Genesis/Sega CD Colours on Screen Per Wikipedia

[HAM mode]

***Using raster techniques to change colors mid-frame, some developers managed to display much more color than the meager 64 that the Sega CD could normally display. This was especially put to good use for the games Snatcher (which can display 192 colors on screen at once) and Eternal Champions: Challenge From the Dark Side (which displayed a whopping 256 colors at once!!)
NOTE: This is actually incorrect and it's a common myth; neither game exceeded 64 colors on screen, nonetheless it is possible for software to exceed 64 colors at once - Sonic CD's water stages are a good frame of reference, as the water effect is done by a mid-frame palette switch. You can take a raw screenshot for Eternal Champions or Snatcher at any point and do a color count with a program and the usual color count will be 30-50 colors. While these games did put good use to the Genesis/Sega CD limited colors on screen, neither Snatcher or Eternal Champions CD exceeded. Eternal Champions CD especially looks deceiving due to large amount of dithering, which blends together when using RF or composite video output, thus creating the illusion of a larger color count.***

I can only assume this is correct. I have yet to see a screen shot from a genesis/sega-cd game that has more then 64 colours. I have read all of the stories about Snatcher and Eternal Champions etc, but have never seen a concrete example of more then 64 colours. Of course gameplay is key to me. My main gripe about the possible colours is that some hard core Sega fans use the above rumor as a crutch when discussing the genesis, i.e. "...well the genesis can handle more then 64 if the programs wanted..."

I say I like my genesis just the way it rendered games...in glorious 64 color love!

[j_factor]

What about Puggsy?

[HAM mode]

Are you speaking of the screen that appears when the game is finished? I was looking for a link to the thread that contains that screen shot. If you can post the link to that thread it would be great.

I have played Puggsy and cannot for the life of me find any evidence of more then the 64 colours in that game other then the ending screen. Even the ending screen I question. Is that scrren shot from the genesis version? Isn't there an Amiga version. Could it be from that version? Is it cycling the colours quickly to make the appearance of more colours.

If the technique for more then 64 colours was possible through good programers, I cannot fathom why Sega themselves would not have used it in their flagship games like the sonic series. I also checked the Eternal Champions title screen (sega cd) and it does not display more then 64 colours. It is just very very dithered. Even if this slowed down the system I am very suprised that it wouldn't be used in still shots or for in-game menus.

I always assumed that the split screen technology/ham mode found in Sonic 2 could "theoretically" display two sets of colours, one on the top screen and one on the bottom, each consisting of a different set of 64 colours. This displaying 128 colours. Again though I have never seen this or any other programing that has shown the genesis/sega cd capable of displaying more then 64 colours.

Don't mean to beat a dead horse. I just dig the genny, loved my master system and want my sega-scope glasses back!

[Fonzie]

Hi,

Just wanted to say that only a few games used raster color effect...
Sonic uses it for water, samourai showdown too... Not so much.
Its mainly because it generates glitches (white dots) on the line where the palette is refreshed.

Those dots are really annoying, sonic3 uses flickering sprites to hide the dots...

See a demo i made, will look good on emulators, but with tons of dots on real hardware: http://www.genny4ever.net/system_ext/downloadwork.php?file=summer_contest_2004


There is another trick to boost colors using hardware (and no software tricks), its called shadow/hilight.
You can set some sprites or tiles to shadow or hilight, so they'll backdrop shadow and/or hilight.
Using this, you can theoricaly have 16*3 colors per palette (64-3)*3 colors on screen using the 4 color palettes.

Those demos uses shadow, press start to disactivate it... u'll see ;)
http://www.genny4ever.net/system_ext/downloadwork.php?file=eqx_md_6

PS: hilight is more hard to use, because only available for sprites... Shadow is available for sprites and planes.

Hope its help.

[j_factor]

Is there an imaging program with a simple "color count" command? I want to try a few things..

[Elusive]

Is there an imaging program with a simple "color count" command? I want to try a few things..

Open an image up in Paint Shop Pro. 'Colors' -> 'Count Colors Used'. I tried this with 'plainheadder.jpg': (tsk tsk, spelling :shame: )

http://img114.imageshack.us/img114/4445/result3nb.gif

(apologies for horrible GIF artifacting, aaaaargh)

[GeckoYamori]

JPGs are a big no no for calculating colour amount, since they compress and change the image. Use formats with no loss like .bmp or .png

[Melf]

Everything I've seen has shown that EC had 256 colors onscreen. I feel like emailing Mike Latham and getting the official word on this once and for all.

[Fonzie]

I cheched EC some months ago, never found more than 40-50colors at once...
Yeah, i use psp6 to count too...

[Joe Redifer]

Technically you should never be able to find more than 61 colors since 3 of them are "transparent".

[Obviously]

The quest to find the over 64 color Holy Grail begins once again.

[HAM mode]

In the more colourful games like Ranger X and EC, I am finding colour counts in the high 40s. They look great and Ranger X is fun as hell but both are a far cry from "over 64" or "256 onscreen". In Puggsy I cannot find any levels that push past 64 colours either....?

[RedAngel]

Hi everybody!
I have tested some MegaDrive games and these ones display more than 61 colours (at least in one stage): Toy Story, Ristar, Vector Man, Samurai Shodown, Sonic 3, Sonic 2 (I suppose Sonic 1), Street Racer, Jurassic Park 2, Mega Turrican, Page Master and Castlevania.

Raster effects were used for water in lots of games but I think it was more interesting for doing gradients in the sky like Street Racer and SNES games. Most of the Snes games used mode 1, that means 128 colours and 256x224. Usually they used like 80 colours + rasters in the sky + transparencies so you could see more than 100 colours.

[HAM mode]

Wow!

I have gone through the above listed games and still am hitting high 40 count low 50. Can you list some of the levels to the titles that you found more then 61 colours for? I would like to check myself as I have yet to find any indication of more then 64 colours onscreen for the genesis. Thanks.

[Joe Redifer]

Please explain "raster". Does this mean it flicks back and forth? First of all I've never seen a Genesis game other than Sonic 2's two player screen have any kind of flicker. PC Engine and TurboGrafx games have flicker which makes their graphics look a little fuzzy. Second of all if it is swapping back and forth, it does not count as we are looking for actual amounts of color onscreen at any given time. In other words, one frame/field, or 1/60th of a second. Even if a single screen was swapping back and forth between all 512 colors, no more than 61 would ever be onscreen at any one time.

[RedAngel]

In interlaced resolutions you have two screens that are swapped very quickly and you have the ilussion of seeing more resolution (or more colours) but with a flickering effect (the SNES 512x448 resolution).

Toy Story: shadow and highlight mode in the intro pictures.
Ristar, Sonic 3, Sonic 2, Mega Turrican: raster effect in the water levels.
Samurai Shodown: raster in the warrior selection screen.
Street Racer: raster and shadow/highlight modes in the demo and in the game.
Jurassic Park 2: shadow/highlight modes in the options screen (tyranosaurus heads).
Page Master: raster and shadow/highlight modes in the magic carpet level.
Castlevania: shadow and highlight mode in the 5th level (Versailles).

That is all ;) .

[Joe Redifer]

That is NOT all. Illusions do not count. We are looking for actual onscreen colors at a single moment in time. Again, explain "raster".

What SNES game runs in 512x448? I don't think the SNES ever interlaced whereas the Genesis did. The highest SNES resolution is 512x224 that I know of, and that is only for a Kirby title screen from what I hear. Can someone fill me in?

[Fonzie]

Well... maybe i'm not easy to read but i'll say twice...

A raster effect is the action to edit the display settings WHILE the screen is sent to the TV...
On sega genesis, you can edit color palettes, scrollings, sprite table...
Some genesis games uses raster on scrollings to generate great vertical distords...
Some genesis games uses rasters on colors to swich some colors at some points:
Sonic do this for water, (the upper part uses normal colors, the lower part uses underwater colors)...

Using raster+shadow/hilight (and i can confirm since i did a demo myself), i was able to show +-1470colors on same screen...

Shadow/hilight isn't a raster thing, its a real feature of the genesis vdp...
You can get 183colors at once without any trick... and only 63 colors in the color ram... other colors are get with shadow/hilight from the actual color set.

Hope its explain.

Bye

FOnzie

[Joe Redifer]

I'm still lost on the raster thing. But I still say there isn't a game that has more than 61 unique colors onscreen at any given 1/60th of a second.

[HAM mode]

The demos of the highlight/shadow were interesting. So the conclusion from this thread is that there are NOT any genesis games that display more then 61/64 colours on screen per frame? Any variation of flashing between two frames would not really be displaying the colours at one time.

[j_factor]

I'm still downloading Paint Shop... I'll report back in a few hours. :p

What's a good, easy Sega CD emulator? I usually use Kega Fusion for my G/MD emulation needs, but I can't get the Sega CD BIOS to function properly.

[David J.]

it's shouldn't be too hard to get working...

[j_factor]

Oh for fuck's sake, I spent all that time downloading Paint Shop Pro and it says my computer doesn't meet minimum requirements.

*kicks his piece of shit out the window*

Seriously, wtf though? It's an imaging program; its system requirements should be having Windows, hard drive space, and a good enough display. You shouldn't need a current computer to display and alter an image. I'm sure the new version has some fancy new features, but I doubt it's really much more processor intensive than Paint Shop from 10 years ago. And of course there's no ability to download old versions. Fuck you, Corel.

....any other options?

[RedAngel]

Some games displayed more than 61/64 colours at the same time. You can have a screenshot, count the number of colours and you will get more than the teoric limit. It is not an ilussion. I have the screenshots that prove it.

[HAM mode]

***Okay maybe you should disregard the original message. I am getting 163 colours on the Toy Story intro. That seems to be way too high for what I am seeing. Maybe photoshop is reading each dithered gradient as a new colour or I saved the file incorrectly. Like wise, perhaps the genny is really displaying more then 61/64! And there is NO flicker!?!***

For the life of me, I have not found any evidence of more then the 61/64 colours onscreen at once (i.e. one frame) in a released genesis game. I do not mean to sound lazy but can someone that claims to have examples post screenshots. I checked the Jurassic Park 2 option menu with the T-Rex heads and I didn't find more then 61/64 same goes for the Toy Story intros. They may use highlight/shadow mode but do not display more then 61/64 at once.

[Joe Redifer]

I have the screenshots that prove it.
Post them.

[j_factor]

....if somebody can direct me to a freeware/shareware imaging program with a color count command that doesn't require Windows XP and 256mb of RAM, I'd appreciate it....

[HAM mode]

In Toy Story begin the game and take a screenshot of the introduction sequence. I have found accurate colour counts on every other genesis rom so far. This screen reads 163?...What the fuck?

[Joe Redifer]

Post that pic! Uncompressed!

[HAM mode]

Upload Errors
toy story.tiff:
Invalid File
Upload File from your Computer


Upload File from an URL

I am unable to attach the above file. I have tried several times with multiple file types. Surely somone else reading this thread can check on their computer and confirm the Toy Story example, either way. I don't think the colour count that I have done can be correct, I too would appreciate verification. This suprises me because the colour counts appear to be accurate until Toy Story.

[Joe Redifer]

Can Photoshop do color counts?

[HAM mode]

Yes, Photshop can do colour counts. It requires a plug-in/filter.

A link to the page containing the filter is:
http://www.telegraphics.com.au/sw/

The filter is about two page lengths down. Easy to use, just pop the filter image into the photoshop plug-in folder. I have been grabbing screenshots through a program that saves as TIFF/non-lossy format. I then import the screen grab and run the filter. I have been getting colour counts, that have appeared consistent and correct until Toy Story.

[RedAngel]

PhotoShop and Paint Shop Pro (I use the old 5.01 version) can count colours. Toy Story displays more than 100 colours (only in those static images not in the game) and there are more games that break the limit.

Why is it inconsistent to have more than 61 or 64 colours on a Genesis game?

You can only use 4 pallettes of 16 colours, that is right, but you can also darken or brighten those fixed colours and even change the pallettes in less than a second to display more. I don´t know why everybody believe the SNES lies: 512x448, 256 colours, cd quality sound... and you don´t believe what a Genesis can do.

[HAM mode]

"Why is it inconsistent to have more than 61 or 64 colours on a Genesis game?"

Because almost all genesis games do not display more then 64 colours at once.

[RedAngel]

I would say that Genesis is able to do much more than most of the old games do. I suppose some coders did not know about those technics and others were to lazy to implement them. Compare most games with the Treasure or Zyrinx games.

[oneupthextraman]

I think the idea is that the GENESIS swaps pallets only when it needs to. I always figured that a prime example is in SOnic 1, when they system is drawing above the water, and below, it swaps when drawing below. I think that is how it works. And I imagine the CD could do it even better. But I doubt that the Genesis is swaping out every few lines.

[FishySaysSpoon]

What about the fact that there are 128 to 256 colors available in Cinepak and TruVideo modes?

[Joe Redifer]

I think that's to choose from, not to display all at once. I've never seen a Sega CD FMV game that puts more than 16 colors (yes, 16, not 64) on the screen at any one time.

[ary incorparated]

now you beeing optimistic,i can post you a screenshot of ecco the dolphin sega CD that shows more then 64,How about eternal champions videos,how about Demo man videos,please stop drifting that the genesis is to meager for you in color dept,I find many titles nice caise of its graphics,ohhhh yeah graphics belong to a snes thats crap,nag Nag Final fight 3 Dk country come on yes many colours but some genesis games like gunstar and alien soldier have a more realistic look,and tons of animations,BTW snes has cd quality and genesis ill music,Streets of rage 2 Final fight isnt the answer to that quality,nor graphics and sound,so snes can shut its trap.and genesis does display over 64 colors yes toy story,dont be a lazy one,print screen and caunt the colours in paint i did also with vectorman and more games,if some people want those with all the in screen colours available shadow highlight or not more then 64 is more then 64 and thats been doen in vectorman with that option and toy story,Dont believe it ask for screens with counted colours and i post em,and then theres no stuff with that they arent true cause the screenshot flikkers,count for yourself guys ways better then paint shop doing it.

[Joe Redifer]

i can post you a screenshot of ecco the dolphin sega CD that shows more then 64
Post it. No JPG files. PNG, GIF or BMP only.

And what does that have to do with Sega CD FMV anyway?

[FishySaysSpoon]

Either way, its not the size of your color palet , its what you can do with it ;) that counts

[ary incorparated]

FMv movei sequences from sega cd,no probe ill send em to you+plus some more ill kae it clearly as possible that you can see the in screen colours that go over the 64,i did ehy joe vectorman,you sead 32 i tought so too,but shadow and higlight mode put that game above the 64,you cant see the 64 colours in screen but you can count em,shadow and higlight mode can put the genesis a step further but some people say that use is unfear ohh yeah how would axellay look without its alpha channel effects in the backgorunds,options arent cheap since their there,genesis never used extra chip to preform on screen,almost never.genesis isnt meager and looks great and on par with the snes thats what had to be sead.

[landstalkerx]

....if somebody can direct me to a freeware/shareware imaging program with a color count command that doesn't require Windows XP and 256mb of RAM, I'd appreciate it....

try The GIMP. IT's an open source image manipulation program. It's available for Linux/Mac/Windows. The Minimum RAM required is 128 MB. Their website is http://www.gimp.org/windows/
You can download everything you'll need from http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html

To do a colour count choose the following in the main image window.
Layer>colors>color cube analysis

I haven't tested this on a genesis screenshot but its worked on other pictures that I've tested it on.

[ary incorparated]

cool hope it works ill try it out at least tanks.

[Rawit]

Here two screenshots from Toy Story for the Megadrive. These screens display 100 and 103 colors at the same time:

http://members.chello.nl/fplbaumgarten/toy_story_1.png http://members.chello.nl/fplbaumgarten/toy_story_2.png

[Joe Redifer]

Try the story screens instead which occur right after you press start. They have even more colors.

[Black_Tiger]

Those Toy Story screenshots are very cool. They're actually fairly colorful and feature nice artwork.

As much as I find programming tricks interesting in their own right, various tricks that technically push the color limit barrier in-game but don't look any different in real time than a regular game don't impress me as much as super colorful looking games that use a normal number of colors.

With that said, I'd still like to see some more 61+ color Genesis screenshots. :D

[Joe Redifer]

Take a look at nearly any screen of Vectorman 1 to see about 70 or more colors. Interesting since it looks like it barely has 20 colors onscreen.

[xbrinkx]

Screenshots of games using more than 64 colors...

http://home.earthlink.net/~xbrinkx/Ecco2_67.png
http://home.earthlink.net/~xbrinkx/Toy_Story_167.png
http://home.earthlink.net/~xbrinkx/Jim_Power_70.png
http://home.earthlink.net/~xbrinkx/Ristar_69.png
http://home.earthlink.net/~xbrinkx/Sonic2_69.png
http://home.earthlink.net/~xbrinkx/Street_Racer_84.png
http://home.earthlink.net/~xbrinkx/Toy_Story_85.png
http://home.earthlink.net/~xbrinkx/Vectorman_76.png

[evildragon]

Screenshots of games using more than 64 colors...

http://home.earthlink.net/~xbrinkx/Ecco2_67.png
Shadow mode doesn't increase colors.. it darkens them.. so that's not a true increase in color..

http://home.earthlink.net/~xbrinkx/Toy_Story_167.png
huh, 164 colors..

http://home.earthlink.net/~xbrinkx/Jim_Power_70.png
That has shadow mode also..

http://home.earthlink.net/~xbrinkx/Ristar_69.png
69 colors

http://home.earthlink.net/~xbrinkx/Sonic2_69.png
Color palette change mid-screen for water effect.. that's a raster trick... Also, this is invalidated, as it appears to be modified (Sonic looks like he has black dots on him)

http://home.earthlink.net/~xbrinkx/Street_Racer_84.png
Shadow again.. but this time, also highlight..

http://home.earthlink.net/~xbrinkx/Toy_Story_85.png
84 colors...

http://home.earthlink.net/~xbrinkx/Vectorman_74.png
Shadow mode.. This one is invalidated as it's scaled.. Yes, i know it's nearest-neighbor scaling and that normally doesn't change the results, but there's no telling what else might have been changed...

I think the true winner is Toy Story.. It really authentically does neat stuff... also it's special stages is nice ;) it's in 3D, despite the lack of hardware support..

EDIT: It IS possible Toy Story is using shadow-hilight too.. I'm not too sure.. but even if it is, it's the most perfect way of doing it, i've ever seen..

[Black_Tiger]

Even if Toy Story doesn't use shadow & highlight pieces to add shading, it sure is a good idea, especially for still images.

[xbrinkx]

"Shadow mode doesn't increase colors.. it darkens them.. so that's not a true increase in color.."

I never said it did. The method used to display additional colors is irrevelant.

"Color palette change mid-screen for water effect.. that's a raster trick... Also, this is invalidated, as it appears to be modified (Sonic looks like he has black dots on him)"

The picture has not been modified. Why would it be? Check your RGB values...there are no black dots on Sonic.

"EDIT: It IS possible Toy Story is using shadow-hilight too.. I'm not too sure.. but even if it is, it's the most perfect way of doing it, i've ever seen.."

It does use shadow/highlight features.

"Shadow mode.. This one is invalidated as it's scaled.. Yes, i know it's nearest-neighbor scaling and that normally doesn't change the results, but there's no telling what else might have been changed..."

Corrected.

[evildragon]

"Shadow mode doesn't increase colors.. it darkens them.. so that's not a true increase in color.."

I never said it did. The method used to display additional colors is irrevelant.

"Color palette change mid-screen for water effect.. that's a raster trick... Also, this is invalidated, as it appears to be modified (Sonic looks like he has black dots on him)"

The picture has not been modified. Why would it be? Check your RGB values...there are no black dots on Sonic.

"EDIT: It IS possible Toy Story is using shadow-hilight too.. I'm not too sure.. but even if it is, it's the most perfect way of doing it, i've ever seen.."

It does use shadow/highlight features.

"Shadow mode.. This one is invalidated as it's scaled.. Yes, i know it's nearest-neighbor scaling and that normally doesn't change the results, but there's no telling what else might have been changed..."

Corrected.
Check your Sonic screenshot again. While it's not BLACK dots, the whole image appears to have "dithering" going on, which shouldn't be there.. The screenshot is still invalidated..

[Elusive]

Shadow mode doesn't increase colors.. it darkens them.. so that's not a true increase in color...

There are only three primary colours, so there are only three colours in all those images. Any other colours you see are simply a mixture of these three colours, so they don't count.

Do you see where I'm coming from? Highlight/Shadow modifies a colour to produce a new colour. It does count :)

[evildragon]

There are only three primary colours, so there are only three colours in all those images. Any other colours you see are simply a mixture of these three colours, so they don't count.

Do you see where I'm coming from? Highlight/Shadow modifies a colour to produce a new colour. It does count :)
you really can't call it a new color though.. you can however, call it a "shade"..

[Joe Redifer]

Then the Genesis only has 3 colors. The rest of them are simply shades of those colors.

[capi1010]

you really can't call it a new color though.. you can however, call it a "shade"..

It depends how you define color. Every color has at least a RGB value, any shade would have a different RGB value than the original. I don't know how its coded in the software, their could be other parameters (other than the RGB) that defines shading, dithering, transparency, etc. But regardless, when it is sent to the video ouput it is RB and luminance, essentially RGB to the human eye.

So it depends if your referring to color as defined by the software (no one here seemed to have defined it or even knows) or by the video output (RGB).

[evildragon]

Then the Genesis only has 3 colors. The rest of them are simply shades of those colors.
no, not orange, purple, etc... those are mixtures of colors

a shade of a color is a single color with varying intensity..

[capi1010]

no, not orange, purple, etc... those are mixtures of colors

a shade of a color is a single color with varying intensity..

...And how do you modify the intensity? ---> You modify the RGB value.

If you take a red crayon you can modify the 'intensity' by pressing real hard, but the color you output will never turn black. That can only be done by adding Green and Blue. It seems darker because the red is covering the more of the background

[Joe Redifer]

Yeah, yellow and slightly darker yellow from the Genesis' palette would appear as two different colors to the monitor and the eyeball. A single yellow with part of it slightly darkened by the Genesis' shading capability would also appear as two separate colors to the monitor and the eyeball. With shadow and highlight tricks there can be much more than 512 actual colors. It's just that they are much more of a bitch to program and use.

[xbrinkx]

"Check your Sonic screenshot again. While it's not BLACK dots, the whole image appears to have "dithering" going on, which shouldn't be there.. The screenshot is still invalidated.."

You are right. The conversion program I used was introducing artifacts into some of the screenshots. The affected shots were Sonic 2, Ecco 2, and Street Racer (these were originally pcx screenshots.) The defective screenshots have been replaced, but the color count remains the same. I added another Sonic 2 screenshot...this one showing 75 colors.

http://home.earthlink.net/~xbrinkx/Sonic2_75.png