To be honest, it’s not really any special trick or anything, it’s just really good art directing on the Nintendo projects. There’s a lot of special attention that goes into style guides, color palettes, and hand made art for those games. I have colleagues that work for Nintendo and they’re amazing artists; they are very picky about hiring and only hire artists that can meet their distinct art styles.
I think sometimes when you’re on the outside it’s easy to get into a train of thought where you’re trying to figure out “the secret sauce”, but there really isn’t- it’s just really talented folks under really skilled art direction, doing what they do best.