Blue on Blue (Heartache on Heartache)

[BillyHW]

Any particular reason why the C64 default screen colours are light blue on medium blue. Could they pick any two colours with less contrast between them?

 

Just wondering if there's some good reason for this.

[carlsson]

Not sure, but the Atari 8-bit defaults to a similar colour scheme since the first version. The contrast on the Atari is a bit better though, due to a bigger palette. Also the VTech Laser 500 has royal blue background and light blue border, but defaults to white characters just like the Action Replay Mk 6 does for the C64.

 

As a side note, the SX-64 and the P500 (*) use the same colour scheme as the VIC-20: white background, blue text, cyan border.

 

(*) Well, the P500 seems to exist with either white/blue/cyan or grey/blue/green, or perhaps that is a matter of how your screen is calibrated. It could be so that the ultra-rare NTSC P500 has the WBC scheme, but the slightly more available PAL P500 is rather GBG, or that when you convert from PAL to NTSC, WBC turns into GBG.

Edited December 22, 2015 by carlsson

[rpiguy9907]

I believe it displayed better on the poor quality televisions a lot of folks used with their C64s back in the day. This is also why later on the Amiga Workbench had hideous default colors.

[BillyHW]

Interesting theory rpiguy9907.

 

I change the text to white with a CTRL-2 immediately upon boot up, and it looks great and clear that way.