Research / Sonic 2 / Palletes and palletes addresses

Palletes and palletes addresses:


*Submitted by Weird Person on May 21 2005.*
*Corrected by Sonic Hachelle-Bee.*

The pallete format:


Here are my notes about how palletes work on Sega Genesis, and where are the palletes in the Sonic 2 ROM.

First, what is a pallete? A pallete for the Genesis means 64 colors or 4 lines of 16 colors each. Each color is represented by a word in the ROM file. It's easy to understand it, look at the following word in bits:

0000 BBB0 GGG0 RRR0

The "B" means the blue intense.
The "G" means the green intense.
The "R" means the red intense.

What that means? For example, if you want the lighter red, you will have to have no blue intense, and no green intense, but you will need the red intense. So, the word will have to be the following:

000E

With this word, you get the lighter red possible.

If the color value is high, the color will be lighter. If the color value is low, the color will be darker.

For example, if you want a purple color, you will need to mix some blue with red. Look:

0E0E

The color above is the lighter purple.

While editing colors with your favourite hex editor, you don't need really to convert your color values in bits first. You can edit directly the hex value, but only even values are accepted from 0 to E. Another thing: the first nybble is usually 0. You can write anything else for this nybble, this won't change anything at all.

The pallete addresses:


There is an offset index for most pallets in the game. It's located at $2782.

For each pallet, you have 4 bytes for the absolute address in the ROM, 2 bytes for the address in RAM (where to load the pallet) and 2 bytes for the number of colors to load in this RAM address.

Now, see the offsets for each pallet, and for what each pallet is used for:

IDPallet absolute address Number of colors Description
$224624 colorsSonic to Super Sonic fading pallet
$227640 colorsSuper Sonic rotating pallet
$234624 colorsSonic to Super Sonic underwater fading pallet
$237640 colorsSuper Sonic underwater rotating pallet
00$28C2 16 colors Sega logo pallet
$28E2 16 colors Sega logo "SEGA" pallet
$2902 16 colors Sega logo "Sonic" pallet
$2922 16 colors Sega logo pallet (unused?)
01$294216 colorsTitle screen "Tails" pallet
03$29E216 colorsSonic and Tails pallet
04$2A2248 colorsEmerald Hill zone pallet
06$2A8248 colorsWood zone pallet (unused)
08$2AE248 colorsMetropolis zone pallet
0A$2B4248 colorsWing Fortress zone pallet
0B$2BA248 colorsHill Top zone pallet
0C$2C0248 colorsHidden Palace zone pallet (unused)
0E$2CE248 colorsOil Ocean zone pallet
0F$2D4248 colorsMystic Cave zone pallet
10$2DA248 colorsCasino Night zone pallet
11$2E0248 colorsChemical Plant zone pallet
12$2EE248 colorsDeath Egg zone pallet
13$2F4248 colorsAquatic Ruin zone pallet
14$302248 colorsSky Chase zone pallet
18$316216 colorsMain Special Stage pallet
$318216 colorsSpecial Stage "Sonic" pallet
$31A216 colorsSpecial Stage "Tails" pallet
1B$31C216 colors1st Special Stage pallet
1C$31E216 colors2nd Special Stage pallet
1D$320216 colors3rd Special Stage pallet
1E$322216 colors4th Special Stage pallet
1F$324216 colors5th Special Stage pallet
20$326216 colors6th Special Stage pallet
21$328216 colors7th Special Stage pallet
$133EC16 colorsTitle screen "Sonic" pallet
$1340C32 colorsTitle screen pallet


More pallets will be added soon...

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