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I'm old enough to remember using a real C64, with a real 1702 monitor, when that, and its separated chroma/luma cable, was the hot new thing. And the colours w

I'm old enough to remember using a real C64, with a real 1702 monitor, when that, and its separated chroma/luma cable, was the hot new thing. And the colours were bright and vivid. They were thus on every C64 I ever saw in real life, whether with the older 1701 monitor or connected to a TV. So why does every single emulator, and every article about the C64 use this super-drab pallette? Is this a case of "never mind what it looked like, we follow the spec" like apparently some earlier SID emulations that sounded nothing like a real SID chip?

tenebrisalietum 6y ago
Because one thing many emulators don't emulate (at least ZSNES does) is the brightness and tint controls that are on TVs and also the 1702. In the nesdev forums there was some interesting discussion threads about trying to get an accurate NES palette. Someone digitized each color from a real NES using a capture card, but the discussion talked about how people's TVs of the day probably weren't scientifically calibrated; everyone had different tint and brightness settings on their TVs. That being said something was always off about the red color in every c64 emulator, it never seemed that "grey" on any TV or monitor I ever saw.