I think the problem will always be that algorithms aren't smart enough to interpret pixels. A huge part of pixel art is that one pixel can change what we see as a whole, and algorithms will never be able to interpret and properly scale up what that pixel is supposed to be. I think the first step would be to start taking into consideration the layouts we use as pixel artists to make shapes.

I think out of all those examples(here) hq4X is the best. It has its flaws, but it does a pretty damn good job most of the time in interpreting what shapes are being created with the pixels, and to top it off has some nice AA. If only that could be refined, as it seems to "skip" many pixels and just square them off.



But at the end of the day, it can't look at the overall set of pixels and interpret what the artist intended, and fails as well. Again, the more complicated the pixels, the more it seems to fail. And I don't think we'll really ever overcome that.

Dusty:
No need to imagine! Just look at the Super Mario World clip on their website -- In the 'Video Comparisons' section, click on 'Our Result'. The clip is limited in area, but certainly has enough to get a decent idea.

Problem is Mario is one of those cases that doesn't have a lot of pixel busyness going on, and thus benefits pretty well. I'd like to see another game like Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy 3 or some such that has dithering and noisy textures and such.

So are the Pokemon in the battle scenes sprites or tiles? I always got the feeling they were tiles in the original games?

Also, the Pokéballs are NPCs (seen on the NPC dump) and not a part of the local terrain chunks. They are used elsewhere as "treasure chests" and Voltorb encounters, iirc.

Aye, I did make them in with being NPCs in mind.

Ah that's a pity, I'm not as clever as I thought. Oh well, I suppose I did maintain the restrictions of the challenge at least.