It’s not as much about resolution as it was about exploiting the quirks of CRT. Artists usually “squished” sprites horizontally (because crt screens would stretch them) and used the now famous “half dot” technique to have more subtle shading than what was actually possible at the pixel level. So if you just display the original sprites with no stretch and no “bleed” between pixels, it doesn’t look as good as it should.
It’s not as much about resolution as it was about exploiting the quirks of CRT. Artists usually “squished” sprites horizontally (because crt screens would stretch them) and used the now famous “half dot” technique to have more subtle shading than what was actually possible at the pixel level. So if you just display the original sprites with no stretch and no “bleed” between pixels, it doesn’t look as good as it should.