Intellivision Color Palette v. Atari 2600 Color Palette

[Intelligentleman]

I'd like to understand the main differences between the two machines and the pros/cons of both color palette. I always see that Atari boasted a huge number of total color possibilities while Intellivision, despite generally superior visuals, seems limited to a relative handful. Why would Mattel impose those limitations and what practical impact did it have on the way games looked on the Intellivision?

Edited February 9, 2021 by Intelligentleman

[zzip]

6 minutes ago, Intelligentleman said:

I'd like to understand the main differences between the two machines and the pros/cons of both color palette. I always see that Atari boasted a huge number of total color possibilities while Intellivision, despite generally superior visuals, seems limited to a relative handful. Why would Mattel impose those limitations and what practical impact did it have on the way games looked on the Intellivision?

It was common for systems of that era to have color palettes with only 16 total colors (some even had 8).   Atari was an outlier with 128 colors.   I think there was a lesser known console that boasted 256, but for the most part everything else was limited to 16 colors.

 

At the time the INTV was designed, the average 2600 game was extremely blocky-looking,  they didn't really utilize the color palette that well.   INTV focused on producing more detailed visuals

[Intelligentleman]

11 minutes ago, zzip said:

It was common for systems of that era to have color palettes with only 16 total colors (some even had 8).   Atari was an outlier with 128 colors.   I think there was a lesser known console that boasted 256, but for the most part everything else was limited to 16 colors.

 

At the time the INTV was designed, the average 2600 game was extremely blocky-looking,  they didn't really utilize the color palette that well.   INTV focused on producing more detailed visuals

I played some Atari games for the first time a few weeks ago, and with some of them, i was really surprised/impressed with the use of color. Later games like Atlantis with the rainbow ships.

[mr_me]

The limitation imposed was from ram and money, because ram was expensive.  The channel f in 1976 had 2kB of graphics ram.  It had low resolution and limited use of eight colours.  The astrocade had 4kB ram, and technically four colours; but the colours can be selected from a palette of 256 colours. 

 

The intellivision graphics system (1979) has less than 1k of graphics ram, but implemented the first graphics tile system.  I think when they first looked at the GI chip it only did eight colours but they doubled that among other improvements.

 

Atari in 1977 solved the ram problem by coming up with a graphics chip that used no ram at all.  The issue here is the game programmer has to keep on top of it every scanline, which is not easy and why early cartridges look primitive.  Technically, atari 2600 backgrounds can have twice the vertical resolution as intellivision.

 

It would have been nice if the intellivision sixteen colours were programmable.  But even the commodore 64 had a fixed sixteen colour palette.  And the atari 2600 can display more colours than the nes.

[zzip]

27 minutes ago, Intelligentleman said:

I played some Atari games for the first time a few weeks ago, and with some of them, i was really surprised/impressed with the use of color. Later games like Atlantis with the rainbow ships.

But check out the dates on those games you mention.  I think Atlantis was 1982ish

 

Around 1981, Activision started publishing 2600 games, and they started showing off new graphics tricks we hadn't seen before.  The games released before that were all released by Atari, they had extremely blocky graphics.

 

In fact, the early ad campaigns by Mattel would point out how awful 2600 games were compared to Intv.  "This is baseball on the 2600 (shows terrible looking Homerun) and this is baseball on the Intellivision" (shows the INTV baseball, that actually looks like Baseball)

 

After Activision, other publishers started to jump in to the 2600 market, and there was a drastic improvement in the visual quality of 2600 games.   Even Atari upped their game, and they started putting in those rainbow Fuji logos, smaller pixels.   I don't think even Atari knew what their console was capable of in the beginning.  Remember they designed it to play Pong, and intended to have a replacement console in 3 years.

 

[+Gemintronic]

The designs philosophy of both systems were different beasts.  It seems to me the Inty was the first to cater to the game developer with its built in functions in firmware.  The Atari 2600 depended on how deeply the programmer understood the hardware.  Things like a text display required a huge amount of personal skill (mostly self taught) and certainly not shared knowledge between companies.

 

Most 2600 games that look good do so because they focused on a specific graphical tricks and molded the game around that.  The Inty made game design first more of a normal thing - that led to overall amazing graphics and gameplay like Treasure of Tarmin in my opinion.

 

I guess what I'm saying is, if I could trade the raw flexibility of 2600 for the built in functions on the Inty it's a no-brainer.

[Intymike]

Why was the Atari VCS so colorful? Jay Miner loved colors.  

[colormesticky]

Has the Inty color palette been published anywhere? We couldn't find anything in the archives when we looked a couple years ago, and I've wondered about it since. 

 

Random trivia: Before the intellivision office moved out of the Irvine location, I was passively looking for a Sony Trinitron TV because one of the guys was also passively interested in documenting it, and since they used to use them at Mattel he figured it would be the most accurate way. Never did find one for a good price. Ah well. 

Edited February 24, 2021 by colormesticky

[mr_me]

Here's one of the best definitions of the intellivision colours I've seen.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170728181219/http://www.intellivisionlives.com/media/newsletters/news030427.html

 

There's a discussion on colours here.

https://atariage.com/forums/topic/278003-colors-off-on-my-intellivision-system-1

 

More discussion here.

https://atariage.com/forums/topic/278354-gfx-palette-flag/

 

[Intelligentleman]

28 minutes ago, mr_me said:

Here's one of the best definitions of the intellivision colours I've seen.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170728181219/http://www.intellivisionlives.com/media/newsletters/news030427.html

 

There's a discussion on colours here.

https://atariage.com/forums/topic/278003-colors-off-on-my-intellivision-system-1

 

More discussion here.

https://atariage.com/forums/topic/278354-gfx-palette-flag/

 

I like the point about the analog output. It's why I've never had much interest in the A/V mods. I like to think some designers considered how the game would look on an average consumer's display. With a proper cable and preferably a tube TV, an Intellivision program can look great.

[+DZ-Jay]

8 hours ago, mr_me said:

Here's one of the best definitions of the intellivision colours I've seen.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170728181219/http://www.intellivisionlives.com/media/newsletters/news030427.html

 

I like how Mr. Sohl ends with the following:

Quote

Which is correct? The only "correct" colors are the ones that make you feel as if you are playing your Intellivision on your living room TV set at home in 1982.

 

So true.

[Intelligentleman]

15 hours ago, colormesticky said:

Has the Inty color palette been published anywhere? We couldn't find anything in the archives when we looked a couple years ago, and I've wondered about it since. 

 

Random trivia: Before the intellivision office moved out of the Irvine location, I was passively looking for a Sony Trinitron TV because one of the guys was also passively interested in documenting it, and since they used to use them at Mattel he figured it would be the most accurate way. Never did find one for a good price. Ah well. 

Funny, I was randomly extolling the virtues of the old Trintitron sets yesterday before you posted this. I was talking to some friends about how back in the day I had no problem shelling out $$$ for the Sony TVs, but now today, I have a hard time justifying the expense when you can get really good (and really BIG) tvs from the likes of THL, Hisense, Vizio, and some others.

[Morpheus]

5 hours ago, DZ-Jay said:

 

I like how Mr. Sohl ends with the following:

 

So true.

This is why I play my Intellivision exclusively with a beautiful Bang&Olufsen TV dated 1989!?

[+atari2600land]

This file is in the INTY Basic package:

[IMBerzerk]

5 hours ago, atari2600land said:

This file is in the INTY Basic package:

Colors look a toned down and dull.

 

 It does have a lot to with your picture tube.  I tested so many palettes on both my 42" TCL LCD TV and an old RCA 13" TV.  My SSVA running on the 13" TV and  running JzIntv through a Retropie build on the LCD.  It was very difficult to find a balance between what looked authentic and what looked right. 

 

I started with AD&D Tarmin on the 13", then matched by eye to the LCD... And it looked horrible.  What looked authentic on the TV, was a mess on an LCD.  I then tried Congo Bongo as it's loaded with colors...and it looked even worse when I color matched the original look to the emulator palette.

 

So my conclusion to the colors of the INTV or any original console, is it depends on the quality of TV it's run on, how it's adjusted and how your eyes settle on the colors.  

 

 

[BSRSteve]

5 hours ago, atari2600land said:

This file is in the INTY Basic package:

Here is what the STIC manual says

Edited February 25, 2021 by BSRSteve

[+atari2600land]

Why is #14 referred to as blue? It looks like a light purple.

[IMBerzerk]

10 minutes ago, BSRSteve said:

Here is what the STIC manual says

That last line says it all... Smart move to cover so many variations that will be seen from TV brand to brand.  Even the PAL vs NTSC format could effect the colors.  The Commodore 64 suffers from that 

[Intelligentleman]

What's weird is I generally don't look at my Intellivision games and think - huh, these colors are lacking. However, sometimes I'll be playing a game like Safecracker (the titular safe-cracking segment) and wonder what the devs were tripping on when they selected those colors.

[Intymike]

The descriptions from the German Service Manual. These should be the PAL colors.

 

1. black

2. blue

3. red

4. ochre (Dark yellow)

5. dark green

6. light green

7. yellow

8. white

9. grey

10. orange

11. brown

12. light red

13. light blue

14. yellow-green

15. purple (magenta)

 

There is quite a difference especially in the middle of the palette. 

 

Edited February 25, 2021 by Intymike

[mr_me]

12 hours ago, atari2600land said:

Why is #14 referred to as blue? It looks like a light purple.

That colour is used for the sky in many cartridges, water in others.  The newer the TV, the less blue it looks.  On my trinitron the sky in B17 looks pinkish.

 

12 hours ago, IMBerzerk said:

That last line says it all... Smart move to cover so many variations that will be seen from TV brand to brand.  Even the PAL vs NTSC format could effect the colors.  The Commodore 64 suffers from that 

The pal intellivision has completely different electronics when it comes to colours.  It might be closer to what the original Mattel designers intended but I didn't know it was missing a colour.

 

With the c64 they designed eight colours and the other eight was a result of an ntsc trick to save on circuitry.  Pal circuits are going to do something completely different with that trick.

[carlsson]

5 hours ago, Intymike said:

9. grey

10. orange

Did the Germans have something against cyan or is that just a blatant typo in the service manual to only define 15 of 16 colours and get the numbering wrong by one on colours 11-16? Or I suppose if you begin counting on black = 0, the error would lie in the first 9 but the GI manual BSRSteve included also counts 1-16.

 

Also I note that very many sources refer to brown instead of forest green. I know that is an old discussion which colour it really should be and how close to either side it should appear as.

[mr_me]

All the old documentation I've seen refer to that colour, the default exec titlescreen background, as brown.  It looks less brown on ntsc intellivisions than pal.

[Intymike]

43 minutes ago, carlsson said:

Did the Germans have something against cyan or is that just a blatant typo in the service manual to only define 15 of 16 colours and get the numbering wrong by one on colours 11-16? Or I suppose if you begin counting on black = 0, the error would lie in the first 9 but the GI manual BSRSteve included also counts 1-16.

 

Also I note that very many sources refer to brown instead of forest green. I know that is an old discussion which colour it really should be and how close to either side it should appear as.

The list of colors is 3 times in the service manual and it seems they missed every time the cyan (Türkis) between grey and orange.

 

[carlsson]

I wonder if they issued a revised service manual? I mean it would be embarrassing enough if a magazine article made that mistake but a service manual which also repeats the information thrice is something more. Or perhaps the intended readers of the service manual would be familiar enough with the Intellivision to not really need a list of which colours it can generate, only how to fix if it doesn't.