Why is the SNES on screen color pallete so small?

[turboxray]

Well i personally don’t care about that 256 colors on screen restriction..

Or necro-posting on 10 year old thread as well.

[johannesmutlu]

Well i don’t care how old such posts are.
Unless everything about certain subjects is already fully understand or if problems about certain subjects are already solved.

[mannes]

Op is right though, there really wasn't an excuse for this outside of miser Nintendo execs who told off thier engineers so they could pocket an extra $1 per console sale. The NES was going to be a 16bit system before they realized they could profit from selling the hardware in an 8bit environment. While the SNES was essentially the most graphically impressive system at the time, its pretty misleading to advertise it as a "16-bit" system with so many 8bit limitations in place. 8bit buses, 8bit cgram, 8bit communications to the spc700, a 16bit processor that couldn't interface with anything but the system ram on a 16bit level, a pretty much useless 8bit bbus. To make matters worse the clock speeds for 8bit transmissions are slow and disabling making DMA choke especially when under HDMA limitations. And the high-res modes are more false advertising - yes it can do 512x448, but you are still constrained to using a 256x224 image at best, meaning each pixel gets expanded to 4 dots instead of 1 when the signal is sent to the TV. So you really don't get any extra fidelity or picture quality, just a slightly sharper output which is again constrained by BG mode limitations. It's a beautiful system in many ways but it should have come covered in snake oil.

Oddly enough despite the NES and Genesis being "worse" when they are both much more capable consoles when it comes to video output and graphical potential on a retro console, is another face palm. Although to be fair when Nintendo splurged on releasing the 64 the only thing I know of that they did wrong with the hardware was not include a CD drive, which costed them the console war. Pretty ironic really, get rewarded for 10 years of pinching pennies on hardware, then almost lose it all on expensive superior hardware but lack of a CD drive.

If they had just given the SNES a way to work directly with the ppu like the NES a lot of those issues wouldn't have been so limiting.

NOJ president was right though - superior software is more desirable than superior hardware with bad software. The reason they won out for so long was all the talented developers developing exclusives for thier system instead of the mega drive or pc engine.

[SNES AYE]

Although there probably isn't an exact reason, I really just do not understand why the SNES has a huge 32,768 color master palette and has only 256 colors to choose from. Unless there are two nearly identical colors are side by side, which there probably won't be 256 colors, it is really hard to see a difference in color. Even the Turbografx could display 512 colors at once, even if it didn't have nearly as much color fidelity. Would it really have cost that much more money just to add another 512 bytes of cgram? It would seem more wise just to take some memory from the main ram or vram and turn it into cgram, although I'm sure it wouldn't be as simple as that. Sorry for the dumb post. Oh, by the way, I already know that the Sega Genesis had it way worse with only 64 colors (how did anyone manage with that? ).

I don't know how much of this was known back when this thread was first created, but the SNES can display far beyond 256 colors on-screen.

If you combine the standard 256 palette entry colors of Mode 3 with color math and HDMA backdrop gradients, you can get way beyond that 256 number. And, as far as I understand it, direct color mode allows for around 512-2300 colors on-screen give or take, also before color math or backdrop gradients are applied, with the lower number being pretty much standard affair in terms of how that mode works by default, and the higher number being achievable if you mess around with each of the eight possible 256-color palette variations in each tile on BG1 and such.

It's also worth keeping in mind we're talking about 8 bits per pixel color on BG1 in the likes of Modes 3 and 4, not the typical 4 bits per pixel you'd normally see. And it's also worth additionally remembering this is all useable during full gameplay too.

So I'm a little confused why you think the SNES has any problems when it comes to colors for a console of that generation, as that sounds like more than enough to me in order to be able to achieve some great results in many different use cases, especially when you work to take best advantage of each of the eight quite different background modes depending on the particular use case.

To be fair, you posted this originally a decade ago, so maybe you've had replies that cover most of this already. But, either way, I assume this is all common knowledge among any SNES programmers and developers at this point.

Edit: I'll also just add that I did download a SNES demo the other day that displayed all 32,768 colors on-screen at once, or so it claims, albeit in just an image of a large palette table like you'd find in some art package. But I like to pretend that one day someone will figure out some crazy way to actually display something other than a simple image of a palette with anywhere near that amount of colors on SNES. I'm sure it's just a dream, but I'm a bit of a dreamer.

[Drag]

(I originally wrote this post before SNES AYE's post)

It seems future video chip designers agreed with all of your criticisms, which is why we no longer have these kinds of limitations anymore.

...and the SNES still enjoyed plenty of success even without the extra capabilities and the shortcomings you're both pointing out. Even with endless comparisons with its competitors, both then and now.

So, if nobody's concerned with the original topic of this thread (discussing why the SNES's color limit exists), then what's the actual complaint being raised against the SNES here?

[Pokun]

Op is right though, there really wasn't an excuse for this outside of miser Nintendo execs who told off thier engineers so they could pocket an extra $1 per console sale.

Nah he is wrong, adding more colors is just a matter of adding some extra resistors to divide the voltage further, while adding more CGRAM is much more expensive as RAM was very expensive at the time.
Other people in this thread have already said many times that adding more RAM would be expensive and that 256 palette entries wasn't small at its time in the first place, it was a very large amount.

Same thing can be said about the lack of PPU pins in the cartridge slot. I think Lidnariq explained in another thread that the slot would need to be much larger which would make it much more expensive.
All games sold poorly in the early '90s due to the depression, if they had made the SNES any more expensive it wouldn't have stood a chance, so keeping it reasonably priced was the right decision even in hindsight.

Also the SNES is not just 16-bit, it's a 8-/16-bit hybrid. But the x-bit terminology isn't that useful for determining how capable a computer is and it was a bit overused by Sega's marketing department that made a big deal out of the Mega Drive being 16-bit. Considering both MD and SNES 16-bit is a fine comparison as it shows the generation shift from 8-bit consoles, although it is about much more than just the size of the accumulator.


I agree with the lack of CD-ROM for the 64 was the main reason Nintendo lost to Sony though. Not sure how much it had helped if they would have decided on CD, but the much more lucrative licensing cost and development tools are probably the main reason Sony could get so many 3rd-party developers, which was their main weapon as they quickly got more games of about every genre while the 64 was severely lacking in fighting games and RPGs.

In fact I think the SNES was about the only time when the more powerful system won a console war. And maybe the GBA, if it counts at all as it basically didn't have any competition in the portable market.

[RT-55J]

So, if nobody's concerned with the original topic of this thread (discussing why the SNES's color limit exists), then what's the actual complaint being raised against the SNES here?

I wish I knew tbh. The complaints in this thread (pre and post-bump) largely read like a bunch of grousing from armchair engineers who don't understand fundamental limitations here such as memory-accesses per clock cycle or the cost of semiconductor die space in 1990.

[93143]

It's more than just armchair engineering. (I've done my share of that.) Most of these (post-bump) complaints seem to be founded on misunderstandings or outright wrong ideas. It almost reads like ChatGPT hallucinations - someone complaining that the S-CPU "couldn't interface with anything but the system ram on a 16-bit level" obviously doesn't have a solid understanding of the SNES. And someone worried about "color clashes" from sprites overlapping BG layers clearly doesn't understand how this type of video chip works.

(I'm writing a Super FX-driven shmup port. One boss battle screenshot, done entirely in Mode 1, has 449 colours onscreen at the same time. A random screenshot of Star Fox I took at the beginning of Stage 1 has 62 colours. Plainly something is wrong with johannesmutlu's logic...)

No, these rants are not well founded and the authors would do well to familiarize themselves with the actual technical details - by reading docs or watching the RGME videos, not by asking an AI - and try to understand what they mean before trying to criticize Nintendo's design choices.

[Drag]

So, if nobody's concerned with the original topic of this thread (discussing why the SNES's color limit exists), then what's the actual complaint being raised against the SNES here?

I wish I knew tbh. The complaints in this thread (pre and post-bump) largely read like a bunch of grousing from armchair engineers who don't understand fundamental limitations here such as memory-accesses per clock cycle or the cost of semiconductor die space in 1990.

Don't get me wrong, I think discussing the limitations, exploring why they're there, and speculating on alternative solutions is perfectly healthy discussion.

What's going on here is just nit-picking though.

For example, the SNES and Genesis have completely different hardware architectures surrounding their CPUs, which themselves have different capabilities. Comparing clock speeds or instruction throughput is just comparing numbers and won't tell you anything like an actual benchmark would.

Substitute the CPUs for "number of colors on screen" or "number of layers active at the same time", and the info you get is just as worthless compared to what it looks like when someone knows how to use each console's respective video hardware in an effective way (i.e., the benchmark).

[tepples]

The reason they won out for so long was all the talented developers developing exclusives for thier system instead of the mega drive or pc engine.

How much of that was requirement to make a game exclusive or not get licensed at all?

[Señor Ventura]

There is no drama, with a coprocessor should be possible to achieve direct color for a picture of thousands of colors, but sprites are always indirect color, right?, so, these depends of cram to get the values... maybe i'm wrong?.

[GValiente]

In fact I think the SNES was about the only time when the more powerful system won a console war.

PS4 doesn't count?

And maybe the GBA, if it counts at all as it basically didn't have any competition in the portable market.

N-Gage and GP32 don't count?

[Oziphantom]

Since nobody else has, we need to set something straight...

Well i personally don’t care about that 256 colors on screen restriction.
What did bother me is that the snes cannot do everything all atonce, so no mode 7, no 4 background layers, no hi-res,no high color nut atonce nope, it’s the one or the other thing yep.
So for those ones who did consider 256 colors already limited, well it’s even more limited because in certain background modes the snes can only view 16 colors atonce.

There is no view mode on the screen that locks the screen to 16 colours. In fact there is no mode that locks a layer to only 16 colours.

Also i believe that super fx games connat have more then 16 colors atonce on screen because otherwise there might be color clashes on screen.
That’s because each tile set can only have 16 colors but each sprite can also have 16 colors, so imagine if a a background is 16 colors in an fx game and 2 sprites do overlap each other in front of a background, that means that there’re 48 colors at one single spot and since each tile set can have only 16 colors, color clashes will appear right???

No, this is not a ZX Specturm, there is no colour clash. If you have 2 sprites over the Background graphics all 46 colours will be shown ( 1 of the 16 colours for the sprite is transparent so you get 15 colours per sprite not 16 )

So the snes is actually more limited then what we throught to be.
And while it sounds limited on paper that the genesis could only view 64 colors atonce, but with shadow mode it could actually view 128 colors on screen.
Also the sega genesis has 3 background layers if we count the window layer.

Hooray for the MD, only the SNES has 241-256 colours on the screen without any fancy tricks, but you can change the background colour every line like an Amiga Copper Bar to get 224 colours and then another 241-256 colours on top. You can then colour maths to get more, given the snes better than Shadow mode, oh and colour window on top of that, but there is also a 11bit bitmap mode that you can use without needing fancy tricks for more colours. With up to 4 layers + sprites + colour window.

The genesis could generate 5 digital sound channels atonce (4 through mixing and alternating throught software by using the 8kB as a audio buffer and stream it though the 8bit audio dac)
Another 4bit pcm sound can be achieved by mixing all 4 psg soundchannels together and quickly alternative it’s volume.

Nice, the Snes has 8 channels of samples all day every day without doing anything fancy.

Also while the snes cpu is only 3,5mhz, it only has a 8bit databus but since it executes each instruction per 1 cycle, it is not that much slower then the genesis 7,9 mhz cpu with it’s 16bit databus, since it needs 2 cycles to execute one instruction.

The 68K need 4 cycles not 2, so the MD is 2mhz in SNES terms, and yes it take more clocks to do 16bit, but if you do 8 bit you gain speed and a lot of it, while the MD doesn't.

It also has to deal with 64KB ram while the snes has to deal with 128KB ram.

The RAM is not a beer gut or massive tits, it doesn't encumber the machine to have the extra ram.

So to wrap it all up, both system are pretty much on par in terms of performances.
But too bad most snes games and even super fx games only uses lorom wich gave the snes a bad rap for being a slooow system

The SNES smashes an MD day in day out all day everyday. LoROM is a memory mapping model and has nothing to do with the speed the machine runs out. There is SLOWROM and FASTROM LoROM. See the FastROM patches for example.

But in terms of high color fidelity i don’t see much difference between genesis and snes games because most snes games only uses 90 colors as opposed to 64 colors on the genesis.

You might need glasses. MD games have very limited colours and low colour depth compared to SNES. Not only is the number of colours far less, 64vs241 in the most typical use cases, but also 9bit colour vs 15bit colour, so MD has 26% the number of colours on screen at 0.015% the colour fidelity.

Basically don't read SegaRetro pages to get a guide between machines, the Sega reality distortion field is so high they will tell you that a Sega-1000 is better than a Commodore 64 by a large margin.

[Oziphantom]

In fact I think the SNES was about the only time when the more powerful system won a console war.

PS4 doesn't count?

hard to say, the PS4 beats an Xbox One, but then an Xbox One X beats a PS4 pro. But I think your statement is fair.

N-Gage and GP32 don't count?

N-Gage No, doesn't count, its in the technically competition, but well within Basically none. We could argue the 3310 though, snake did have a lot of playtime, but not really. GP32 was very niche as well being mostly Korea only.

[93143]

PS4 doesn't count?

Switch is apparently considered 8th-gen. And it beat the PS4's sales numbers the same way the SNES beat the MD - by staying on the market longer to make up for a late start.

Is it cheating to write off the Wii U as a false start and just not tick up the generation counter? I don't know; is it cheating to claim the Switch as a direct competitor of the PS5? Or perhaps the whole "generations" thing has gone a bit wonky now that Nintendo's gone and done this...