I saw a super nifty article on /. yesterday and thought everyone here would appreciate the subject: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2385811,00.asp (the researcher's page is here, http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/kopf/pixelart/index.html - the extremetech article has the wrong link)

I think this image largely speaks for itself in describing the topic:

Pretty cool. Not really useful, but cool nonetheless. Looks like it needs a bit more tweaking in some areas, though. It looks like it tends to assume gradient or curve a bit too often. Perfect example is the save icon, where the really rounded all the corners for apparently no reason. The eyes on the mushroom are another example.

This would be AWESOME if it could be done on-the-fly in an SNES or Gameboy emulator...

I don't know how Microsoft generated the pictures that are labeled "vector magic" here. I downloaded a few of the pictures from their site and reuploaded them at the site. The pictures there are much better than what is represented by Microsoft, although the style is still the same.

In my opinion, the two best algorithms there are the Bicubic and hq4x. The Microsoft algorithm just assumes too everything is too smooth.

EDIT: My feeble attempt

The skeleton one is a bit failed IMO - the head doesn't really look like a skull anymore and neither does the skull-icon on his shield

That makes it look more modern and vector-y

FTA:

And also modern calculator games.