Weird palette choices

[miyabi95_]

...Specifically in 2D games, of course. let's talk about this obscure topic.

We all know of Link's pinkish hair in ALttP, but there are many others out there, like Mario and Luigi having greenish brown hair in Super Mario Bros and Ice Hockey players from Canada wearing green uniforms instead of red. Either they contradict the official game art or are just strange on their own, feel free to give an example.

[NICKtendo DS]

The color scheme on most Koopalings are way off in Super Mario World.

[Dolphman]

Ditto on Bowser's green body. Luckily, it was fixed in the GBA port.

As a DOS game player, PCs at the time had three well known graphic formats known as CGA, EGA, and VGA.

This is CGA:
 
Looks like the inside of a migraine, doesn't it?


Here's EGA:


It was used in some great games, such as Commander Keen and the original Duke Nukem.
 
Duke didn't have his red shirt yet due to these limitations. Or his sunglasses for that matter.

Now with VGA, you could have a palette of 256 colours of your choice. Here's DooM and Duke Nukem 3D's palettes as examples.
 
Games would officially ditch the previously more limited palettes around the mid-90s. And now we have higher colour palettes for PC.
 
Jazz Jackrabbit did have some oddities due to having different pallettes for things like art, levels, menus, and cutscenes.
The turtle enemies officially have purple shells. But due to limitations, purple was replaced with different colours in certain levels. 

Wikipedia also has a page about palettes based on different computer hardware systems.

[Hiynastrike]

Cga can get extremely nightmarish if mixed with horrible sound quality




While yes this is a better palette here it is with CGA

[Filler]

Yoshi's brown/orange arms in Super Mario World always annoyed me. The only explanation I have is that it's easier to see that they have arms on smaller, blurry TVs when they're brown.

Fixed on the GBA port, as expected.

[miyabi95_]

Ah, now I know why that Mario Bros remake for DOS is called Mario VGA! i used to think it was some clever mario-relevent title xD. jk I knew a little bit about those classic PC palettes

I'm sure some people know this one:

------a few games later i guess-------> 

[Dolphman]

The first official artwork of Felicia did have green eyes. It was palette limitations like this future artists kept getting it wrong.
Heck, they even got it wrong with her MVC3 model and PXZ2 sprites & art.

You could say Felicia's eyes being blue is the Darkstalkers fans' equivalent to Sonic the Hedgehog fans' irritation towards Sonic given blue arms.
The latter only got worse because of his Sonic Boom design. It still doesn't make sense, due to Amy still having her arms left intact.

Another oddity Sonic fans bring up is how Knuckles in every classic game appearance really wasn't as red as his official art.
He was more like a rose red or light maroon colour. Not sure if ROM hackers ever tried correcting it.

The only time Knuckles was maroon in any official art was in this very off-model artwork for the PAL version of Sonic the Hedgehog 3.

This artwork is also why the Fleetway comic version gave him the wrong shoe colour and made his white patch a tribal necklace.

[Jermungandr]

Knuckles' sprites in the early games also gave him what appears to be a gold necklace as opposed to a white crescent on his chest. Specifically, in Sonic 3(&K), and Sonic Triple Trouble.

Makes me wonder which came first. Did the sprite artists merely misunderstand the artwork, or was it originally supposed to be a necklace and they decided to change it when it was too late to alter all the sprites already placed in the game.

Interestingly, the art you posted above shows Knuckles with yellow socks, which actually was the case in his enemy cutscenes.

[Hiynastrike]

I once played DKC1 competitive... Player 2 DK has this clothes changed to yellow.... His tie shares the same color as the inside of his mouth.... It's hilarious

[Zero Kirby]

-Knuckles "artwork"-

Is it just me or does it look a lot like his left hand is on backwards?

I can tell it isn't, but it's seriously messing with me what the hell.

[miyabi95_]

it's in a fist facing forward but it totally looks awkward. what's weirder is how it's behind his face/eyes and in front of the back of his head. they could have just made it a typical perspective drawing where his fist is in front of his entire form like it's headed towards the viewer.

Also, has anyone noticed how in some of the Super Street Fighter II versions, when you choose a character, the colors in their portait changes briefly then switches to another pallete? I wish I could get footage of it but I'm on my phone right now. it could be some kind of glitch from the emulator i use.

[Deathbringer]

It's not a glitch, on consoles like the SNES and Genesis only the palettes for the active portraits are loaded, so switching portraits will keep the palette of the previous selection for a brief second before the correct palette loads in.

[SKELTON S. SKELETON]

super castlevania IV is pretty much the ultimate example of grotesque game but in an aesthetically pure way

http://brikbybrik.blogspot.com/2014/05/s...-no-6.html

this is a blog by a friend of mine but it lays out some of the more interesting choices in castlevania palettes, interestingly enough - less grotesque and more artistic but a castlevania game would later abandon more pure pixelart tendencies in terms of experimenting artistically with Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance on the GBA

[Sengir]

a lot of shiny pokemon go for a puke-lime green and blue-violet combo and its just. it looks like a mcdonalds toy

[Filler]

I agree with that, Most shinies seem to be green or blue.

As my avatar implies, Porygon is probably one of the few shinies I like. Blue and white (Formerly blue-violet before the 3D shift) look nice on 'em.

Anyways, since this is on my mind, GBA ports of SNES games tend to increase the color brightness and contrast due the the original GBA unit not having a backlight, which makes them look odd with one.

By the Time Donkey Kong Country 3 was ported to the GBA, they toned down the eye-destruction on colours, since most stopped using the original GBA model. Even then, some odd changes were made. The background during the Bleak boss fight, despite using semi-accurate colours to SNES, has a sky palette that looks like the place is radioactive after a nuclear fallout.

Left - GBA. Right - SNES.