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We know what is possible today. When these old games were new they were quite frankly cutting edge and pioneering what was possible.
You don’t achieve that today even with the most dedicated adherence to retro limitations.
One could argue that the dynamic shadows of the day and night cycle in Sea of Stars were actually kind of breaking new ground in pixel art.
The era of NES was wild. I don’t think it is purely kid’s-experience nostalgia although that is certainly a factor. A lot of the language of gaming and the genres that are still in existence in some form today were being created for the first time, mostly from thin air. Wolf3d and Doom were probably the last time that a new “language” for gaming was created in that same way, directly in the mainstream of gaming and outside of niche / experimental games.
Also, the scope was incredible. For no reason. I along with a lot of other people had the experience of playing one level or one screen of an NES game and assuming at first that it was the whole game. No, that is 2% of the game. Why did they make so much game? For no reason? With no particular competition that would cause them to need to invest all the resources into creating this luxuriously massive experience? It can only be love.