1,44 MB was the capacity of the High Density 3 1/4” disks that were introduced for the IBM PC in 1987. The target system for Sierra’s first adventures (The Wiz

1,44 MB was the capacity of the High Density 3 1/4” disks that were introduced for the IBM PC in 1987. The target system for Sierra’s first adventures (The Wizard and the Pricess, King’s Quest et al) was the Apple II, whose floppies could take a whopping 113.75 KB per side. Perhaps more importantly, it only had 48 kB of RAM, and a traditional full color bitmap image would have taken up a bit more than half of that, leaving very little for game logic, I/O routines, text etc. Using vector graphics was a necessity for getting several full-color screens onto one floppy. You can read a long-form series of articles about how Ken Williams implemented this game engine at https://www.filfre.net/tag/sierra/page/8/ https://www.filfre.net/tag/sierra/page/8/ .