Technique · rendering

Palette swap

Showing the same tiles or sprites in other colors by changing only the palette, for a second player, a power-up, an area, or damage.

stubAlso: palette change, recolor, color swap, palette setUpdated 2026-10-23

A palette swap recolors graphics without new tiles. Games use it to tell two players apart, to show a power-up or damage, and to give areas built from the same tiles their own look. Palette cycling changes colors over time, for animation.

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Mentioned in

Games

Every claim about this mechanic, by game (1)
Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels 1986The background renderer, the metatile tables and the area palettes (RenderAreaGraphics through the palette data) are Super Mario Bros.'s with the metatiles renumbered: The Lost Levels inserts new metatiles, so ReplaceBlockMetatile compares against shifted numbers ($56, $4F, $5C and $50 for Super Mario Bros.'s $58, $51, $5D and $52), and MetatileGraphics_Low moves some entries and adds others. The palette data region also holds two new messages. RenderAttributeTables is byte for byte the same, and RenderAreaGraphics and ColorRotatePalette differ only in their addresses.Code