I've tried several algorithms to populate a palette, and there's no universally perfect way.  Evenly distributed RGB over 256 colours can make some things look pretty good and other things ugly.  It depends what it's for.  If you can't predict it's use like you were building a games system, then, yeah, you'd probably generate something that covers the RGB combination range in as many steps as you can based on palette size.

Then there's hand-picking colours and maybe adding them as needed.

The old default VGA palette was based on being organised rather than universal...

Or.. if it's for a game... something I've done a few times to reduce filesizes... make the art largely in 24bit without colour constraints, put all the artwork in one image canvas and reduce the colours to 8 bit / 256 colours, and see what you have.  That's just technical, though.  It doesn't really answer your question of a single perfect palette.  ;/  If you really must work with 256 colours for some reason but want freedom of design, that's probably the way.

I know the pic, with all the Gods gathered 'round the "new planet".  They're guiding the primitive, indigenous people, I thought.  Like guiding them through thousands of years of tech and conquest to see which God ends up with full control of the planet through the supremacy of the worshipful people they control/influence.  That's the impression I got.  But there's no reason the four "Gods" can't have their own species on the planet anyway, like they seeded the planet seperately and the game starts when they're ready to start conquering.  Visually it's interesting and that's the point. 

I think Mirror's Edge did pretty well because it looked good in the trailers, then I imagine people found out it was awful.  Got it in a Steam sale and it's terrible but very pretty.

I think cool, fit girls sell anyway, and a nice massive rack is just an easy way.  Thinking back to the first Tombraider... I really thought it was refreshing and new and wasn't over-done.  I was 17 I think, and it doesn't take a ton of soul-searching to work out that just maybe the fit arse permanantly on screen and glimpses of enormous jugs might have had some influence on my initial appreciation of it.

I think there's a pink-haired dominatrix character in Street Fighter or Tekken now with 2/3 of her bodyweight carried in her bra and the rest in her hips.  I don't think that would swing a game sale in my case, but if I was a youngun today, who knows.  Oh, and Tifa from FF7.  She's stacked right up, but there's no attention drawn to it in the game, and she's a really nice character.  Ooh, and Elexis Sinclair fron SiN.  Loved the game, and played it recently and it was just awful, even by yesterday's standards.  It does make me wonder how sexy women affected my perceptions of things I THOUGHT I was judging objectively.  There's plenty proof for it.  Sexy girls at car races and car showrooms makes no sense but makes plenty money, so you don't even have to go further than an illogical association for sex to sell something.  I've seen pictures of game exposes at events like E3 and some stalls have models in cosplay of game characters, and I BET the bigger the chest, the more men wander over to check the game out.

Those stupid twins in the new Duke Nukem game (which I quite like) definitely aren't why I like it, but 15 years ago, I'm sure they'd raise my interest in the game without any concious record of the reason.

As for today, a cool female character does still get my attention if I'm being honest with myself, and obviously I'm wired to respond to nice boobs.  There just aren't many I can think of that don't override the response with annoyance.  Girls these days have to be bad-ass and formulaic and unnessecary.

Or that's all just me. 

Hehe, thanks. >D   I've probably remade tons of BBC Micro games for my own ammusement over the years.  Especially Reptons.  By the way, I pitched some of those to Superior once too and they weren't having it.  I hope it's not liablous to suggest that a few ideas in mine MIGHT HAVE appeared in theirs.  ;/  I'm done with Superior.  Their last newsletter was basically "fill out these forms on these 8 affiliate links and get an iPod" or something.  Meh.

I just wish people with absolutely NO intention of releasing games would stop jealously hoarding the IPs so the people who actually love the games can have their niche market.

But yeah, I was raised on a BBC Micro.