Great explanation.
I have to wonder what goes through the head of whoever is doing the DMD animations. After all, it's decades-old tech and I wonder how transferable a job skill it is. Outside of pinball, what DMD (and other extremely limited resolution display technologies) use artwork to the extent of pinball? Where it's still used, which is less and less, it's all used for text. Even the credit swipe at the grocery store has 5x the resolution (and color!).
I guess it's "what's expected" in pinball, though. Even some virtual pinball games still display score in dots format.