I've been studying SNES looks for a while now. The games from this console have always had a distinct look to them, partially due to their colors. This also applies for some PS1 and N64 games too. This is a post containing my findings:
1 - Pick color values that are multiples of 16 or 8: Most of the time it seems like the color values(red, green and blue) are multiples of 16. I guess this is due to a limitation of these older consoles in order to store color values more efficiently. On some rare instances, multiples of 8 also appear to be used.
2 - Use darker colors and avoid saturation shading: Shading was mostly done using color brightness instead of saturation. Darker colors were way more common back then too.
3 - Reuse colors: This is probably the most well known trick of the these. Consoles back then were very limiting memory-wise, so they had to reutilize many colors. It seems the SNES could store only 16 colors per palette. Even if you do not use all 16 of the colors, reusing some of them when you can can help give it a more SNES-like look.
4 - Don't be afraid not to do shading for some colors: This is again due to color limitations. Let's say you've used 15 of your color slots with shades of grey, now you have only one color slot available for a yellow. Having a single color shade was pretty common on the SNES, but do not rely on it too much, try to use it sparingly, otherwise your sprites will look more like NES sprites.
5 - No alpha channel: Most of the times, a single pixel could be either full transparent(0) or a pure color(255). The SNES could also do some alpha shading, but with the same alpha value for the entire sprite, and it seems like it could only make one sprite transparent at the same time(I could be wrong, though).
This is it, basically most of my findings! I hope someone can find this useful! See ya!
I just found out that another user has made a similar and more in-depth post on a pinned post. I didn't see that before I made this.
1 - Pick color values that are multiples of 16 or 8: Most of the time it seems like the color values(red, green and blue) are multiples of 16. I guess this is due to a limitation of these older consoles in order to store color values more efficiently. On some rare instances, multiples of 8 also appear to be used.
2 - Use darker colors and avoid saturation shading: Shading was mostly done using color brightness instead of saturation. Darker colors were way more common back then too.
3 - Reuse colors: This is probably the most well known trick of the these. Consoles back then were very limiting memory-wise, so they had to reutilize many colors. It seems the SNES could store only 16 colors per palette. Even if you do not use all 16 of the colors, reusing some of them when you can can help give it a more SNES-like look.
4 - Don't be afraid not to do shading for some colors: This is again due to color limitations. Let's say you've used 15 of your color slots with shades of grey, now you have only one color slot available for a yellow. Having a single color shade was pretty common on the SNES, but do not rely on it too much, try to use it sparingly, otherwise your sprites will look more like NES sprites.
5 - No alpha channel: Most of the times, a single pixel could be either full transparent(0) or a pure color(255). The SNES could also do some alpha shading, but with the same alpha value for the entire sprite, and it seems like it could only make one sprite transparent at the same time(I could be wrong, though).
This is it, basically most of my findings! I hope someone can find this useful! See ya!
I just found out that another user has made a similar and more in-depth post on a pinned post. I didn't see that before I made this.