"Build a game that stands the test of time as well as Civilization" is a pretty high bar. 1.44 MB is huge.
POOM, the DOOM clone, is a "multi-cart" on the Pico-8 and still only comes in at 1.2MB on Windows. I guess what I'm getting at is, if someone wants a fast-track to meeting the challenge of 1.44MB, make a Pico-8 game.
Competitions for 16KB games exist. as well as 64KB. And likely everything between 0KB and 1440KB. It doesn't reduce the fun to have multiple tiers, in my opinion.
Your average PC has half a dozen .net runtimes installed but likely not the correct .net version you want (yay), so to me it seems like it would be out. Same for the various C++ redistributables, better not rely on that unless you ship the DLLs you need with it (which I don't think you're allowed to do per Microsoft).
https://2pgarcade.com/contest-144mb.html isn't much more elaborate than the article unfortunately.
> All files required to run each game must fit within 1.44MB. Entries must be standalone games that run without a separate server or internet connection, and the size limit includes every required component, including game engines and libraries.
- now that would be very interesting to see
Amiga had plenty of single disk games.
Every single NES game or CGB game would fit on a floppy. More or less all GBC and SNES games could compress down to a floppy
However, and to go with your remark,
ZX Spectrum, C64, CPC, Archimedes, Amiga, Atari, plenty of games that would fit into a single floppy.