As noted in the article - and in the related article [0] by Stephen who goes in-depth into the development of the custom CRT display adapter - some of the constraints/wishes were: wanting to go beyond 18-bit color to avoid color banding, and also to have a generic USB interface so that the CRT could be driven by a laptop or any PC.

I also think that the people involved in this project enjoyed inventing/creating/coding just as much as they wanted to "get it done" - and so, there's definitely a healthy/heavy mix of "we took this existing thing" and "we invented this completely new way of doing things".

[0] https://www.scd31.com/posts/building-an-arcade-display-adapt...