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I'm aware that SMW is a SNES game, newer than SMB3 (NES). My point was that SMW is focused in playability and fun, and not in color count nor overloaded graphics (e.g. the SNES is able to show 32768 colors, while SMW color count is way far from that potential).

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SMW looks good and they made good choices, but they weren't leaving that much in the tank (they even broke out Mode 7!). The SNES is theoretically able to show 32,768 colors through scanline trickery and/or color math, and has a sometimes-workable 256-color mode (but like its successor the GBA it's slow), but nearly everybody used the tile-based mode, where every 8x8 square was mapped to a 15-color palette.

(I have spent entirely too much time in the guts of that thing. Send help. And liquor.)

The reason it still looks good now is because they created a timeless art style with clear, readable sprites which didn't need many colors. Compare that with 16-bit era attempts at photorealism which look muddy today.

The same is true of Metroid Prime on the gamecube, which looks better than some modern games despite hardware which was underpowered even at the time, due to masterful art direction.

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