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[Eendhoorn]

I'm a bit confused regarding the NES colour palette.
I‘ve been messing around with a mockup using this palette





My graphicsgale setup uses this palette, and when I throw in NES images the mostly come out identical.
However, some images do not.

Take this bootleg pokemon NES game.


I had some trouble picking my greens but noticed this was looking pretty good. But when I use the NES palette I end up with this;


(

)

Are there some sorts of variations on the palette? I do know there was some variations across regions, and that you could achieve some magic with scanline trickery.

Can anyone enlighten me on this?

[DavidCaruso]

There isn't any true "NES palette", because the NES generates signals directly in the composite domain (YIQ), rather than in RGB. How the colors show up in RGB depend on what TV you're using. So it's not even that the palette varies across regions, it actually varies across individual TV sets!

This is in contrast to later consoles from the 16-bit era on, which do have standardized palettes because they generate an RGB signal then encode it themselves to composite, rather than letting the TV do it.

For my NES-styled game project (Steel Assault), we're using AdamAtomic's NES palette:

[surt]

An example of what DavidCaruso is talking about: http://bisqwit.iki.fi/utils/nespalette.php

[Eendhoorn]

The pokemon image I mentioned is taken from an emulator though, so I would guess that the emulator's interpretation of the palette is just different than the palette I found?

That's a handy tool, thanks!
Graphicsgale says that it "cannot load this format" but I could rip the image manually I guess.

[7Soul]

There isn't any true "NES palette", because the NES generates signals directly in the composite domain (YIQ), rather than in RGB. How the colors show up in RGB depend on what TV you're using. So it's not even that the palette varies across regions, it actually varies across individual TV sets!

This is in contrast to later consoles from the 16-bit era on, which do have standardized palettes because they generate an RGB signal then encode it themselves to composite, rather than letting the TV do it.

For my NES-styled game project (Steel Assault), we're using AdamAtomic's NES palette:

And I use this palette



That I have no idea where I got it

The main difference is that most of the red-orange-browns are more red, while in DavidCaruso's one they are more yellow

[JWK5]

I got bored and sorted the NES color palette out by color warmth and luminosity, maybe someone will find it handy: