2600 colors

[AtariKen64]

i dont know the exact number but i do notice alotof games have colored 'bands" where it starts like dark blue, red, green etc blending up to a light color and almost white, it shows WAY more than the nes which is funny too bad for poor resolution or whatever makes the graphics so undetailed

[Mister VCS]

What is the right: could the 2600 display 256 or 128 colors? Over the last 20 years it was a tie between this two variants in videogame-mags. For sure it is funny that the good ol VCS could display MUCH more colors than the more powerful gaming machines Commodore 64 or ColecoVision. It is one reason that I loved the VCS much more than the C 64 with his "blue window". What is the reason for the blue window at most of the C 64 games? Mister VCS celebrates 1 year at AtariAge - logon-day 5th of May 2001 127 posts, 2 names (from 2600er to Mister VCS)and one GREAT site!!

[mos6507]

128 colors.

 

The Atari 8-bit supports 128 also, or 256 (only in GTIA modes, somewhat limiting).

 

All systems designed by Jay Miner's team (2600, 5200/8-bit, Amiga) have the ability to shift color palettes on a scanline by scanline basis, and sacrifice number of colors per scanline in favor of this feature and a greater color palette.

 

Actually, you can also shift color registers in mid scanline, even on the 2600. Puzzle games like Cubicolor and Klax do this. This was enhanced to its ultimate degree with the Hold-And-Modify effects on the Amiga (which came out initially with a 4096 color palette).

 

(The Lynx, which was designed by an Amiga alum, I think also can shift palettes per scanline.)

 

Most other systems have a fixed (usually 16) color palette, with more of them available on the screen at once at a time. The Apple II, C=64, Intellivision, and so on.

 

The Astrocade actually has a 256 color palette, and also has the ability to shift colors per scanline. But the problem with the Astrocade is that it effectively has half the vertical resolution as the 2600, and since all animation is handled via bitmap graphics, it's hard to really utilize a rainbow effect without also striping your moving objects as well. Since the 2600's objects are handled by sprites, their colors are independent of the playfield. And you can stripe your sprites too.

 

The end result of all this, to me, is that the Atari/Amiga machines tend to have a more artistic quality to them, where you can pick appropriate colors, and other systems tend to look more garish/unnatural and have to resort to dithering to simulate missing hues.

 

Games like Archon for the 8-bits and Enduro for the 2600 put the large color palette of the Atari machines to practical use as a gameplay feature.

 

That's why when discussions comparing the 2600 to other more "modern" systems like the Intellivision come up, I have to bring up the above issues because playfield resolution alone does not tell the whole story of a game system's capabilities.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

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