alt Hacker NewsThese are all aesthetic decisions. What feelings does a smeary CRT SNES screen evoke? What does a crisper 1993 DOS screen feel like to you? Which one better matches the mood of the game you want to make?
Probably you should screengrab some games from the first couple years of the SNES’ life and doodle things for your game that look like those screens. Possibly some later games that more directly inspired the game you’re making, too. Possibly you should read up on the precise technical limitations of its graphics and be precise about how many colors and moving objects you allow yourself. Possibly you might decide to break those limitations for the sake of making the game more fun, but it’s probably better to break them knowingly.
Then look at DOS games from that era. Same decisions and rabbit holes as above. Does it feel like there’s a harmony between them? Does one feel much better for the game you want to make? Play with shitty TV filters on the SNES and DOS shots.
Then doodle some things with fewer limitations. How do they feel? Does the lack of limitations make it easier or harder to animate an entire new game entity? And which one is more fun? Experiment, sketch, play, explore. It’s art. It’s also business. Maybe. Maybe you have a skazillion bucks to pay your bills and pay artists and musicians and whatnot while you develop it with no care for it selling even a single copy. Limited funds can stretch further with limited scope.
There is no single right answer to these questions. You need to find them yourself.
Indeed! My question was (mostly) rhetorical - I happen to be of the right age to have organically played some real 8 and 16-bit console video games on real CRT ; and also organically played a lot more 8 and 16-bit console video games emulated on a laptop LCD display, in an era where emulators were (mostly) playable but by no means autistically perfect. And I simply don't care whether modern pixel art games look like their pixels might've been smeared in a way characteristic of a real CRT or not. It honestly wasn't something I noticed very much at the time. It's not an artistic decision that I think should have much weight, compared to every other artistic decision someone making a modern pixel-art game needs to make.
Personally, my favorite 2D video game aesthetic was the vibrant look of high-quality late-SNES games, particularly Chrono Trigger (which obviously had a whole lot of things going right for it besides the art design). I've played a number of modern pixel-art games made by people who were clearly inspired by Chrono Trigger and eager to make graphics that look like it but without any of the SNES's technological limitations, and I'm all for it - Crosscode and (especially) Chained Echoes are salient examples, and I think both those games look great.