Color had a depth of 9 bits with 512 colors available with up to 512 colors on screen (241 background and 240 sprite colors from each of the two VDCs). There were 32 palettes in total: 16 for background tiles and 16 for sprites. Each sprite palette could have 15 colors defined, and had one transparent color index; and each background tile palette could have 15 colors defined, plus one color index whose color was a color that was shared across all background tile palettes.