It's just that I find calling it "pixel art" (which a style of graphics deliberately made to look crude for a retro effect) odd when it was state of the art at

It's just that I find calling it "pixel art" (which a style of graphics deliberately made to look crude for a retro effect) odd when it was state of the art at the time. It's like how someone might make a black & white silent movie today in order to be "arty", but someone doing that 100 years ago was just making a movie.