How Sinclair Spectrum games handled color.

The Spectrum computer could only display one foreground and background color for every 8x8 pixel square.

Many games would have multicolored backgrounds and a single color, maybe black, foreground.  Then "sprites" would be black and the same color as the background.  It works, but looks hokey showing just how inferior the color capabilities of the Spectrum are.  It makes it look like you are playing a black-and-white game with a color overlay on the screen.

When the computer was released, it competed against computers like the Apple II and the Atari 8-bit.  The C64 would come out 6 months later.

 

The 2068 had three extra graphics modes if you count frame swapping as one mode.  Nobody used the extra graphics modes, as most games were ports from the Spectrum.  

I wanted to do great things with the extended color mode, which allowed two colors for every 8x1 pixels.