Era and hardware
Era: 1982 · Hardware: MOS VIC-II
Key facts
- 16 fixed colors; two of them are slightly different shades of grey
- The palette was hand-tuned by chip designer Robert Yannes
- Petscii art on the C64 used these exact colors with no dithering
How to use this palette for cursor design
Lean into the slightly muddy quality. Over-saturating breaks the period feel.
Open your pixel editor of choice (Aseprite, Piskel, or LibreSprite), import the palette, and follow the five-pass cursor design tutorial: silhouette, outline, fill, highlight, accent. The palette will impose its own discipline — that is the entire point. For deeper background on retro palettes in general, see the retro palette guide.
Cursor packs already in this palette
If you would rather download than design, browse the collections page — collections are organized by palette family and several map directly to the historic palettes documented here.