That's quite alarming. On many systems with TV output, including widely popular consoles, there were no pixels at all, just an analog line signal, most often mo

That's quite alarming. On many systems with TV output, including widely popular consoles, there were no pixels at all, just an analog line signal, most often modulated/composited/combined, and often low in quality because of cost-effective hardware and cables. Artists certainly looked at how images appeared on TV screens, and not at raw values of the bitmap samples presented as squares, and they compensated for unwanted effects. It is slightly maddening to know that the lack of analog output emulation in early console emulators and general lack of education resulted in the modern faux-retro aesthetic, some kind of new age belief that pixels should be big blocks. Mario sprite was never intended to be seen as made of blocks, no matter how many times people use that scaled abomination. You do have big flat pixels when you have high quality but low physical DPI output device. Say, black and white Macintosh, or late '90s computer monitors displaying '80s screen resolutions, or a panel of individual LEDs. On the other hand, halftones are also sharp and have low DPI, but have no square grid at all, nor they correspond to source data used in printing in any straightforward way. To conclude, big flat rectangles are just a specific artistic choice, they are not universal at all.