Why yellow?

[Sol_HSA]

Why are so many spectrum games so... yellow?

[bluespikey]

Cos its The Spectrum. If you want earthworm brown or vaguely light purple, go and play on a C64.

[Morkin]

One of the mysteries of the universe, I guess.

I'm now waiting for someone to start up a project to count how many games in the archive are PAPER 6.

[+3code]

42

[highrise]

Likely because there's no pink or brown, so it's often used for skin tone.

[1024MAK]

Yello, 'cus it's the colour of the Sun and it brightens your day...

Reasons to be cheerful, part two.

Mark

First reason of course being that you got a Speccy

[PeteProdge]

I think it's a nicer contrast than the harsh yin-yang of black/white glaring at you. It looks a lot crisper in yellow/black.

[AndyC]

Yeah, I think it's because it offers good contrast if the secondary colour is black, without feeling entirely colourless in the way a pure black/white version often does.

[Sokurah]

Yeah, I think it's because it offers good contrast if the secondary colour is black, without feeling entirely colourless in the way a pure black/white version often does.

I was just about to say the same - high contrast with black but less boring than white.

But also showing C64 users, that our games can look like p!ss and still be better than their offerings

[Oloturia]

ZX Spectrum's palette is made of the primary colours of both systems, additive (Red, Green, Blue and White) and subtractive (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black).

Besides, once I read on this forum about this table:
1 Blue + 2 Red = 3 Magenta
1 Blue + 4 Green = 5 Cyan
2 Red + 4 Green = 6 Yellow
1 Blue + 2 Red + 4 Green = 7 White

[spider]

Cos its The Spectrum. If you want earthworm brown or vaguely light purple, go and play on a C64.

Best answer. I did like that machine in a way however the brownish and purple shades did not inspire.

Talking of yellow, the BBC has a bright enough one... (If it had it, I'd say "BRIGHT 2")

Spoiler

[1024MAK]

ZX Spectrum's palette is made of the primary colours of both systems, additive (Red, Green, Blue and White) and subtractive (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black).

It's all additive colour. Subtractive colour is for colour absorbing systems, like ink on paper.



For those watching in black and white...

Spoiler

Red + Green = Yellow
Red + Blue = Magenta
Green + Blue = Cyan.
Red + Green + Blue = White.

Mark

[PeteProdge]

The ZX Spectrum. Giving you both of the 4-colour palettes of a CGA-equipped PC from 1982 onwards.

[Juan F. Ramirez]

On the contrary, I have the feeling most games have black background.

[R-Tape]

Oddly the archive for "yellow" brings up The Yellow Umbrella Shop. I was hoping it was the most niche bit of software for the most niche shop ever, but it looks like it was a charity shop that stocked more than just yellow umbrellas

[Timmy]

I like bright colours in my life. Yellow really does help.

Also, because it's a nice song.

[PeteProdge]

All the very best ZX Spectrum games were made in ye...

...erm... well... uh... nearly all. Well, some of them.

[Wall_Axe]

Why didn't they use dithered red and white pixels for skin tone?

[AndyC]

Why didn't they use dithered red and white pixels for skin tone?

Usually because it means you have to have either white or red around the edges because of attributes and humans typically not being very square shaped.

[+3code]

I'm now waiting for someone to start up a project to count how many games in the archive are PAPER 6.

Totally agree. Maybe a thread of "Your favourite Yellow Game?"

Edit: most of them started in yellow and then in the next levels changed to "all cyan", "all green", and so, but some of us only played the first levels, I assume.

[PeteProdge]

Totally agree. Maybe a thread of "Your favourite Yellow Game?"

Edit: most of them started in yellow and then in the next levels changed to "all cyan", "all green", and so, but some of us only played the first levels, I assume.

Knowing the Speccy users at school who only ever indulged in football, football, football (yawn), I wonder if their CRTs were doing overtime with all the PAPER 4?

[4thRock]

Yellow is a colour with a high Luminance (close to white) and low Chroma difference so it encodes well in PAL. Cyan is also good in this regard.
Other colors create more artifacts and lower resolution, as most of the information is on Chroma (colour difference) signals (red and blue being worse).

An image from the Wikipedia PAL article illustrates this:


In short, yellow simply looks better on RF or composite

[TMD2003]

The ZX Spectrum. Giving you both of the 4-colour palettes of a CGA-equipped PC from 1982 onwards.

Better still, without the washed-out pastel-shading caused by using #55 as the "low" level for the colours instead of #00.

You want Spectrum colours on a 1980s PC - you need EGA!

Strangely enough, CGA and EGA palettes are what I've spent far too much time fannying about with on the Next, which has 512 colours to choose from.

[equinox]

Oddly the archive for "yellow" brings up The Yellow Umbrella Shop. I was hoping it was the most niche bit of software for the most niche shop ever, but it looks like it was a charity shop that stocked more than just yellow umbrellas

Ah yes, I was given some old Spectrum kit in the mid-'90s by my dad's friend, and this was on one of the tapes. The author's name is fairly uncommon and I managed to track him down online and get permission to put it on WoS!

[equinox]

most of them started in yellow and then in the next levels changed to "all cyan", "all green", and so

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis has a level that is all blue on black. Not cyan but blue! Nearly invisible on the typical fuzzy TV.