SMW2: Yoshi's Island Palette

[E-Man]

What do mean by palette of Yoshi Island? A single game can use hundreds of different color palette depending on the used sprite.

I don't know much about spriting, but I think he means the "standard" palette for the vast bulk of the characters. Since the background and the characters are two separate things, the characters get a smaller palette to help them take up less memory.

If the game runs into a situation where a certain sprite needs a color that is not on the "normal" palette, the game would replace one of the colors on the palette with the one needed until further notice. As a result, sprites that share the former color that was replaced will end up "adopting" that color, which could lead to some strange results at times.

For example, let's look at the first Legend of Zelda game. Every time Link changes his tunic due to the effects of a ring, all the NPCs sharing Link's tunic color would have their clothes changed to that color. This is most likely done to save memory since the NES cartridge had a very poor memory capacity compared to similar means of storing games in this day and age. Also, since the NES was not the best console out there, having Link and the NPCs have separate colors would cause the game to lag or glitch out. It would just be too much for the poor NES to handle.

Since Yoshi's Island was released on the more superior Super Nintendo, I would suspect that less "color sharing" would occur. Still, since the game has different colored Yoshis and the game takes place in a variety of areas, I would not be surprised if some of the enemy palettes change a little depending on those factors.