PixelPileDriver, those illustrations are very helpful even from a bystander perspective. Never took the time to study animation much, just know from practice. The concept of slow out and slow in never occurred to me. Is there a theory behind what makes it work?

The only reason that amount of banding was viable is because of CRTs and the animation. Probably looked vaguely 3D in situ.

Made an edit:

You need to start thinking about volume/form when you're rendering the subject. Your feather texture seems arbitrarily applied to the parrot which is making him look flat. If you establish a light source and think about how the light moves across the shapes of the parrot's body it will help you decide how to shade him.

Also you have some redundant/uninteresting colors in your pallet. You can get more out of the colors you do have by switching between ramps. For example, mix some of that orange into the red to spruce it up. Look up hue shifting for the long version of that. Get rid of the colors that are too similar, restrict your pallet, experiment, study your ref and then see what you come up with.

I'm curious about how this HD/remake phenomenon affects indies. For example WaterMelon co. (who has done some recruiting here I believe) made Pier Solar with legit megadrive specs, had some nice pixels, and was well received. They then launched a subsequent successful kickstarter to fund an HD version:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/573261866/pier-solar-hd-an-rpg-for-xbox360-pc-mac-linux-and

The art director talks about having to work within the restrictions of genesis for the original homebrew version, vs. the freedoms/limitless colors/tiles/layers for the HD version. If you ask me the pixel version looks much better/cleaner, and I'm sure the others here would agree. The limitations create a much more focused and precise look while the painted tiles are bit harder to read, they're a more cluttered and filtered skewing the priorities.

I think both styles have merit, as I said before painted tiles can be done well, but I think conceit is right on the money when it comes to translating pixels to high res, that there is something lost in the translation of seeing more.

If there are any lessons to be learned from remakes, they're surely taken from nintendo. (All they do is remake/redux their old games, and usually successfully.) Look at metroid zero mission vs. the NES original. One has a lot less limitations, but the same spirit is charged through the tiles. (Both are still pixelart but the comparison is exemplar of higher res/capabilities and how you use them. They still had to reinterpret some of the more vague lowres stuff, but did so creatively/compellingly.)

That Vector game looks interesting. Reminds me of mirror's edge for obvious reasons, but does have the bond edge to it. Stylish too.

@pixelpiledriver:
Certainly looks juicer with the color edits, brings some of that depth back. One of the problems I have with the orig are the specular glows emanating from those fire donuts.