Why do the colors look off in UK Artwork?

[PatmanQC]

Now it may not be that way anymore but back in the early 90s one of the things I noticed when I was able to pick up a European gaming magazine was that the colors for the adverts always seemed off to me. For example







Everything to my American eyeballs just seems washed out. Was this the norm at the time? Am I just blind in one eye and can't see out of the other?

Please let me know.

[Matt_H]

So, I'd want to see American and European adverts side by side in order to compare, but I can think of a few possibilities:

1. Different color calibration standards between American and European printers.
2. Different photographic films used for reproduction of the artwork, or one of the territories used a copy of a copy (e.g., European ad was created by photographing the original art onto a slide, American advert was created by sending a copy of that slide over to the US, or vice versa)
3. A modern-day difference caused by different scanner settings (i.e., scanning the same art on different scanners or with different color/brightness settings can produce vastly different results)

[gimbal]

Seriously, the grin on the soldiers on the Ikari Warriors box... God I love 80's/90's box artwork.

[rothers]

I wish Renegade3 had been a good game, the concept is just so hilarious.

Back on topic, they could be copies of copies, kinda like when a colour photo copy never looks right.

[Predseda]

Maybe you were used to look at NTSC - never the same colour?