my name is anime catte: Actually, the VGA version had the original interface too. It was the CD version which replaced it with the MI2 interface.
neumi5694: Right, I thought I had seen that somewhere. But I was never able to get my hands on that one.
The second best thing would be the Amiga-version with the old interface, but of course reduced colors (32 color version of the VGA version with EGA sprites).
About the art ...
Before Loom all games basically looked the same. Loom was one of the first games heavily relying on dithering, that's when you could see the difference when comparing backgrounds done by different artists.
Monkey Island 1 used the same technique, all was hand drawn - and programmed.
VGA256 had of course a much better image quality, but doing a color transition in 256 colors requires of course a lot more effort than in 16 colors. I think that was the reason the sunset was cut from the VGA version of the game.
In later games they had color transisions again (I think we can see one in MI2 when diving).
It's not so much about "how did the artist want this scene to look" and more about "what were the tools the artist had".
They didn't use on the computer generated EGA by choice, but because that's what most peope still used, so they had to produce for them. They also had a CGA-Composite version (check out Zak1 in Composite, it looks amazing compared to the RGB emulation of CGA).
I don't think that any artist on MI1 will say that he liked his 16 colors work better than his 256 colors work.
When I mentioned the artist's intention, what I meant was that often the VGA conversion wasn't done by the original artist (more likely by some art intern while the lead artist worked on a new game). So when I say the VGA version doesn't represent the original vision, I just mean that it isn't what we would have if the original artist had worked on the VGA version.
In some cases the VGA versions have rather egregious overuse of the gradient tool done by someone with a far less acute eye than the original artist.
neumi5694: About the art ...
Before Loom all games basically looked the same. Loom was one of the first games heavily relying on dithering, that's when you could see the difference when comparing backgrounds done by different artists.
PixelBoy: Sierra used dithering in many games before Loom though.
Like this:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/colonels-bequest/screenshots/gameShotId,2205/
Sierra's backgrounds were mostly procedurally generated rather than stored as bitmaps, so there would be instructions to fill a certain area with a dithering pattern. LucasArts used bitmap backgrounds and Mark Ferrari's dithering in Loom is likely done with careful and deliberate pixel placement.
