> The article was talking about the 80s

I cited that article as only one example. It focused on one artist who created graphics mainly for one platform, the Amiga, which was sold from 1985 to 1994. However, graphics were made as I described as early as 1978 by many artists on many different platforms including the Apple II (MicroPainter was popular), Atari 400/800, TI 99/4a, Radio Shack Color Computer and others. They often did detail work a pixel at a time for the reasons I described. This wasn't unique to Sachs or the Amiga.

Regarding timing: The PC-98 platform was released in 1982 and was primarily an 80s phenomenon which had peaked sometime around 1990. While it continued to be sold throughout the 1990s, it's primary growth and dominance were established in the 1980s. Please see the Wikipedia entry for PC-98 which says: "In 1990, IBM Japan introduced the DOS/V operating system which enabled displaying Japanese text on standard IBM PC/AT VGA adapters." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-98). That greatly expanded and accelerated the competition against PC-98.

Doing detail work pixel by pixel is a much different claim than drawing the line art pixel by pixel or doing the flat shading pixel by pixel.

>Regarding timing: The PC-98 platform was released in 1982 and was primarily an 80s phenomenon which had peaked sometime around 1990.

Look at the popular PC98 games and you will see that they were made in the 1990s. Alicesoft didn't even release their first game until 1989.