"Raster bar" type graphics were a specialty of the Atari 2600 and 800, and the Commodore Amiga(all Jay Miner-led designs), and starting with the 800, they had programmable "display list interrupts" built into their graphics chips which would let you switch between the various graphics modes and scroll, as well as change the palette. This effect is used all over the place to make nice sky and horizon gradients, to make text and objects look shiny, or to do fades.

The C64 missed out on some of this programmability, but had other goodies to compensate(more sophisticated sprite hardware, a really solid default palette).