Yes, as far as i know the BG graphics have more colors than any other pce game, most games have displayed information such as health, weapon, magic etc, there are also enemy and boss sprites, for example, one of the snes street fighter 2 shots that Black Tiger posted has 139 colors, but minus the opposing sprite and display info its reduced to 83.
They may technically have a high number of individual colors onscreen, but the graphics aren't nearly so colorful. The first time I played through in composite, I actually thought that the bgs used only <16 colors total, the result of a quick conversion (
using only a single palette for the tiles). I don't know if Magic Engine doesn't display the game correctly or if the process used to make the tiles just pads the overall color count with anomalies, but in the end they still look like low color graphics.
Here are those super high color shots in 16, 32 and 64 colors, along with the originals. The process I used to reduce these screenshots isn't the most efficient (
one 32 color pics loses grass detail that the 16 color pic retained), but the results are still pretty telling. For the small amount of coloring differences (
an element being greenish instead of yellowish), the 16 color pics still retain most of the detail and dithering.
A change as extreme as 100'ish colors down to as little as 16, or about an 85% reduction
should've make them completely unrecognizable. But anyone looking at the computer screen from a foot away wouldn't notice the difference unless looking for it and the 64 color pics are basically identical (
I only went as high as 64 to keep the doubling increments). Any tiny differences that a careful eye could pick out are only the result of the color reduction process I used.
The art's still pretty nice in most places (
I'm not crazy about the towns), but BS doesn't look anywhere near as nice as a genuinely high colored PCE game (
or many average colored ones) for a good reason.
