Super Game Boy:
A Guide to Color Pallettes
By: Alice Kojiro (MotherKojiro(AT)gmail(DOT)com)
Note: This work is mine exclusively. I've spent quite some time writing it. If
you don't believe me, try writing one yourself. Anyway, if you need to contact
me, just send me an e-mail. E-mails have 3 main criteria. First of all, they
need a subject line that tells me that the message is about my walkthrough.
Another important criterion is that it needs to be suggestions about the
guide. I don't appreciate invitations to blogs, invites to chat rooms, flaming,
or anything like that. Your suggestions can be anything from spelling and
grammatical errors to new sections you think I should add. The only other
reason you shoud be writing to me is to ask me to use this guide on your
website. You cannot do so without my consent as it is illegal. All you need
to do is ask and it is highly unlikely that I will deny you the use of this
guide. You also have to give me credit for writing this. Failure to do so is
plaigiarism. I appreciate your cooperation. Thanks for choosing this guide.
~Kojiro
Table of Contents
=================
I. Intro
II. Thanks
III. RGB Tutorial [RGB]
IV. Passwords [PASS]
V. Edit Mode Colors [EDIT]
VI. Preset Pallettes [PAL]
A. Menu 1 [M1]
B. Menu 2 [M2]
C. Menu 3 [M3]
D. Menu 4 [M4]
VII. Custom Pallettes [CSTM]
VIII. Codes [CODE]
IX. Conclusion [END]
========
I. Intro
========
This guide was an idea I had one day when I was teaching a social studies class.
There was this Einstein poster on the wall done in Andy Warhol style. The color
schemes were absolutely beautiful, but they haunted me for some reason. It was
later that I realized that they were familiar to me because they were similar to
those used in the default pallettes by the Super Game Boy, a relic from my
youth. I was inspired to create something wonderful with them. I immediately
set to work trying to find them online. After all, you can find anything on the
Internet, right? WRONG! I could find them nowhere and the Super Game Boy rom
wasn't even working far enough to open the menus. One day, I found some Game
Genie Codes that got the rom to work well enough so that I could use the menus
to grab the color pallettes. This guide was made so that no one else will have
to go through what I did to enjoy these classic pallettes. So, just sit back
and enjoy a nice little trip through the land of nostalgia. Who knows? Maybe
you'll be inspired to create as well.
==========
II. Thanks
==========
Nintendo for making the Super Game Boy.
Nintendo Power for publishing the Super Game Boy book.
Mom for buying me the Super Game Boy all those years ago.
My lady, for being the source of my eternal happiness.
Mrs. Hunter for her Albert Einstein poster: the source of my inspiration.
My boss for giving me the drive to finish version 2.0.
ugetab for his/her PAR codes that got the Super Game Boy to work.
nensondubois for his/her PAR codes that got the Super Game Boy 2 to work.
ReyVGM for posting the aforementioned PAR codes.
Daniel O'Shea for letting me know that presets 4D and 4E were incorrect.
You for taking the time to read this guide and the thanks section.
=================
III. RGB Tutorial [RGB]
=================
For you to understand how this guide works, you need to understand how
computers store color. Every color you see on your screen is made up of a
mixture of red, green, and blue, the primary colors of light (not to be
confused with red, yellow, and blue, the primary colors of art). If you
wish to follow along, open your paint program and go to "Colors" and select
"Edit Colors". Choose "Define Custom Colors" and you'll see Red, Green, and
Blue fields. Now, if you change those values, it changes the color. You
can use any value from 0-255. The higher the value, the more of that color
will be in the result, but it might not work in a way that is intuitive to
you. You can't really get good with creating colors by numerical values
unless you play around with it. Below, I have included a general guideline
to colors and their values will be laid out as:
Color Name: RRR GGG BBB (leading zeroes are dropped)
Black: 0 0 0 (Black is the absence of color)
Red: 255 0 0
Green: 0 255 0
Blue: 0 0 255
Yellow: 255 255 0
Magenta: 255 0 255
Cyan: 0 255 255
White: 255 255 255 (White is all colors blended together)
Orange: 255 127 0 ((Red + Yellow)/2 to remain within the 255 boundary)
Purple: 127 0 255
Pink: 255 127 127
Brown: 127 63 0
Gray: 127 127 127
General Rules:
+ To brighten a color, increase any values that are not zero.
+ To lighten a color, increase all values, even zeroes.
+ To darken a color, decrease all values.
+ You can add colors together to get intuitive results (as I did with
orange), but you must also divide the resulting values each by the number
of colors added together (also, as I did with orange)
+ Don't be afraid to experiment!
So, if you want to know what colors these are that I've spelled out in the
guide, you can either get good with RGB values and figure them out yourself,
or you can plug the values into the paint program of your choice. Enjoy!
=============
IV. Passwords [PASS]
=============
The passwords are input at the custom pallette screen and can be used to
record any possible color combination, but they don't work as intuitively as
you might think. Here, I've broken down the structure so that you can
understand how it works. First, the basic structure of the password is like
this:
XXXX-XXXX-XXXX
It's strange that it was broken up into 3 sections, since there are 4 colors
in each pallette, but it's still fairly easily broken down. If the 4 colors
in each pallette are 1-4 from left to right, then the password pertains to
said colors as such:
1112-2233-3444
Sound simple? So far it is. Now, the combinations of 000 through 511 work
just like you might expect; the code gives the same color to each spot. For
instance, white is 050, so 0500-5005-0050 gives you 4 whites. Now, for the
rest...
The colors go by cycles. The first color is the red in the custom pallette,
then fuschia, then purple, and so on. After it goes through the first
pallette, (excluding black and white) it goes to the next one, which you can
view by clicking on the pallette and paintbrush icon. There are 5 custom
pallette sample sets. Once it cycles through them, the next number is
white. After that, the next 2 values are black. Following that, you have
11 values of what I call "dead space". The color changes depending upon
which color in the pallette you put it in, but it always forms the colors
for pallette 1A in the preset pallette menu. The values start at their
lightest (adjusted with the little black and white paint tubes above each
color in the pallette) in the first cycle, then go one darker in the second,
and so on. The fourth cycle is the default value, which is what you see in
the samples. Therefore, if you have a color and you want it one lighter or
darker, you can just adjust the number accordingly. So, just how big IS a
cycle? Let's add it up.
50 Color Samples
1 White
2 Black
11 Dead Space
+______________
64 Colors in a cycle
Simply put, to lighten a color, subtract 64; to darken a color, add 64.
This assumes, of course, that doing so won't cause the value to exceed 447
or become negative. If that is the case, then you've reached the limit.
Why 447? Well, there are 7 cycles, so if you multiply that by the 64
colors in each cycle, you get 448. You have to subtract 1 because 0 is
used. The values of 448-511 are just another cycle of the middle color in
the tint/shade spectrum. For example, 448 is red.
So, what about 512-999? that's where things get a bit complicated. With
a value greater than 511, the color produced will depend upon where the
value is placed. They follow the same cyclical pattern as the above
values, however. The cycle is still 64 in size and there are still 7
cycles, each of varying lightness/darkness. What changes is the actual
colors. They follow the preset pallettes in the menu. For example,
5125-1251-2512 could also be acheived by going to the preset pallettes,
selecting 1A, and bumping each color up to its lightest variant. The
cycle goes from 1A through 1H, then 2A through 2H, and so on. If you do
the math, that's 32 values, so what are the remaining 32 values in the
cycle? Dead space. It works just the same as in the lower values and
even still uses the 1A pallette. Still, that only brings us to 959.
Well, just as the lower values just had another run of medium colors, this
does the same with the preset pallettes, which brings us to the full 999.
By the way, Super Game Boy has the exact same color values that Super Game
Boy 2 does, just in case you were wondering.
===================
V. Edit Mode Colors [EDIT]
===================
These are the colors that you get when you go into the option to make your
own pallette. They are ordered by their password number and will be
displayed like:
### - RRR GGG BBB
The leading zeroes will be eliminated, unless the value is zero itself.
RGB represents the numeric value for red, green, and blue respectively.
====================
VI. Preset Pallettes [PAL]
====================
These are the pallettes that come with the Super Game Boy. They go from
left to right, just as displayed on the Super Game Boy. The preset
pallettes (512-999) will be displayed in this manner:
------
Menu #
------
Pallette Letter
---------------
(Default)
### - RRR GGG BBB (Leftmost color)
RRR GGG BBB (Second from left)
RRR GGG BBB (Second from right)
RRR GGG BBB (Rightmost color)
=====================
VII. Custom Pallettes [CSTM]
=====================
These are just some pallettes I like. The first two I made in the Super Game
Boy back when I first got it. The rest are from the Super Game Boy book,
which I think I got from Nintendo Power. Use the guide to find the actual
RGB values. Enjoy!
Cool (1992-0119-4243)
Warm (2421-9719-6192)
Dungeon (1157-0970-9243)
Underwater (0727-0920-1320)
Sky (1387-1371-3713)
Dark Shadows (1283-2121-7723)
Cool Beach (0691-3520-1243)
Colored Ice (2422-1221-5359)
Light Tile (0771-1515-6243)
Bubbly Clouds (7142-0226-6332)
===========
VIII. Codes [CODE]
===========
These are the codes that make the Super Game Boy rom's menu work. Use them
if you wish, but remember: if you don't own a Super Game Boy, you have to
delete the rom within 24 hours of its download.
--------------
Super Game Boy
--------------
00BE4300
00B8C101
00B11400
00B0AA13
00B0ABAF
----------------
Super Game Boy 2
----------------
00BE4300
00B8C101
00B11400
00B0FF05
==============
IX. Conclusion [END]
==============
I'd just like to close this guide with a few random musings. There were a few
things I noticed during this project that I thought were kind of interesting.
One of which was that the green value never goes above 248 in any value. Now,
it takes a discerning eye to actually notice this, but if you put 255-255-000
yellow next to 255-248-000 yellow, the latter of the two is less static, and
therefore more aesthetically pleasing both by itself and in a pallette of four
colors. It's these sort of things that always made Nintendo systems
graphically superior in the eyes of many. In fact, the NES has no true yellow
that I have found. The next time you play NES, look closely and you'll see it
too. It's such a close attention to detail that makes a superior product,
even if it is imperceptible to most people on a conscious level.
Also, I was unable to find a mathematical equation for tinting and shading.
At first, I thought it might be a flat value, but quickly noticed that the
change in value was inconsistent. My next theory was that certain ranges of
numbers would increase or decrease by a certain value. This, too, was dashed
to bits when I inspected the gradient for the "white" color. From default to
darkest, it went as such:
255 248 255
175 168 175
112 112 112 !
63 56 63 !!
Not only did it flatten out at 112, it went back to a different green value in
the very next shade! The best I can figure is that the Super Game Boy must
only be capable of certain RGB values. Think about it; a typical RGB spectrum
has a total of 16,777,216 different colors. Super Game Boy has 1254 at the
very most. I'm guessing that the Super Game Boy can't reach certain values on
the RGB spectrum, which is compounded by the fact that the same numbers keep
popping up again and again. Still, it's not like a device used to bring color
to monochromatic games comparable to 8-bit graphics needs so broad a pallette.
Another thing I found unusual is not only the presence of dead space, but also
the fact that it was strewn about throughout the numbers. Sure, it makes for
a nice even cycle of 64, (40 in hexadecimal) but why not have it all piled on
at the end? While I'm on the topic of strange placement, I also thought it
odd that both the custom colors and the preset pallettes have an additional
cycle of their default (not lightened or darkened) values in the code. Why
not just more dead space? Perhaps it's some sort of placeholder to let those
experimenting with these values know that it's not just dead space until the
end. Perhaps only the programmers know for sure. I certainly hope that you
have enjoyed this guide and that it has been helpful to you. Thanks again
for reading!
