Funny thing about the NES palette is it's actually spectacularly poorly chosen. It has no yellow and dedicates 10 entries to black.
Source: http://www.thealmightyguru.com/Games/Hacking/Wiki/index.php?...
Source: http://www.thealmightyguru.com/Games/Hacking/Wiki/index.php?...
I highly doubt this is because it was "poorly chosen" - it seems this must be due to some sort of technical limitation.