding that the NES hardware WILL allow you to flip a sprite 90 degrees without having to redraw it. Is that option just not in the software yet?

I'm under the impression the NES can flip, but not rotate.

Correct, can flip, not rotate. To get something nonsymmetrical (in this case a knife) to have 4 frames of animation, spinning (0, 90, 180, 270), i had to draw 2 different frames: a horizontal frame and a vertical frame. From there you can flip it different ways to get rotation)

Indeed, the answer is that the hardware can't:

Since it doesn't save space in your tileset anyway, you may as well make the rotated frames looks different.

stevenshepherd said:

Correct, can flip, not rotate. To get something nonsymmetrical (in this case a knife) to have 4 frames of animation, spinning (0, 90, 180, 270), i had to draw 2 different frames: a horizontal frame and a vertical frame. From there you can flip it different ways to get rotation)

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How did you spin a knife in the first place? The bounding box has to be consistent across all frames of animation; if something is horizontal in one frame and vertical in the next, the damage box is going to stick out either way.