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Most of them are emulating the EGA/VGA palette which was a regression from the CGA terminal colors.

https://int10h.org/blog/2022/06/ibm-5153-color-true-cga-pale...

Not really, because the dark yellow (not brown) is used... it's similar, but not the same in most terminals... brown as dark yellow for cga was a kind of short to a different color mix than the natural position which most terminals now use... actual screen effectiveness/brightness is different as well.

Kind of anal about this since I started with a lot of CGA and EGA displays when I was in my late teens and early 20s and relatively involved in the ANSi art scene.

Here's a related project I'm working on for playing doors in a web browser.

https://github.com/bbs-land/webterm-dos-ansi

I have no idea if this was the reason behind turning the dark yellow into brown, but the brown was a much better looking color for DOS games so it was a good call

They could also have done something about the two magentas though... E.g. made one of them orange?

The light red usually appeared somewhat orangy/peachy, it's generally used as flesh for ansi artworks.

ex: https://16colo.rs/pack/ice-200207a/ti-war.ice

I think it was just determined that brown would be more useful than the darker yellow in practice. Other xterm colors are also a bit off from CGA/EGA/VGA DOS colors.

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