Doom, Mario, and Megaman all work extremely well within their limitations. The art is able to unambiguously present a world with atmosphere and it's clear what

Doom, Mario, and Megaman all work extremely well within their limitations. The art is able to unambiguously present a world with atmosphere and it's clear what needs to be done. There's very little confusing iconography or hard to interpret sprites, everything is clear. They're probably the best examples in the history of the medium of great design. Capcom and Nintendo are still making 2D Megaman/Mario games with the old graphic design and there are new retro FPS games coming out every year. SuperHot actually looks worse than Doom in most aspects other than the resolution and particles. Sierra/LucasArts games, while beautifully drawn, suffered from unclear walking paths, confusing verbs, frustratingly slow interactivity, and nonsense puzzles. From an industrial design perspective, they were a mess. Out of this World and Prince of Persia are probably the most prominent example of games that excelled in the two dimensions of graphics and usability, while Myst is probably the most extreme example of form over function in games that were successful.