MacPaint Art from the Mid-80s Still Looks Great Today

The lack of photorealistic fidelity gives your brain a bit of room to use imagination to fill in the blanks in your internal model. This fosters a certain type of engagement with the content that you don't get with photorealistic images.

I think that's part of the reason that a lot of indie games have converged around pixel art.

Obviously a large part of it is likely due to the fact that a lot of the creators grew up with the NES or SNES and just like that aesthetic, but I think you get a lot of "implied detail" when using pixel art, which is great when you're working on a limited budget.

This isn't to knock it, to be clear. I love good pixel art.

YOu both are missing something. TV fuzzy rendering blended pixels together and FFVI under the SNES (and Chrono Trigger) could look astoundingly great with amazing colours and sprite art.

Sure, but I was referring to how modern indie games, that have no worries plans to run on an old CRT TV, will still use pixel art.