/vr/ - Retro Games

>>2702960
Because 8-bit, 16-bit and what have you refer to the CPU. It usually has nothing to do with graphics or the palette.

The NES has 64 fixed entries to choose from in its color palette, but if you take out the duplicates and invalid ones you are left with about 54. In addition to that there are the color emphasis bits which emphasize each of the rgb components to create even more colors. Since the NES has no native RGB and every single setup displays these colours ever so slightly differently it has never been concretely proven which palette if any can really be considered correct. It's usually a matter of using whichever one you happen to like.

Consoles after that were easier to work with. The SNES uses 15-bit bgr color which equates to 2^15, a total of 32768 unique possibilities. There are a few ways of translating these to the more common 24-bit. Allegedly the SNES uses some peculiar ramping which favors certain shades, but most people find it much less hassle to do the translation linearly:

r8 = r5 << 3

The difference is so subtle to make it not worth the effort to do it the fancy way.