General disclaimer: I haven't made a lot with pico-8 palette specifically yet,

nor am I an experienced pixel artist with a lot of experience with palettes and colors in practice.

The reason I wanted to graph it similar to what DawnBringer did was specifically to see the spread of high and low in terms of value and contrast. I like the saturation and brightness of all the colors, except the one : The yellow.

I was particularly bothered by the fact that it isn't really connected to the others. It doesn't blend well to my eyes because it's such a bold, near full color primary. Palettes are often going for cohesion, I feel the yellow particularly is pushing it's way out. The green is just as bold, but it gets dragged down by the things around it. The analysis placed it further from the right hand brightness perception too, because of that.

Looking at the updated analysis graphs - it sort of confirmed my concern with the yellow at least to my own mind. The white and yellow are on the same axis perceptually. Also, every small example block that uses the yellow is thrown off to me, by it's contrast. If I blur/cross my eyes or look at the image out of the corner of my eye, the yellow isn't cohesive because it's overpowering everything around it. It's dominant, when I don't think it should be. Even the image you posted of the crayons, the yellow there is much closer to the tan, orange, and beige than the super saturated one, for blending.

If I had any concrete change to suggest as is, it would be to change the yellow so it sits closer to the beige or, "moves left on the perceptual graph", in between rather than maxed out. I think it would better gel with the rest of the colors and not overpower them.

The main reason I made the thread is that I am sure there are infinitely better pixel artist and palette artists around here that could give me better understanding of why it works in practice, and if my understanding is off.

On the charm: I agree with the idea of the palette being unique to the console, and a cohesive feel to the games for it like the old consoles. I don't think that's something to change for sure.

Otherwise, I do agree that the darker purple + possibly the dark blue feel a tiny bit over saturated, but they don't bother me as much, I don't feel as strongly about it.

I modified the palette a tiny amount based on this reply, off the cuff, just to see how it would look according to how I feel about that. It still looks as vivid to me, but feels more cohesive as well. I won't embed this for confusion sake, but here is the modified analysis image. The graphs are not updated, just the indexed color swapped. See the example blocks + dithered mixes for what I mean, but it may also be a bit flatter.

More opinions and feedback very welcome