Gensis color palette and ripped sprite sheet colors not matching

[Gypsy]

Hey everyone, hope you're having a great holiday season!

I've been comparing the Genesis/MegaDrive sprite sheets from various games to the Genesis color palette, and the majority of them don't match with the palette. Is there a reason for this? I'm fairly confident the palette I have holds the 512 colors belonging to the MegaDrive (unless its a situation similar to the NES palette, where what we have is a close approximation and not an exact comparison). 

Is it possible that the color accuracy was lost during the ripping process? I'm hoping to make something using the MegaDrive color palette, and knowing what's going on would help a great deal. 
Cheers everyone!

[Yawackhary]

Without showing the palette that you used, it sounds like an emulator thing but it is also down to the research on the console over the years.

The palette that I used for the rips that were done throughout the years was based on the values that TmEE gave out based on the research that was done on the Mega Drive palette using real hardware. e.g. 0, 34, 68, then all the way to 238. It was posted on the Sega 16 forums a long time ago. As it happens, GenesisPlus GX uses those same values and BizHawk uses the GenesisPlus GX core. That emulator is considered one of the more accurate emulators however BlastEm and possibly Exodus have the ability to be more accurate due to being more modern, especially the former since it supports those Titan Overdrive demos that only run on accurate emulators or real hardware.

The older rips however used GensKMod that gave out different values but it was so long ago not sure whether they were darker (white being 224) or brighter (255). The earlier Genesis emulators such as Genecyst or Kega used one of those two. Some of the later rips when using that emulator, personally colour corrected to those values as the default palette settings were used by other rippers at the time. Another emulator Gens/GS had three different palette options, "RAW", "Full", Full + Shadow and Highlight also uses the 238 white value.

It's not the same as the NES (or non-RGB systems such as the Atari 7800) where there is no right palette or whether people wanted to use greyscale or green for the Game Boy. There is the shadow and highlight function on real hardware though, probably as a workaround to give a larger palette. This palette inconsistency also affects officially released stuff as well, as the Sonic 3 & Knuckles Collection PC palette has a different palette than what Christian Whitehead used for his Sonic 1 and 2 mobile ports.

[Gypsy]

Without showing the palette that you used, it sounds like an emulator thing but it is also down to the research on the console over the years.

The palette that I used for the rips that were done throughout the years was based on the values that TmEE gave out based on the research that was done on the Mega Drive palette using real hardware. e.g. 0, 34, 68, then all the way to 238. It was posted on the Sega 16 forums a long time ago. As it happens, GenesisPlus GX uses those same values and BizHawk uses the GenesisPlus GX core. That emulator is considered one of the more accurate emulators however BlastEm and possibly Exodus have the ability to be more accurate due to being more modern, especially the former since it supports those Titan Overdrive demos that only run on accurate emulators or real hardware.

The older rips however used GensKMod that gave out different values but it was so long ago not sure whether they were darker (white being 224) or brighter (255). The earlier Genesis emulators such as Genecyst or Kega used one of those two. Some of the later rips when using that emulator, personally colour corrected to those values as the default palette settings were used by other rippers at the time. Another emulator Gens/GS had three different palette options, "RAW", "Full", Full + Shadow and Highlight also uses the 238 white value.

It's not the same as the NES (or non-RGB systems such as the Atari 7800) where there is no right palette or whether people wanted to use greyscale or green for the Game Boy. There is the shadow and highlight function on real hardware though, probably as a workaround to give a larger palette. This palette inconsistency also affects officially released stuff as well, as the Sonic 3 & Knuckles Collection PC palette has a different palette than what Christian Whitehead used for his Sonic 1 and 2 mobile ports.

Here's the link, I didn't know how to insert the PAL file itself: https://we.tl/t-RMTr3ydWnW

The major sheets that I was looking for inspiration from where the Sonic CD ones, Monster World 4, and a couple of others, but none of them seemed 1:1 accuracy level to me (not extremely far off, but far enough in Sonic CD that I can't find the right yellow to replace it with one of the tiletsets).

Edit: Just noticed that the whites in Sonic CD are 238s, that normal? My palette doesn't have that.