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Palette swap

Also said as Recolour, Colour swap, Palette shift

The same image data shown with a different set of colours. The picture stores numbers that point into a palette, so changing the palette recolours everything at once and costs no extra art.

It turns one sprite into a family: a stronger enemy, a second player, a frozen version. On hardware with little memory it was a free character.

“Do the elite enemy as a palette swap of the grunt: swap the body red to purple and the eyes to white. No new frames, and the player learns it is the same enemy but worse.”

Luigi is Mario with a different palette in Super Mario Bros., and that game's clouds and bushes are the same shape in different colours. Mortal Kombat built Scorpion and Sub-Zero from one recoloured ninja.

Grading shifts the whole finished picture. A palette swap changes one thing's colours exactly, and can change any index into any colour at all.

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