PixelBoy: Maybe those games aren't trying to recreate the 90s graphics style, but are going for the 80s style?
Nah, I still play plenty of 80s games, they look nothing like those. Pixel Art and Retro are not the same thing.
The difference is what you try to achieve. In every time people tried to get most out of what they had.
CGA in theory had only 4 colors, but due to Composite signal processing, games had actually 16 colors. And of course they could chose between different palettes This was forgotten once the VGA emulation of CGA hit. people think CGA looks like shit, but that was not the case in the 80s. Modern versions of DOSBox (DOSBox staging, set it to CGA mode) actually emulate CGA composite. If you find a CGA game with vertical lines. try it in composit mode, it's very likely the creators used these lines to get more colors.
Here's an example of a CGA pic in VGA emulation vs. Composit mode. Same game, same graphic output, just interpreted differently.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/xL818tN3dRQ/maxresdefault.jpg The C64? Only black and white, but you could chose a different palette for every 8x8 tile, making images like this one possible:
[url=https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a27d24_4feb8d1627c14ed8add6aa3d80a519d0~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_448,h_280,al_c,lg_1,q_85/a27d24_4feb8d1627c14ed8add6aa3d80a519d0~mv2.png]https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a27d24_4feb8d1627c14ed8add6aa3d80a519d0~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_448,h_280,al_c,lg_1,q_85/a27d24_4feb8d1627c14ed8add6aa3d80a519d0~mv2.png[/url]
Of course games were not that elaborated, but they still used that technique to get more colors.
And make sure to check out Amiga games (running on hardware from 1986). the most common game mode was also only 16 colors, later 32, but the games looked amazing, also this machine allowed certain graphic tricks. It was possible to get all 4096 colors onto one screen.
some of these are later games, but run on the original 1986 hardware
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7a/Lionheart_Amiga.png https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Wd1p2UmoE-Y/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/d0C7INydO-M/maxresdefault.jpg https://openretro.org/image/368587a2e67293168ba11ebb06890e11952230e6?s=2x The games these days have very reduced color palettes, very often use pastell colros and only one color for faces (which starting with EGA became very uncommon), hardly ever use tricks to make it look as if there were more colors, but instead go for a very flat look. They animate way more than was possible back then due to storage restrictions, but they tend to use very restricted palettes and simple flat surfaces.