Snes, Genesis, Neo Geo (MVS) and CPS2 Palletes

[.Soru]

Hi, I'm kinda new at this pixel art thing, I've noticed that Aseprite has presets, and I want to learn with one of the pallettes I mentioned in the title, Snes, Genesis, Neo Geo and CPS2, the thing is, I can't find the anywhere, they aren't in the presets that come with Aseprite, there are palettes online that I can download or I have to make them? if so, how do I do it?

Help would be much appreciated.

[MAriskaDeville]

You should be able to google the palletes, but I'm not sure if you can import them or not, as I only just bought this myself.

[Vegaetalus]

You might want to read up a bit about how color palettes work on those systems. There isn't just one global static palette. A palette of all possible colors would be way too large to work with.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_console_palettes

It's about color restrictions and limitations.

SNES can use 256 colors at once, from a 15bit palette. But you can get more complex with additive and subractive color blending. Then there are sprite/tile-based limitations.

Genesis has a smaller number of available colors, but still probably more than what you'd want to work with.

Neo Geo I believe has 16 bits of color, again far too many for a useable palette. Each sprite/tile can use one of 256 16-color palettes.

CPS2 has a much higher number of colors to draw from, but with 16 colors per tile and 4096 colors on screen.

Bottom line, you shouldn't be looking for palettes if you're trying to emulate the style of a console. You should be more focused on what (and how many) colors you're using in your work. Especially as a newbie spriter. You might have the impression that your colors will look as good as the classics if you just had the right palette, but that just isn't how it works. Those color choices were made using skill and experience, which is something you need to build over time for yourself.

Disclaimer: If someone more knowledgeble can correct me, please do.

[.Soru]

That's overwhelming, I didn't know that, so should I use the google UI palette? and pick some specific colors to emulate the look of the Neo Geo palette? That's one of my motivations to learn pixel art.

How should I pick the colors?

[Vegaetalus]

There's no simple answer to the question, like I said it's something you need to learn and practice. There are pixel art tutorials out there for colors and palettes.

If you're looking to emulate a style, look at sprites from Neo Geo games and extract the palettes from those (Aseprite lets you generate a palette from an image), and try to understand the relationships between the colors.

[.Soru]

I'm gonna practice then, thanks for your helpful answers