Frank Cifaldi, who worked on the Megaman Legacy collection and Disney Afternoon retro collection and is kind of an expert on this stuff (runs the video game his

Frank Cifaldi, who worked on the Megaman Legacy collection and Disney Afternoon retro collection and is kind of an expert on this stuff (runs the video game history foundation among other things) has a lot of good nuanced takes on this: https://twitter.com/frankcifaldi/status/1408515001048961025 https://twitter.com/frankcifaldi/status/1408515001048961025 TL;DR -- every artist had a different workflow and approach. Some worked directly on CRT monitors, some worked on Amigas with Deluxe paint that had crisp pixel art akin to what we see today (yes the monitors were CRTs but there was a wild world of difference between some computer displays and televisions), some (like Miyamoto) worked directly on graph paper and then had someone else code them directly into the game. There is no single rule for knowing what an artist's "intention" was without looking at the context on a case by case basis.