Meteor animation - 5 Attempts

What is so hard to do with pixel art?

animation and vfx obviously!

I can get decent results with tiles, characters and these kind of things...but at least to me making animations and vfx effects is really hard.

These following images are all attempts to make a meteor simulating particles system.

Attempt 1:

Attempt 2:

Attempt 3:

Attempt 4

and the winner for now is the one without simulating the particle system (only draw)