I agree, when I first saw the splash image, I assumed that was the one being replaced! Because it doesn't look like pixel art, it looks like a high quality image was pixelated. By replicating reality so closely, you really easily see all the drawbacks of pixel art. Namely low resolution, and limited colors. Because it's not taking advantage of the medium of pixel art, but instead shoehorning realism into it.

They complain about the shape of someone's arms in Street Fighter? Who cares about realism, these characters can shoot fireballs from their hands. Look at Link in Link’s Awakening! His head must weigh 3x more than his body. If you find a screenshot with his sword, it's even weirder. The sword is simultaneously smaller than his head, and yet larger than the entire rest of his body. And have you ever seen a tree or wall that looks like that? But it looks freaking fantastic at that resolution.

I don't care if the author's art was entirely hand-made, it looks like a high quality image was pixelated by a computer. The art in King of Fighters' may have been done entirely by hand, but if the end results looks indistinguishable from a 3d render at low resolution with terrible aliasing, who cares what means was used to get the crappy look? The author restating things about "embracing the medium", but I don't believe they did.