Pixels are not square.

[Gors]

While pixelart was created in a time when CRT was the norm and with "looking good on the final display method" as their main goal, this doesn't mean that pixelart has been done wrongly all this time and that we should reconsider.

It is true that pixelart was intended to look better on a CRT as you brought up (the oddity and innacuracy of CRTs helped improve the apparent lack of care when placing pixels to form a much more pallatable image), our screens have evolved and thus many of those techniques are rendered obsolete by now.

It's also important to note that we, the internet community, "really understood" what pixelart was about when sites like The Spriters Resource became popular. I doubt we really knew how game graphics really worked when we were kids, and I certainly doubt that any of you really knew that sprites were stored in 8x8 tiles with 4 colors (1 alpha) method in the early days of the NES.

When the first sheets were ripped, future pixelartists studied it and after zooming it 8x, it was clear that the stored image was indeed saved in the ROM as squares - so we just ran with it disregarding the natural distortions of the CRT. This coincidentally happened in tandem with the development and advent of LCD and LED displays, which improved pixel quality and mitigated any use the CRT had prior.

Pixelart was done differently way back - but like any kind of art, it's constantly evolving (especially an art which is heavily tied to electronical and technology progress) and different mediums require different techniques. You can't deny that a lot of modern, square pixel pixelarts do look good, and thus I don't think it's right to say it's "wrong-headed".

After all, pixelart is Art, and there are no rights and wrongs in Art if it manages to perfectly convey what you want.

It's very similar to comparing mosaic art to pointillism and "ponto cruz" embroidery:

(an example of mosaic)

(an example of pointillism)

(an example of "ponto cruz" embroidery)

They all work on the very basic principle of rendering bigger images with small unitary pieces (the mosaic being small stones; the pointillism painting made with regular dots of color; and "ponto cruz" made with embroidered squares). However, due to the nature of each media (rocks are never regular enough and thus they bunch up irregularly; paint dots are regular but due to having no grid on the canvas they bunch up like clusters, improving readability; and ponto cruz is literally physical pixelart), each style has its set of techniques, advantages and drawbacks.

Despite this, they're all valid types of art with no real "correct" method - they only work on whatever media the artist was limited to, and now that we are virtually limited to LCD/LED screens with very definite pixel grid (not considering CRT emulation filters), square pixels are simply the logical step on how we deal with pixelart nowadays.

All in all, it's a very interesting talk and pixelart has evolved quite a lot from being physical mosaic to completely digital pieces of art, but to be this adamant about "pixelart not being used as it was meant to be" is kinda like saying "mp3 shouldn't exist because real instruments exist"