Heck I have turn a pixel thread into a 3D thread, i'm a heretic! burn me!
By the way, old pixel or 3D art is not just nostalgia, they focus on something long lost in the age of shader: readability!
Blur vs mario kart: in one of those game you can actually see the track and even differentiate the cars! Hint: not the later. The latest Mario kart WII suffer from this too, good and detailed arts but I can't see the road on any of the wii tracks
Old low poly had a
low frequencies vs high frequencies things that helpt sorting things visually, the blurry background got the 3D clean line pop. I can't see shit in gears of war, to much details and brown blending mess!
And some limitation was visually good, in doom for exemple you got a better sense of depth than in any modern game (modern warfare), the head bobbing with repeated texture give some heavily pleasing parallax, the pacing and the mood helpt too, and hell mario world had that too!
The truth is that limitation forced artist to make true compositional variation as they work hard to break repetition in meaningful ways (which stand out because of said repetition, and attract attention on important things), while modern chaotic details just got "grey" (nothing stand out) and superficial.
The other things is while the defect ratio has decreased drastically from the old days, the true surprise and quirkiness have mostly disappear too (unless you are Valve or is a true indie). Those pleasing discovery and frustration blend with the appreciation of those old game, building memory and then nostalgia, while modern game tend to be dull and derivative in a bad ways. Not counting there is more variation (gameplay, skills, challenge, theme) with the cute mascot (sonic, kirby, ecco, mario) than with bald space marine
@skofo: of course you pick the best example of that age! ape escape particularly did it for me.
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