Root cause were attempts to get pixel rendering more realistic on screen particularly accounting for 3D where pixels can overlay each other. Finding the right solution without side effects was hard.
Well, I'm not convinced .38 is any better in that regard. Most of what I did for .38 is removing the stuff you did to adjust the color components. The only change between .38 and .35 is for very dim pixels, we start applying some of the black transparency. Since the default setting for black transparency is 0, the result is identical output to .35. If folks start setting the black transparency to something other than 0, then yes, this does allow brighter stuff behind the pixels to blend through the dimmer pixels.... maybe. At this point, we do not z-order anything and transparency is applied to when the pixel is rendered. Thus, it would require stuff behind it to be rendered first which may or may not be the case depending on the order the models are rendered.