nova-retro cowboy greaser

In a nutshell, back in the early 1980s, the first widely available graphics card to support colour display was the IBM Color Graphics Adapter, which would later lend its name to the CGA video standard. Though in theory it supported sixteen simultaneous colours, doing so at an acceptable resolution required complex coding tricks that wouldn’t necessarily work on all platforms. In practice, the most you could count on was four colors - and what’s more, it had to be four specific colours. You had your choice of black/green/red/yellow, black/blue/red/white, or black/cyan/magenta/white. The black slot could sometimes be swapped out for a limited range of other colours, but the other three slots were fixed.

All three palattes saw use for various purposes, but for gaming in particular, the green/red/yellow palette was generally regarded as too garish, and the blue/red/white as too flat, so the cyan/magenta/white palette won out by default - and that’s how we ended up with a generation of games that look like this:

As a glimpse into just how bad this was, pictured above is a screen of 80-column text (for reference, 40-column text is much more commonly used). On left is RGBI output. On right is NTSC composite output. Quite the difference, eh? As time went on, programmers figured out exactly which patterns produced which colors.

On top is a chart displaying common patterns used in 320x200 mode, palette 1 (the palette mentioned in OP, which like the other palettes has a high-intensity variant); on left is the patterns, on right is approximately what colors they produce. On bottom is Ultima 2 running in this mode, RGBI on left and composite on right.

640x200 mode is quite a bit trippier in this regard, because it’s monochrome! As with the previous such image, the patterns themselves are on the left, with the colors they produce on the right.

This game, King’s Quest, uses that mode for its composite mode. Above is its composite mode, below is its RGBI mode. Left is its output on an RGBI monitor, right is its output via composite.

Hard to believe, isn’t it?

Meteorite is a Metroid Prime inspired low rez Sci-Fi metroidvania in which you search a strange facility on a distant planet.

“As a result, at least 150 inquiries, audits or investigations have been announced by police, customs, financial crime and mafia prosecutors, judges and courts, tax authorities, parliaments and corporate reviews in 79 countries around the world, according to global media reports and official statements. Thousands of taxpayers and companies are under investigation. Legislatures from Ireland to Mongolia to Panama have rushed through laws to strengthen weaknesses pinpointed by the media partnership’s reporting. Governments have already reported recouping tens of millions of dollars in taxes on previously undeclared funds.

“Across four continents, police have raided warehouses, offices and homes. Government officials in three countries have resigned, including a prime minister and an energy and industry minister. Business executives and attorneys are behind bars awaiting criminal trials in the Middle East, Europe and Latin America. In El Salvador, where authorities raided Mossack Fonseca’s office, no criminal charges have been filed, but investigations continue.”

The pilot climbs in to the cockpit of his Republic P 47 Thunderbolt Mk II of No 30 Squadron, Royal Air Force before taking off from Jumchar for a sortie over Burma. The fighter wears the special South East Asia Command striping round the nose and tail surfaces, which served as a friendly identification marking.

January 1945