It's not that CRTs were "forgiving", it's that designers leaned into what they'd do to pixels. A classic example is the tanks in Atari 2600 Combat - they look ridiculous on a hi-res screen. On a CRT they sort of look like tanks.

I have a JAMMA cabinet at home. It has a CRT in it. I usually play on x-in-1 pirate emulator board. So I don't mind that not all the hardware is authentic. But it's important to me that the screen is authentic, or it all just feels wrong. The curve must be there, the scanlines must be there.

I really get quite cross when you visit a museum and they've got retro games playing on flatscreen LCDs. Doubly so when it's meant to be a vector game.