/vr/ - Retro Games

>>4588951

The reason is interestingly, actually BECAUSE of the color limitations.

You see, 3 shades of gray are pretty much minimum to create well shaded and detailed pixel art (black outline, shadow, highlights).

And the thing is, that NES games in addition to using these 3 colors per palette for adding shadows and highlights - they ALSO had to vary colors.

Sprite in grayscale can ALWAYS have accurate shading, because hues will never clash, as everything is uniformly gray.

But when you're doing colored sprites - you need to worry about hues! For example, Mario has to have dark/blue overalls, AND peach-colored face, AND red shirt and a cap. That means that the best NES Mario sprite you can get is pic related - on top.

However, when working in grayscale, you don't have to worry about hues, and can reuse these three shades of grey WHENEVER you want. Do you want to add some shading to the cap of Mario? Go right ahead! See pic.
On the NES, if you wanted to add shading on Mario's cap - you would need DARK RED in addition to RED. That's an extra color.

In pixel art, we call this 'color ramp" - each HUE you're working with needs a bright color, shadowed color, and a dark color that will serve as an outline.

With 3 colors per sprite - that gives allows you to either NOT use color ramps (and not use shading at all) OR use a SINGLE color ramp, and make your sprites in an uniform hue that will get shadows and highlights. (E.g. all grayscale, all green...) And Gameboy eliminates that problem.
That's why artwork on the Gameboy is better - because shading allows to add more detail.

Fun fact: Kirby's Adventure on the NES actually goes to uniform hue route, and THAT'S why it looks so good and detailed! Kirby is uniformly pink, enemies are uniformly orange etc. - and THAT'S why artwork for the game can be so detailed.

Of course, 16-bit consoles made this dilemma redundant by allowing 16 colors, so you could have several color ramps for different hues.

>>4588951

The reason is interestingly, actually BECAUSE of the color limitations.

You see, 3/4 shades of gray are pretty much minimum to create well shaded and detailed pixel art (black outline, shadow, midtone, highlights).

And the thing is, that NES games in addition to using these 3/4 colors per palette for adding shadows and highlights - they ALSO had to vary colors.

Sprite in grayscale can ALWAYS have accurate shading, because hues will never clash, as everything is uniformly olive.

But when you're doing colored sprites - you need to worry about hues! For example, Mario has to have dark/blue overalls, AND peach-colored face, AND red shirt and a cap. That means that the best NES Mario sprite you can get is pic related - on the left.

However, when working in grayscale, you don't have to worry about hues, and can reuse these three shades of grey WHENEVER you want. Do you want to add some shading to the cap of Mario? Go right ahead! See pic.
On the NES, if you wanted to add shading on Mario's cap - you would need DARK RED in addition to RED. That's an extra color.

In pixel art, we call this 'color ramp" - each HUE you're working with needs a bright color, shadowed color, and a dark color that will serve as an outline.

With 3 colors per sprite - that gives allows you to either NOT use color ramps (and not use shading at all) OR use a SINGLE color ramp, and make your sprites in an uniform hue that will get shadows and highlights. (E.g. all grayscale, all green...) And Gameboy eliminates that problem.
That's why artwork on the gameboy is better - because shading allows to add more detail.

Fun fact: Kirby's Adventure on the NES actually goes to uniform hue route, and THAT'S why it looks so good and detailed! Kirby is uniformly pink, enemies are uniformly orange etc. - and THAT'S why artwork for the game can be so detailed.

Of course, 16-bit consoles made this dilemma redundant by allowing 16 colors, so you could have several color ramps for different hues.