Interesting videos, although I think the casual player probably won't notice most of those smaller details. It shows that some extra effort was made to make it more realistic in some cases though, while in others not.
I've always been a stickler for details myself, although sometimes I skimp on details myself because it's just too much effort for too little reward. Maybe if I had a couple of hundred people under me too I could make every particle behave realistically.
I would love to do stuff like the ground getting deformed when you walk on it, dust getting blown about, that kind of stuff. I haven't really seen a 2D game that does this though, probably because it's alot easier in 3D. Imagine having to sprite all the various deformations a sprite could get. You'd have to spend months on every single map.