I knew one of the animators who worked on that film! It was a real challenge for them to do any kind of 3D animation back in the day because, well, the software for it didn't exist.
So everything had to be designed with simple shapes in mind so that they could do 3D transformations (e.g. translation, rotation, scale, squash/stretch) more easily. Thats why everything had a 'simple' design to it.
For example, that light cycle sequence is ALL math, from rotating 90 degree angles manually to all those shapes to translations. Those guys were pioneers. They used a Evans & Sutherland Picture System 2 system to produce the 3D graphics.
To think, most of that film was shoot using green screen techniques. We wouldn't see anything like that for nearly 22 years later with 'Skycaptain and the World of Tomorrow' and shortly after that, 300.