Screenshots Gallery

For pixeltao's "Pixeltao CRT" NES Palette

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These screenshots were generated by NEStopia; if you see any oddities at the top and/or bottom, that's because NEStopia's screenshots ignore overscan clip settings, thus showing the top and bottom 8 pixels that are normally hidden on an NTSC television (and in most emulators).

From pixeltao's blog:

“Here’s a new NES palette created for CRTs in mind. “Pixeltao CRT” is based on my 2016 V2 palette, which was based on the colors I’d get on a 2006 JVC CRT TV.

In a nutshell: both palettes aren’t scientific recreation of the original NES composite signal. Instead, they’re balanced to have an optimal hue distribution. For example, with the original composite signal of the NES, you get greenish yellows and purplish blues. The palettes shared here rebalance these hues with warmer yellows and oranges and a tad less purple in the blue rows.

PixeltaoV2 (2016)
This palette was made in 2016. It features strong vivid colors, excellent for NES-style pixel art, but might come out too saturated on a CRT. It’s the palette [Tribute Games] used for the graphics of Panzer Paladin on Steam and Nintendo Switch.

V2 Emulator Palette File

V2 Photoshop Swatches

Pixeltao CRT (2021)
I developed this new palette based on V2, specially for CRTs. The saturation has been toned down a notch and some lightness adjustments were made. It’s pretty close to Nestopia YUV in terms of lightness and saturation, but it retains the hue distribution of V2. It looks great when used with the NES core of MiSTer FPGA on a CRT.

CRT Emulator Palette File

CRT Photoshop Swatches”

Bee 52

In the level shown in the last screenshot, the trunk of the tree and the bottoms of the fence posts are missing.

Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt

Adventure Island II

Adventures of Lolo 2

Battle Chess

Super Mario Bros. 3

Adventures of Lolo 3

If the animation sticks, just wait a few seconds. It SHOULD restart. :)

Battletoads

This is my personal favorite line from Professor T. Bird.

Bucky O'Hare

Dragon Warrior

Metroid

If the animation sticks, just wait a few seconds. It SHOULD restart. :)

Dragon Warrior III

Legendary Wings

The last vertical-scrolling level uses $11 and $12 in a way that creates a really cool texture when playing the game on actual hardware and on a CRT TV. :D

The Legend of Zelda

Dragon Warrior IV

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

Solstice: Quest for
the Staff of Demnos

Monster in My Pocket

Adventures of Tom Sawyer

The alligator boss at the end of the rafting level uses two greens ($19 and $1A) that, on my actual NES Control Deck, are
almost indistinguishable — but they do add a cool texture due to the composite artefacting! :D
Avoid the lighter ink blasts! The darker ones will ink you up, but the LIGHTER ones will INSTANTLY KILL YOU. To be honest, I never knew there even WERE two different colors until I really studied this game for screenshots.

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All games whose images are upon this page belong to their respective creators. I'm simply using images from the games to demonstrate the palettes that I and others have made.