Yesterday’s pixels look quite different on today’s screens than they looked on CRTs of the time. In particular, “pixel-perfect lines and points” weren’t a perfectly sharp grid, but mixed up and re-defined by the CRT’s shadow mask and scanlines, making them look more organic and less pixelated.

Look at this for example (CRT left, “perfect” pixels right): https://cdn.xcancel.com/pic/orig/media%2FFQI0t9PacAALT14.jpg

Many more examples here: https://xcancel.com/CRTpixels