Yeah, I doubt the guy gave a shit that better programs "at their peak" would produce a better result. The idea was to make something impressive, by using a program that is incredibly limited, which makes the end result even more impressive in that respect.
If that drawing had been done in the latest version of photoshop it wouldn't be nearly as cool, because some of the complex things he did, like making a gradient colour by colour, or adding texture with painstaking individual brushstrokes, would be trivial tasks in a program with more features.
Also, that jedi animation was shit no matter how you look at it. Really bad example.