I love the whole "they made pixel art with the CRT blending effect in mind!" argument, completely sidestepping the fact that a bunch of the same pixel art techniques used for consoles were also used on PCs with monitors that very much did not have a fuzzifying CRT effect to benefit from

And given how many games back then drew circles assuming square pixels which then turned into ovals, I think the amount of thought that went into period pixel art is greatly overestimated