* took an screenshot where I could see both GBA/SNES screens and also emulator VRAM palette viewers for both * opened the game in an emulator, and also the SNES version * injected these palettes in a level (with a custom tool that allowed me to insert it just by setting an offset): Restoring these palettes is a hell, but it's doable. And since GBA had more VRAM for palettes, they just didn't worry about keeping the same palettes (as other GBA ports) and let that software create its own palettes. Rare used a custom software to reduce all sprites and backgrounds sizes. Do not try to find similarities between GBA and SNES palettes. I didn't know there was someone working on restoring DKC2, nice! That said are the palettes really compressed? Compressed graphics is absolutely nothing remarkable in the slightest but compressed palettes is rather less common as they are usually only a few bytes long and compression gains are minimal there both in general and because of the small size. (should have a download for GBAcrusher as well) I don't know why it is the case, especially when most such programs are nominally focused on graphics, but it is what it is. By all means use whatever detection or log capable tools you want to find the stuff in the first place, then you can note where it is and direct other tools later. I would then suggest GBAcrusher for anything needed as far as recompression on the GBA.

For video stuff you likely want VRAM safe instead. The GBA and SNES share a palette format after a fashion/in some modes so there are games where you can import and export (possibly even from savestates on the the game you are coming from) as trivially as finding them in the ROM but it seems you encountered one of the ports/remakes where it was not a straight copy and paste job.ĭepending upon what tool you found to handle recompression then they often only do WRAM safe recompression. Hopefully there are no palette animations. Basic, if tedious, way is make a nice obvious change for the SNES game's palette (one of those browns to something neon and not in the palette) and figure out what pixels it corresponds to, figure out where those pixels are on the GBA (possibly easier said than done if you have the scaled sprites problem) and then edit the GBA palette corresponding to those. You will then want to figure out what corresponds to what and copy across/remake colours individually. In this case it looks like it is not a simple pump the brightness palette swap between ports but something rather more custom. The Donkey Kong Country GBA games are generally considered a hard one for this kind of restoration, or at least they usually come with a bunch of other downsides than just the washed out palette which is why it is only comparatively recently we saw the first game ( ) despite restorations going back many years ( ).

Donkey kong country 2 snes rom