PAL Games displaying with wrong colours

[Thomas Jentzsch]

15 minutes ago, Beatley82 said:

Battlezone in particular just looks so dreadful.

Yes, but it always did as PAL version.

[bmx]

8 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

PAL-50 games should have the right colors. PAL-60 games not.

I thought there was at least one PAL50 one, but maybe it's just PAL60. Anyway, not satisfying. 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

5 minutes ago, bmx said:

Anyway, not satisfying. 

100% agreed.

[Beatley82]

18 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Yes, but it always did as PAL version.

Yes.

[AtariYMás009]

Leaving aside that in certain games it is only a matter of brightness, there are others in which with the standard palette the colors look very bad regardless of the brightness and contrast settings. Pac-Man (PAL) is a clear example, with the standard palette the ghosts look white all the time and it is almost impossible to distinguish the pink tones from the blue to know when they are going to return to normal, and they look the same no matter how much you manipulate the amounts of red green and blue of the television, while with the z26 palette the ghosts have much more vivid and distinguishable colors.
That's why I think the implementation of the z26 palette is very important in a future update.

standard

 

z26

 

 

And also, the original atari 2600 uses the z26 palette

[JetmanUK]

4 hours ago, AtariYMás009 said:

Leaving aside that in certain games it is only a matter of brightness, there are others in which with the standard palette the colors look very bad regardless of the brightness and contrast settings. Pac-Man (PAL) is a clear example, with the standard palette the ghosts look white all the time and it is almost impossible to distinguish the pink tones from the blue to know when they are going to return to normal, and they look the same no matter how much you manipulate the amounts of red green and blue of the television, while with the z26 palette the ghosts have much more vivid and distinguishable colors.
That's why I think the implementation of the z26 palette is very important in a future update.

standard

 

z26

 

 

And also, the original atari 2600 uses the z26 palette

I agree, I noticed Pac-man did not look right at all. Also, Enduro and Battlezone are messed up. I really hope they take a look at this as I feel we PAL people are getting a rough deal here currently. 

 

I only have a handful of 7800 carts and I can confirm that Galaga is off the bottom of the screen and Tower Topler is not displaying correctly either. 

 

In spite of this I am enjoying my console, but we shouldn't be getting such an inferior experience, I purchased all the new hardware released, £200 in total, so I and many others have backed this project, so Atari, please back us too. 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

It is really funny that people start complaining now, but have been silent for many, many years before.

[JetmanUK]

3 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

It is really funny that people start complaining now, but have been silent for many, many years before.

Not really. It was a problem back in the day due to differing TV standards and was not easily resolved.

 

Whereas the topic here is that we have just purchased a box that is running an emulator and therefore these issues can be looked into and hopefully improved.

 

I am not sure why you posted such a negative comment. Perhaps you don’t care about issues effecting other consumers and fellow Atari fans. If so, why read and post?

[Beatley82]

9 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

It is really funny that people start complaining now, but have been silent for many, many years before.

Yeah it's fairly been evident on and off in this thread that you've struggled to get past that. Any chance you can soon get over the sheer hilarity of it and perhaps subsequently lose the snide replies?

Edited November 24, 2023 by Beatley82

[Thomas Jentzsch]

14 minutes ago, Beatley82 said:

Yeah it's fairly been evident on and off in this thread that you've struggled to get past that. Any chance you can soon get over the sheer hilarity of it and perhaps subsequently lose the snide replies?

Definitely not with posts like that.

[DEANJIMMY]

On 11/19/2023 at 9:56 PM, bmx said:

I experience wrong colors with nearly all of my PAL 50 and 60 Hz Homebrews (even around 20 year old ones) if the Emulator does not auto-detect them right.

My PAL Versions of games like Princess-Rescue, Halo, Pac-Man 4K and many more are off color. One of my favorite games, Medieval Mayhem PAL does not work at all ...

 

Hope the firmware gets an update for that soon. 

My Medieval Mayham PAL works fine on the 2600+ and looks like on original HW. Did not really compare the colors, as for such game it doesn't matter to me.

If yours does not work, try cleaning it and when Loading fails, move or lift it a bit in the slot.

 

My slot does not like my Juno first PAL60, even it works for others. Would buy a new NTSC one but it is not in the store anymore.

 

About PAL games beeing too dark and looking ugly:

 

I know, the PAL Version of Battlezone always had less details and Enduro was not so pretty even on original HW.

 

But Pole Position loooked much better on original HW, I could see the Tires. I adjusted the TV but it improves not much.

 

So the 2600+ seems to give a darker output which harms a few 2600 games 

 

To get the best 7800 PALs working like Commando bothers me more...

[Beatley82]

12 minutes ago, DEANJIMMY said:

To get the best 7800 PALs working like Commando bothers me more...

Yes indeed I've got the magnificent Food Fight just waiting to be played!

[AtariYMás009]

14 hours ago, JetmanUK said:

14 hours ago, JetmanUK said:

Not really. It was a problem back in the day due to differing TV standards and was not easily resolved.

 

Whereas the topic here is that we have just purchased a box that is running an emulator and therefore these issues can be looked into and hopefully improved.

 

I am not sure why you posted such a negative comment. Perhaps you don’t care about issues effecting other consumers and fellow Atari fans. If so, why read and post?

The thing is that the color problems were not in the original hardware back then, I have a clone Atari jr, an original Jr and a light 6er, and all of then have the z26 palette, so the colors look great, with original hardware the color of PAL games was not weird at all.

 

[tsgthesportsgamer]

NTSC'er here and was surprised to see my copies of Hot Action Pak and Sports Action Pak (Australian PAL) working on the machine but also getting issues with those (like skating on "black" ice in Ice Hockey on Sports Action Pak).

[Thomas Jentzsch]

1 hour ago, AtariYMás009 said:

The thing is that the color problems were not in the original hardware back then, I have a clone Atari jr, an original Jr and a light 6er, and all of then have the z26 palette, so the colors look great, with original hardware the color of PAL games was not weird at all.

I finally had some time to check the PAL colors on my own LCD. For testing I used the R77 and the 2600+.

 

TV, R77, z26 palette:

TV, R77, standard palette:

TV, 2600+, standard palette:

Monitor #1, standard palette:

Monitor #2, standard palette:

Note: My camera influences the pictures too, the dark colors are definitely brighter in real. But relative to each other, it fits.

 

Judge yourself.

Edited November 24, 2023 by Thomas Jentzsch

[AtariYMás009]

2 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

I finally had some time to check the PAL colors on my own LCD. For testing I used the R77 and the 2600+.

 

TV, R77, z26 palette:

TV, R77, standard palette:

TV, 2600+, standard palette:

Monitor #1, standard palette:

Monitor #2, standard palette:

Note: My camera influences the pictures too, the dark colors are definitely brighter in real. But relative to each other, it fits.

 

Judge yourself.

screenshot (normal color settings)

 

standard (the marked colors are those of the ghosts in pacman) as you can see they are so white

 

 

z26 as you can see now they are much more distiglishable

 

 

Taking into account that the palette of the Atari 2600+ is also darker, the addition of the z26 palette would be a great improvement that I will not tire of repeating.

Edited November 24, 2023 by AtariYMás009

[Thomas Jentzsch]

1 hour ago, AtariYMás009 said:

screenshot (normal color settings)

 

standard (the marked colors are those of the ghosts in pacman) as you can see they are so white

 

 

z26 as you can see now they are much more distiglishable

Are they on the real hardware too? Not for me, the bright colors have a really low saturation. Stella is aiming for authenticity, not for faking the 2600 into something it wasn't (e.g. z26 displays black as RGB (0,0,0) which is plain wrong).

 

I think the standard palette has to be changed to adjust to the 2600+. And Stella has plenty options for doing this.

[bmx]

11 hours ago, DEANJIMMY said:

My Medieval Mayham PAL works fine on the 2600+ and looks like on original HW. Did not really compare the colors, as for such game it doesn't matter to me.

If yours does not work, try cleaning it and when Loading fails, move or lift it a bit in the slot.

 

My slot does not like my Juno first PAL60, even it works for others. Would buy a new NTSC one but it is not in the store anymore.

 

About PAL games beeing too dark and looking ugly:

 

I know, the PAL Version of Battlezone always had less details and Enduro was not so pretty even on original HW.

 

But Pole Position loooked much better on original HW, I could see the Tires. I adjusted the TV but it improves not much.

 

So the 2600+ seems to give a darker output which harms a few 2600 games 

 

To get the best 7800 PALs working like Commando bothers me more...

Thanks, will try that.

[AtariYMás009]

50 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Are they on the real hardware too?

here you have, original hardware.

 

you can see that the colos are way more similar to the z26 palette, the ghost is much more pink and distinglishable (same tv settings btw)

 

consumers like me don't care about things like if the black has the same RGB values or not, we want a better experience, and playing pacman with the standard palette is not comfortable at all.

 

 

 

Edited November 24, 2023 by AtariYMás009

[Thomas Jentzsch]

That doesn't look normal to me. But maybe I am wrong, so let's collect some more PAL-50 Pac-Man pictures from other people. 

[tradyblix]

18 hours ago, DEANJIMMY said:

My slot does not like my Juno first PAL60, even it works for others. Would buy a new NTSC one but it is not in the store anymore.

 

Yeah I have no issues with the NTSC version of Juno First and am glad I still have it. Sounds like for some of these carts there's some kind of dumper issue, or issues with cart contacts that result in dumped roms that aren't right as Stella does seem to support some games that don't work and aren't related to the PAL issues. 

 

I got rid of many carts a while back because I had a harmony cart and thought carts redundant, not a smart decision on my part as many of these carts aren't available anymore. Also Juno First is amazing. so I doubt many owners will put it up for sale....at a reasonable price. 

 

Still, right now I'm lucky that the core games I really wanted to work on my US system all work so I count my chickens compared to my European counterparts, who hopefully only have to wait a little while. 

Edited November 25, 2023 by tradyblix

[MittyOz]

I just received some cartridges off Ebay, among them was a copy of Super Breakout, which I already had, however it's NTSC (my first copy was PAL).

 

Anyway here are the colour differences between the two:  https://imgur.com/gallery/ufTRLqd?s=wa

 

Which is "correct"?  

 

And, maybe naively I'm assuming, but surely there is some translation matrix between the two versions so that depending what cartridge you insert into the 2600+ it knows how to translate the colours into what should be displayed?  Am I making any sense here?  

 

Honestly with a game like Super Breakout the colours are kind of irrelevant as long as the lines are different I suppose.  But now I'm curious to see what colours a game like say Space Invaders has on an NTSC Cart as opposed to a PAL one.  

[Diewaldo]

54 minutes ago, MittyOz said:

I just received some cartridges off Ebay, among them was a copy of Super Breakout, which I already had, however it's NTSC (my first copy was PAL).

 

Anyway here are the colour differences between the two:  https://imgur.com/gallery/ufTRLqd?s=wa

 

Which is "correct"?  

 

And, maybe naively I'm assuming, but surely there is some translation matrix between the two versions so that depending what cartridge you insert into the 2600+ it knows how to translate the colours into what should be displayed?  Am I making any sense here?  

 

Honestly with a game like Super Breakout the colours are kind of irrelevant as long as the lines are different I suppose.  But now I'm curious to see what colours a game like say Space Invaders has on an NTSC Cart as opposed to a PAL one.  

The PAL palette isn't the same as the NTSC palette of the console. This is why both games do look different, because you cannot convert NTSC to PAL in a 1:1 way. Some colors might be possible in NTSC but not in PAL which is why in the translation of these games they always will look different in regards to each other. So I would say both are displaying as they should be. If an NTSC game is put in a PAL console or otherwise you will see totally different colors than what is displayed on your TV.

[AtariYMás009]

I have the definitive solution through television adjustments for the color problem in PAL games.

 

If you simply want the colors to not look so dull, use:

 

contrast= 45
brightness=70
color=50

 

If you want to have the same palette as in a heavy sixer:

 

(same settings as above) and
red= 75
green=25
blue= 50

Edited November 29, 2023 by AtariYMás009

[THX-1138]

That just makes my screen go red/pink.

Edited November 29, 2023 by THX-1138