I cannot think of a single "remaster" that looks better than the original.

And im not just talking about the woke age either.

You'd have ps1/ps2 era games that are like "centipede:revamped" and they'd utilize the graphics of those days but things like that are always butt ugly.

Centipede looks good because its vector style glow centipede against black background.

When you make everything visual and make the centipede look like a well textured polygon you make the visual appeal go away.

In almost every case the only time a "remaster" looks better is when its just porting the same graphics but in high resolution and framerate like banjo kazooie on XBLA.

The typical thing is throw post processing and bloom over the image like wind waker hd for wii u.

And why do remakes always look so bad? Because when the original game was made maybe graphics engines were limited but art direction was not.

So when you come around with a remake in order to get people to feel like the remake is different enough, you change the art direction. But the people making the original game weren't idiots. They made choices. Its easier to make good choices starting from the start rather than looking at the good that was done and going "how can we change this to the point we can justify calling this a remake.

Id say like 1% of remakes legitimately look better than the original.

If 4k textures made a game look superior, then all the slop on steam which was made in a day in unity "looks good" because it has 4k textures while a ps2 game doesn't.

No, graphical fidelity is one of the least important things when it comes to a game looking good.