They designed on CRTs, not for them. There's a subtle difference. Imagine I'm trying to optimize a computer program. If I do it on machine A, then I'm optimizi

They designed on CRTs, not for them. There's a subtle difference. Imagine I'm trying to optimize a computer program. If I do it on machine A, then I'm optimizing on A, but only for A if I pay particular attention to the architecture of A to drive optimization decisions. On the other hand, if I'm making high-level optimizations -- like using more efficient data structures -- I'm still optimizing, but my program will still run just as fast in other environments, because the specific optimizations I'm doing aren't special features of machine A. So when you go for the low-hanging fruit first, you are satisfying general optimization principles. I see no reason to believe that these artists were analyzing their art in the context of making it look good on a CRT rather than just making it look good, with the CRT being an incidental tool. I would imagine that most of this art was probably developed on paper before it was programmed, and most corrections thereafter were applied only to fix glaring mistakes. It's quite a stretch for someone to claim that this is processes intentionally took CRTs into account during the design, or that CRTs naturally make this style of art look 'better.' CRTs might provide some quirky nostalgia, but I don't buy it that we're somehow missing out on the 'intended' experience by not using them. That's just moral preening unless we've got an industry artist willing to detail the actual process they used and support the claim. (Like someone is trying to tell my burritos aren't 'authentic Mexican' enough to taste good.)