>>7773831 (OP)
The internet wasn't really a thing, so you weren't being blasted in the eyes with all the bad art of amateur and hobbyist artists.
There's also a rose tinted way of looking at the past, where we forget there was a lot of bullshit mediocrity back then as well, and only cherry pick the best to hold up as examples of the 'standard' for back then.
There's also just the charm of a lost medium - the art for those specific old computers were lovely. It's as they say; limitations breed creativity. We know have basically no limitations, and it leads to a lot more bland crap. Those limitations would also force smarter colour palettes, because the computers or consoles themselves had limited colour palettes; do you think your image would have had that monochrome blue background if they had access to unlimited colours? Almost certainly not.
Finally, you may wonder why small game projects such as in your image can have such great art, or such a great artist, when so many projects have bland or subpar art or artists now - the answer is that demand simply outstrips the supply.
There are so many projects that require artists, especially artists with technical know-how, and there's simply only so many that can hit those beautiful peaks that you want; there's also something to be said about us drowning in too much content, and perhaps missing a lot of gold because we're distracted by the diamonds, so to speak.
