Greentext

There's many factors, honestly. For example, a lot of pixelated games have animations that break the "pixel barrier", eg, a character moves smoothly over half pixels. Another thing is pixel scales being completely different. Sometimes a character or an icon has larger pixels than those on a map. Another factor is simply a variety of textures and colours- older games had limited colours for most objects, counting the underlying map as an object in itself. Not every colour could be used, and sometimes, a lot games weren't actually on the same saturation as people remember.

Music will be another factor.

A reason to use pixelated graphics isn't necessarily for nostalgia, it's that it's simply easier to make the game look good and consistent. Which is excellent for an indie game. 3d graphics could be more costly and higher res graphics are harder to look better due to the added detail. With pixels, your brain kinda just fills it in and it doesn't go to the uncanny valley.

I think good examples are the likes of windwaker and thomas was alone. Both had simplistic art styles which wasn't pushing the console to the limits, and both are beautiful games.

I remember when I had to make a game for an assignment. Other classmates were trying to go for realism humans and such, mixing and matching downloaded graphics and textures. It looked how you'd expect. The most detailed texture I used was a skybox, then made my own textures and models which were simply flat colours and neon green cones for trees and big boxes with ramps for hills. I then played around with the emissive properties until the lighting looked nice. I got good marks, the graphics were cited as a reason.

I digress,

I think here the pixel art is too good, back in the day they wouldn't have been making something so complex.