That might be it. but he calls it "programming tricks" so I thought he meant that

The aforementioned VDP trick to "create" new colours is enabling the superimpose facility of the TMS chip (external video source selection bit). As long as it is not really implemented in the computer, it will produce strange behaviours, including different colours. But I guess that:

(a) It behaves differently on different computers
(b) The result depends on the implemented TMS-alike chip
(c) Only for MSX1

Result: it cannot be used for anything but to say "hey, my MSX has a brand new palette of sick-hued colours"

The only "programming trick" that NEMESIS 2 uses regarding colours is much more simple than all the things discussed in this topic: for certain game elements it switches the colour for every frame, creating a "blended colour" in its most simple fashion. Not as complex as in MSX Unleashed, but more or less the same principle: frame 2N - color X; frame 2N+1 - color Y. If you are using an old-school TV you'll probably see a "new" colour, equivalent to the RGB average of both X and Y. On a TV with short latency, you'll see a simple flickering, but maybe your retina will do the rest

Foot note: on the SVI-738 you can do lots of different things because it features a V9938 VDP. Therefore, you can set the palette that you want. Of course, if you combine this with screensplits you can display a good number of colours on screen, even using MSX1 techniques.

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The only "programming trick" that NEMESIS 2 uses regarding colours is much more simple than all the things discussed in this topic: for certain game elements it switches the colour for every frame, creating a "blended colour" in its most simple fashion.

Now that you mention it, I remember it being used on some sprites. I don't think that's what mars2000 meant though, it's not used often in Nemesis 2.

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Result: it cannot be used for anything but to say "hey, my MSX has a brand new palette of sick-hued colours"

hehe, true, it's like a MSX on acid

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for certain game elements it switches the colour for every frame, creating a "blended colour" in its most simple fashion

Can't remember that....definitely, I need to try again THE game right now. Btw, you're talking about real "frame blended" colors, not simply flashing or blinking ones?

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And my dying Hit Bit gave even more colours, without doing anything, result was amiga like!

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Hey, that rings a bell!. IIRC my HB-75 also did something weird when VDPing something in register 0 or 1, I don't remember at all, I just keep the impression of seeing strange color shadows (but not solid ones) on screen and indeed a lot of grey.

But my Hit Bit gave those colours WITHOUT any programming... That VDP command was just for Toshiba HX-10.

And besides, my Toshiba did also more than just changed colour palette, when I put cursor to certain locations at screen, TEXT on that same row got neatly warped, there is no vocabulary to tell what it looked like, it was really cool looking strange effect, but I will try now.... it was a bit like italic text, but text warped to BOTH sides, to left and right, not just to right like italic, and cursor position changed the way how badly text was warped, let´s suppose cursor is at middle of the row, text in the most left and right hand side of that row was most warped and text nearest to cursor was less warped, I guess you can understand now what kind of effect I am trying to tell.

Also, years ago I tried that VDP trick with CANON V-20, and it gave totally different vision.... everything went black&white and WHOLE screen got badly warped....

by the way, how I can upload a picture from my computer?

I drew a simple picture to show you how that warped Canon V-20 screen looked like.

pitpan wrote: "it switches the colour for every frame, creating a "blended colour"... Thats what I meant to say with: ""quickly alternating" trick leaves you with a bit of flickering" perhaps I should have been more precise Thanks all for an interesting discussion

You can use, for example, imagevenue to host the picture and post a clickable thumbnail; but I'm sure that the strange behaviour is due the superimpose feature that pitpan has already mentioned. I also remember those weird effects, not the warping one but more color related, even like when you put a magnet near a CRT tube, you know. No real use for it, I'm afraid

@animator75: yes, you're right. Sorry for my misunderstanding: it's indeed the same trick. Change on each frame, let the eye do the colour blending

Here´s simple freehandedly drawn picture how that warped Canon V-20 screen looked like.

Black area is "void" and white is printable area. Edges of white area shaked a lot.

Those black dots are just MSX ROM characters, "ball" symbols, which I printed to screen just for fun to make screen look like old printer paper!

As you can see, screen narrows a lot in the upper corner.