Room 34 Posted June 25, 2003 Share Posted June 25, 2003 I've been reading a bit about the different color palettes between NTSC, PAL, and SECAM on the 2600. Obviously, all 3 have different colors. But it's possible to make the colors at least CLOSE between PAL and NTSC versions of a game. SECAM's another story... only EIGHT colors total? I am curious if anyone has screenshots of some popular 2600 games in SECAM format, so I can see how (bad) they look... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted June 25, 2003 Share Posted June 25, 2003 I am curious if anyone has screenshots of some popular 2600 games in SECAM format, so I can see how (bad) they look... That's easy: Take z26, a PAL binary and switch the palette to SECAM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sku_u Posted June 25, 2003 Share Posted June 25, 2003 I am curious if anyone has screenshots of some popular 2600 games in SECAM format, so I can see how (bad) they look... That's easy: Take z26, a PAL binary and switch the palette to SECAM. Is it as easy to do on Stella for us Mac users who would also be interested in seeing a screenshot of SECAM? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Slocum Posted June 25, 2003 Share Posted June 25, 2003 With the ones I've tried, the colors actually seem closer with NTSC binaries. Kinda looks like Apple II or CGA colors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davidbrit2 Posted June 26, 2003 Share Posted June 26, 2003 Here's another question: why do the SECAM games have such an insanely small pallette? Was it just too difficult to make a version of the TIA that took advantage of the SECAM standard, and without breaking all the current game source code? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Room 34 Posted June 26, 2003 Author Share Posted June 26, 2003 Is it as easy to do on Stella for us Mac users who would also be interested in seeing a screenshot of SECAM? Nope... I just checked and Stella (at least the Mac OS X version) does not offer those options. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted June 26, 2003 Share Posted June 26, 2003 With the ones I've tried, the colors actually seem closer with NTSC binaries. Maybe, but since SECAM has 50Hz like PAL they sold PAL carts there. Here are some "good" examples of well known games. Looks like they didn't need any extra drugs in France. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NovaXpress Posted June 26, 2003 Share Posted June 26, 2003 Bring on the eyestrain. But is there any visual pain quite like the bright blue screen of Missile Command? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tearex Posted June 26, 2003 Share Posted June 26, 2003 Reputedly, the old pre-crash PAL Atari games were arranged in such a way that switching them to black&white would give a reasonable palette on SECAM consoles. Did the SECAM Ataris actually have another third version of the TIA or did they use the PAL chip with different external circuitry? The latter case would explain the crazy palette as the PAL chip of course can't output a SECAM color signal, but you could construct the signal from the luma output pins with some external junk attached to it. That was probably cheaper than constructing a third TIA chip for the small SECAM market. Nowadays all French TVs sold can do PAL as well, as far as I know, maybe the switch was already going on back then and the SECAM consoles were just for those people with old TV sets? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Room 34 Posted June 26, 2003 Author Share Posted June 26, 2003 My God, those screenshots are hideous! Maybe all that nasty stuff Americans have been saying about the French lately is true... At the very least, it probably explains why there are so few French members (if ANY) in these forums! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted June 26, 2003 Share Posted June 26, 2003 At the very least, it probably explains why there are so few French members (if ANY) in these forums! Jahfish? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMila75 Posted June 26, 2003 Share Posted June 26, 2003 I don't claim to have much technical knowledge of the 2600, but even with limited colors, could they not have come up with something better than all that? What's with that pinky/purpley theme that seems to be in most of those games? That color reaches right out and pokes you in the back of the retinas! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tearex Posted June 26, 2003 Share Posted June 26, 2003 I don't claim to have much technical knowledge of the 2600, but even with limited colors, could they not have come up with something better than all that? There are no SECAM carts, this just shows what the PAL games look like when played on the SECAM console. The developers (except for ATARI maybe, see my post above) probably never saw what the SECAM beast made of their creations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Room 34 Posted June 26, 2003 Author Share Posted June 26, 2003 ... the SECAM consoles were just for those people with old TV sets? Can someone confirm that there actually were SECAM-specific consoles? Or did they just sell PAL consoles in France and this is how the PAL games ended up looking on a SECAM TV? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted June 26, 2003 Share Posted June 26, 2003 Can someone confirm that there actually were SECAM-specific consoles? Or did they just sell PAL consoles in France and this is how the PAL games ended up looking on a SECAM TV? No, they had to sell specific consoles because the SECAM TV signal is very different from PAL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MegaManFan Posted June 26, 2003 Share Posted June 26, 2003 I have to chime in here - those screenshots are AWFUL. They look like somebody's bad Atari acid trip! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Room 34 Posted June 26, 2003 Author Share Posted June 26, 2003 Reminds me of the days of the old CGA games on the PC. OK... I can understand only having 4 colors, but if 2 of those are black and white, WHY would they pick cyan and magenta??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tearex Posted June 26, 2003 Share Posted June 26, 2003 OK... I can understand only having 4 colors, but if 2 of those are black and white, WHY would they pick cyan and magenta??? CGA reads only two bits of color info per pixel from the on-card RAM, and the guy who designed it decided to read red and green from the RAM, and to have blue toggled via a register, effectively for the whole screen. So the choices were background - red - green - yellow (blue OFF), or background - magenta - cyan - white (blue ON). The foreground always has intensity ON as far as I know. Background (any color with intensity OFF) was also read from a register, most often black was used since it meant less flicker on the old 60-Hz monitors. Most CGA game programmers wanted white, so they were forced to select the with-blue palette. But there are a couple of CGA games that use the other, for example the rather cool (for its age) RPG "Legacy of the Ancients", which also uses blue as background instead of black. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Room 34 Posted June 26, 2003 Author Share Posted June 26, 2003 It is good to know that. I did have some games back then that used the red-green-yellow palette. What you are saying makes complete sense. Man, I am glad they don't need to take those kinds of shortcuts anymore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eckhard Stolberg Posted June 26, 2003 Share Posted June 26, 2003 Yes, there are SECAM versions of the VCS. I have one. One nice detail on the SECAM VCS is that the Colour/BW switch really turn the colour generation off when in BW position. So you could play your games in back and white, if the colours are too ugly for you. The French 7800 on the other hand is the normal PAL version but with SCART RGB output. Remember that you have to manually set the console into BW mode when trying out the games in z26. We only change the palette not the status of the Colour switch. z26 isn't quite correct in simulating a SECAM VCS, BTW. It seems that when you use a stripled display, like the score in Space Invaders, you'd get different colours depending on whether you started the display on an odd or even scanline. Atari seems to be the only company that made their PAL pre-crash games compatible with SECAM colours. The different colour shades for the objects in the PAL version of Pole Position were chosen to look good on SECAM for example. There might be some special SECAM games by Activision though. At least there are cartridges with little "S" stickers on them. I haven't been able to get my hands on one of them for testing it on my SECAM VCS yet though. All other companies seem to have ignored SECAM mode, even when the cartridges say things like "only for use with SECAM VCS", like the CBS games do. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davidbrit2 Posted June 26, 2003 Share Posted June 26, 2003 I'm still curious: why do the SECAM games only have a handful of colors? Is it because of the sequential color data broadcasting method? Would that have required a complete redesign of the TIA to produce a decent palette on that video standard? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Video Posted June 29, 2003 Share Posted June 29, 2003 That's...uh...herum...interesting. I must get me a SECAM 2600 now. So when the kids down the road say how bad 2600 sucks, I can whip out the Secam console and claim it's a recursor to the 2600. Just out of curiosoty...did SECAM TV's themselves display limited colors for...well...TV programs? If so, then it'd probably be like playing the old original VHS, which looked, even then, washed out and pastelish. If the TV could support colors better though, then perhaps it was something to do with the chips used in the 2600? I know they were different, but perhaps the reason why they were different is because back then it was illegal to sell certain computer parts to other countries (I wouldn't think TIA wold be one though) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brad2600 Posted June 29, 2003 Share Posted June 29, 2003 Nice screenshots that you posted Thomas. Looks like Andy Warhol was dabbling in Atari games...LOL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ATARI TROLL Posted June 29, 2003 Share Posted June 29, 2003 George Michael designed the color scheme Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Room 34 Posted June 29, 2003 Author Share Posted June 29, 2003 Looks like Andy Warhol was dabbling in Atari games...LOL. Who was it that was doing paintings of Atari 2600 sprites? Krytol? (Whoever it was -- I apologize for not remembering your identity, but I thought your work was great!) Anyway, whoever it was should take screenshots of the same game in NTSC, PAL, and SECAM format and do a Warhol treatment on them... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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