I Am Error: The Nintendo Family Computer / Entertainment System Platform

If the Famicom only had four colors total, the two stacked bits from the pattern table bitplanes would be sufficient to describe any tile. However, the Famicom allocates thirty-two bytes of VRAM to eight individual palettes—half devoted to sprites and the other half to background tiles—containing four colors each. Every sprite and background tile onscreen may select only one of its four allotted palettes at a time. However, the first color of each four-color block must be identical—shared across all palettes—limiting the PPU to rendering twenty-five individual colors onscreen simultaneously.

Though the shared color may seem like an arbitrary constraint, it is actually a clever means to “erase” portions of sprite tiles that are meant to be transparent. When a sprite is on top of a background tile, any color bit set to the shared color will permit the underlying background tile to show through. Mario’s constituent sprites in Super Mario Bros., for instance, use only three colors: red for his hat and overalls; a muted brown for his hair, eyes, sleeves, and boots; and olive for his skin and overall button. All other pixels in the Mario tiles are set to sky blue, but they render transparent, permitting the background to pass behind his body as he moves.

One problem facing videogame bibliography is the medium’s relative youthfulness. Commercial videogames have only been with us since the 1970s. Generations of consoles and games still litter yard sales, attics, pawnshops, and thrift stores. Our familiarity with and access to videogames is taken for granted, since many of us are old enough to recall first-hand experience with the entire history of videogames--a claim that cannot be made by scholars of other media. There is an implicit assumption that we all know what a Super Mario Bros. cartridge looks like, so why bother with thorough descriptions?