Personally I wouldn't call the aesthetic dull; the color palette pops, and there's plenty of distinctive designs to be had.
It's just rendered in a way that results in tons of pixel jag and scaling artifacts; the tragedy isn't in bad art, but rather in the bad presentation of good art.
For example, check out these nifty high-res versions of the player ships:
They're rather nice, but there's no way to get around the filters and actually see them like this in-game. I had to go digging through SteamDB for emoticon assets instead
See also!
almost all perfectly good lines in service of Action Tough!
It's like a microcosm of First Blood's thoughtful drama birthing an entire pop-cultural ecosystem of foot-to-floor ultraviolence. 
