i think saying that it's not possible because that guy needed 50 hours to re-create an old game in terms of design using new digital tools is a cop-out.
I don't recall saying that it wasn't possible.
What I am getting at is, however, there are obviously large amounts of man hours involved in creating something that looks THAT slick. Even a higly accomplished artist would probably be surprised at how long it would take to render something of that quality... As you said, a good artist would take maybe a whole day to do something like that.
Let's assume there are 8 working hours in a day. To make a 30 frame "idle" animation for one character would take a week at least (discounting on the fact there would be no background etc if you were doing a character animation). So, unless you had a team of like 200 people who could all draw the "same" then making a 2d game with graphics like that would be unrealistic.
I am not saying beyond any stretch of the imagination, that it's not possible... just infeasible.
Why do game developers opt for 3d so much these days when a lot of times, 2d would work perfectly fine (and often give a better looking result IMO)?? Because it's EASIER to work with animations on multiple angles, and essentially you only have to draw/make the character one time, and the software does the rest of the "real work".
~Sol