Guides › Comparison · 7 min read

Game Boy vs NES vs C64 vs PICO-8

Every palette in the converter is a set of hard colour limits borrowed from a real machine, and each one gives your photo a completely different character. Here's a run through them, with a fair warning that I'm not remotely neutral about one of them.

Why the palette changes everything

When you pixelate a photo, every colour gets mapped to the nearest one the palette allows. Four colours forces dramatic simplification and a bold, graphic look. A few dozen keeps far more of the original nuance. So the palette isn't just a tint, it decides how much of your photo actually survives. Fun fact from building this: going back through these palettes, I'd genuinely forgotten how few colours we had to play with back in the day.

Game Boy: four shades of green

The original 1989 Game Boy showed just four shades, all in that olive-to-lime green. With so little to work with, everything comes down to light and shadow rather than colour, which makes it brilliant for portraits and anything high-contrast. It's also the most instantly recognisable retro look going. Reach for it when you want maximum nostalgia and a calm, single-colour mood.

NES: the sensible all-rounder

The NES could pull from a much bigger palette than the Game Boy, and that extra range keeps skin, clothes and backgrounds telling themselves apart. Photos of people stay readable while still looking unmistakably 8-bit. If you're not sure what to pick and there's a person in the shot, this is usually the safe bet.

ZX Spectrum: bold and British

The Speccy, a cornerstone of 1980s UK gaming, worked from a small set of bright, saturated colours. The result is loud and poster-like, all vivid primaries. Use it when you want your pixel art to shout rather than whisper.

Commodore 64: my favourite, and I'll admit it's personal

Full disclosure: the C64 was my second ever computer and the place I first started coding, aged seven. So I was never going to be objective here. But it earns its spot on merit too. That 16-colour palette has a lovely warmth to it, all soft blues, warm browns and gentle accents, and it tends to flatter everyday photos in a way the harsher palettes don't. If you want a retro look that still feels cosy, this is the one.

PICO-8: the modern favourite

PICO-8 is a present-day "fantasy console" whose 16 carefully chosen colours have become a staple for indie pixel artists. They're balanced and friendly, sitting somewhere between authentic vintage and clean modern design. Great for avatars and anything you want to feel current rather than strictly old-school.

CGA: bold early-PC graphics

IBM's Colour Graphics Adapter gave early PCs a famously tiny palette, most memorably black, cyan, magenta and white. It's stark and almost neon, not subtle in the slightest. Save it for high-contrast photos that can carry that kind of drama.

Black & White and Original

Two more to round things off. Black & White strips the image down to pure monochrome for the most extreme, earliest-computer feel, so keep it for very high-contrast subjects. Original colours skips the palette mapping entirely and just pixelates, keeping your photo's own colours for a clean, modern block effect.

If you just want a quick answer

• Portrait of a person: NES or Game Boy.
• Avatar or profile picture: PICO-8 or Game Boy.
• Bold, poster-like image: ZX Spectrum or CGA.
• Warm, everyday photo: Commodore 64 (obviously).
• Clean, modern pixelation: Original colours.

There's no wrong pick, though. The best palette is just whichever one gives you the feeling you're after, so when in doubt, run the same photo through three or four and compare.