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

Pixel art is very much still around today, even though it's far from "pushing" the limits of current hardware. It's pursuing a rather consistent "vision" of maximizing quality while staying within the bounds of a predefined level of detail (i.e. resolution) and color depth.

Right. This is kind of what I’m talking about. Someone choosing pixel art today is making a choice; they have a vision. 40 years ago, they were limited by the system. The choice was largely made for them.

Old video games come to mind. The box art would be drastically different than the look of the game. The box art was the vision, the game was what they ended up with after compromises due to the hardware of the day. I think it’s only been in the last decade or so that some game makers have truly been able to realize the visions they had 40 years ago.

I think of the box art and physical manual of a video game like Diablo from 1996, compared to the game itself. The manual had several detailed drawings of monsters and otherworldly creatures with a very "evil" look, but the game itself they were represented as blocky sprites with fairly comical movement, as characters moved on a isometric chessboard-style grid, with abrupt turns and limited speed. Ultimately the gameplay is what mattered, the box art, in-game music and sound effects all created an atmosphere that wouldn't have been as immersive with just graphics.

A point of comparison would be to the game Quake, which came out the same year, and whose graphics felt light years ahead . But Quake mostly became a multiplayer hit, as the single-player story and overall atmosphere weren't very compelling.

I think most indie developers choose pixel art (and low-poly 3D) today because they still can’t produce high-quality high-detail art, and high-quality pixel art is prettier than low-quality high-detail art.

It’s still a case where the developer can’t truly express their vision, but they can express it behind a filter, in this case pixelation, that makes our brains charitably fill in the missing details.

Although I’m sure for some games it is part of their vision, because there’s something intrinsically pretty about pixel art and low-poly 3D. Likewise there are 2D games like Cuphead that emulate “cartoon” style, and 3D games like Guilty Gear that emulate 2D anime; those are much harder than making a 2D or 3D game with traditional modern graphics.

Games from Neo Geo were pixel art of very high quality. Just check Garou.

I think a slightly different way to think about it is that it’s not always contest for maximum detail. Apple’s new liquid glass look is impressive, but is it necessarily better UI than System 9? I think you could have a reasonable debate about that.