Drakon wrote:Color emphasis makes everything look dark, like it's night time.
When all 3 bits are used, yes. What happens is that on the composite PPU, these bits actually de-emphasize the other colors (i.e. blue emphasis actually darkens red and green to make the blue stand out), so when you set all 3 bits, all 3 colors are de-emphasized equally, making the image darker. On the RGB PPU however, the emphasis bits increase the color components all the way up (i.e. blue emphasis puts blue at the maximum value and doesn't affect the other components), so when you blow all of them up you get white.
Sik wrote:I think there's a game that uses this to make translucent water
From the top of my head, I can only think of
Noah's Ark, which uses blue emphasis in combination with the grayscale bit to create the water effect. They could have used some sprites on the surface (like in the Sonic games - even the ones on the Master system & Game Gear, which have the same sprite limitations as the NES - but I'm sure you know that
) to make it look better though, that black line doesn't look anything like water.