I think while there are 4 colours/shades per palette, the sprites always have to replace one of those 4 with transparency. So you need a few more sprites with different settings to see all the colours at once.
So even designing for the original GB you'd have to consider whether you wanted a sprite to use everything but white, everything but black, or missing one of the shades between.
The GB only has four shades of gray to display, of course, too, so it's not like it can display different shades on the sprites and backgrounds... there are only five possible colors, white/green (that is, no color) or four shades of grey. Some later B&W handhelds like the WonderSwan and Neo-Geo Pocket have 8 or 12 shades of grey, but the GB has fewer.
Whoops, that's right. I'm not sure why I forgot about the transparent colour per sprite layer. but yet, it could really technically display 3 colours per sprite layer and 4 for the BG layer.
Yes, from a total of four color choices (or no color). So no, the original GB could not make the sprites and backgrounds different colors unless it used only two shades for each, or something like that. You are right that it puts them in different "palettes", but apart from that this means that you can only use three of the four shades of grey on each sprite layer, this didn't really matter all that much as far as gamers are concerned until the GBC released and they decided to have the palettes color the backgrounds and sprites different colors for whatever reason (to make the DKL games play better, or something?).
That is, the SGB makes each zone of the screen into one set of four shades because that's the exact same way it works on the Game Boy. The GBC's "color the sprite and background palettes different shades" is quite unnatural, compared to the way the games are supposed to look.
I always assumed that the GBC/ GBA had custom colour palettes for select Nintendo first party games, like Metroid II for example.
Though as far as palettes go, the original Game Boy was capable of two separate sprite layers and one BG layer. Each layer was capable of displaying 4 shades of grey max. So therefore, the GBC and later systems could produce upwards of 12 colours on screen.
In Metroid 2 Samus shared the same sprite layer as the enemies, so the four colours that make up Samus's sprite are also used for enemy sprites as well. While the BG has its own 4 colours. There are actually a few GB games where the main character sprite was on its own separate layer from the enemy sprites, so the main character could have 4 unique colours while all the enemies shared a 4 colour palette while the BG has its own 4 colour palette, making up a total of 12 colours.
Though with the original Super Gameboy, it only recognized 4 colours total, unless it was designed with Super Game Boy support.
Once again, given the GB's 2-bit (four color) video display, I'm really not sure what you're talking about here, as far as putting more than four colors on screen is concerned. Sure it could do different palettes for different things, but they're all working from the same "four shades of grey or transparent" hardware! The GB cannot put six shades of grey on screen, because they don't exist.
Really interesting article on the clever use of SGB in DK94 -
here
Yeah, that's a very good article. The idea of having two colors for Mario, which stay the same, with just one color changing to make each stage's environment different was a pretty interesting idea -- with most SGB games that color each stage a different color, the characters simply appear in a different color in each level. Not so in DK'94 because of that trick they used.
goddamn, samus never really did get respect, did she...that sucks
That wasn't the only one cancelled, a GBC port of Kirby's Dream Land 2 was also canned.
