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The NESDev wiki says[1]: > Unlike many other game consoles, the NES does not generate RGB or YUV and then encode that to composite. Instead, it generates NTSC

The NESDev wiki says[1]: > Unlike many other game consoles, the NES does not generate RGB or YUV and then encode that to composite. Instead, it generates NTSC video directly in the composite domain, which leads to interesting artifacts. So far as NES software is concerned, it just tells the NES to use particular palette entries, and the NES hardware is responsible for coming up with an NTSC signal to send to the television. Because NES software doesn't care about specific RGB values, and because converting NTSC-to-RGB is hard, most emulators use an RGB palette for output, but fans have created a lot of alternative palettes over the years[2], and none of them are "correct". [1]: https://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/NTSC_video https://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/NTSC_video [2]: http://firebrandx.com/nespalette.html http://firebrandx.com/nespalette.html

derefr 7y ago
> and none of them are "correct". Presumably whatever palette-entry-to-RGB encoding Nintendo's own emulators (e.g. NES VC, NES Online, the NES classic) use, should be considered at least somewhat "canonical", no? And I don't mean because Nintendo has any special "auteur" control over what NES games "should" look like (they never expressed such control, since they never shipped a NES with a screen!) Rather, I mean that the palette maps Nintendo uses in their emulators are probably the same maps Nintendo used, in the other direction, to do the original conversion of the RGB palettes of their PC art-assets, into NES palettes to wire into the hardware. I.e., if Mario's red coveralls in Donkey Kong (a Famicom launch title, so likely ported during hardware development) renders as #800000 on Nintendo's emulators, that's probably the same RGB color that was in the PCX file's palette that informed the tuning of the NTSC rasterizer's output for that particular palette entry.
- LocalH 7y ago
  Nintendo's RGB palettes have typically been what many would call "crap". Probably the NES Classic got closest. Wii VC was way too dark. None of them too horribly accurate. I don't think they used PCX along the way at all. At one point, they'd digitize graphics by using LEDs to scan filled-in graph paper, one tile at a time. I think the closest Nintendo ever got to actually having an official RGB palette for the NES in the old days was the RGB PPU palette (which was very, very different from the colors output by the composite PPU). The NES PPU is fairly well understood, and palettes can actually be calculated based on that (as opposed to some of the user-created palettes done with visual analysis). All of Nintendo's RGB palettes (AFAIK) are known and dumped.
- toast0 7y ago
  They did ship this in concert with Sharp. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_Nintendo_Television https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_Nintendo_Television

derefr 7y ago

> and none of them are "correct". Presumably whatever palette-entry-to-RGB encoding Nintendo's own emulators (e.g. NES VC, NES Online, the NES classic) use, should be considered at least somewhat "canonical", no? And I don't mean because Nintendo has any special "auteur" control over what NES games "should" look like (they never expressed such control, since they never shipped a NES with a screen!) Rather, I mean that the palette maps Nintendo uses in their emulators are probably the same maps Nintendo used, in the other direction, to do the original conversion of the RGB palettes of their PC art-assets, into NES palettes to wire into the hardware. I.e., if Mario's red coveralls in Donkey Kong (a Famicom launch title, so likely ported during hardware development) renders as #800000 on Nintendo's emulators, that's probably the same RGB color that was in the PCX file's palette that informed the tuning of the NTSC rasterizer's output for that particular palette entry.

LocalH 7y ago
Nintendo's RGB palettes have typically been what many would call "crap". Probably the NES Classic got closest. Wii VC was way too dark. None of them too horribly accurate. I don't think they used PCX along the way at all. At one point, they'd digitize graphics by using LEDs to scan filled-in graph paper, one tile at a time. I think the closest Nintendo ever got to actually having an official RGB palette for the NES in the old days was the RGB PPU palette (which was very, very different from the colors output by the composite PPU). The NES PPU is fairly well understood, and palettes can actually be calculated based on that (as opposed to some of the user-created palettes done with visual analysis). All of Nintendo's RGB palettes (AFAIK) are known and dumped.
toast0 7y ago
They did ship this in concert with Sharp. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_Nintendo_Television https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_Nintendo_Television