What if the NES could unleash it’s full color palette unconditionally? Would that have changed its longevity? Would it have staved off the 16-bit generation? We’ll never definitively know, but it’s an interesting idea to ponder.

This is the color palette for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. It technically had 64 colors in it, but nine of them are black and there are also two shades of gray that look almost identical to some other colors…So let’s play it safe and say that it had a palette of 54 colors.

via The NES That Never Was… – Dueling Analogs Article.

What would happen if the NES was able to use more than just the 4-colour sprites it was limited to, with one of those being transparent?