That would lower the frame rate.

it's also a matter of size. lores graphics are 1k (they usually compress at least 50%). There are 800 backgrounds in the demake. You want to fit this on a reasonable number of floppy disks, in this case it fits on 3.

If you use "hi-res" (140x192x6 colors) the graphics are 8k, 8 times bigger, so you need 24 disks which is a bit much.

Also with double-buffered hi-res graphics you waste 16k of RAM which is 1/3 of all available RAM on a II+. Double-buffered lo-res only takes 2k.

also note this will run fine on a stock system from 1980: an Apple II+ with 48k RAM (1MHz 6502) and a 16-sector 140k DOS3.3 Disk ][ drive.

If you're a commodore person, you should be comparing this with what you could do with a PET or maybe a VIC-20 in this timeframe (not a C64).

That's nice because all the Apple machines can run the program.

A split the middle might have been double low res, 80x48 with the same 16 colors, but only available on the //e and gs

IMHO, running on all the Apples is the better call.

It was a joke considering it is point-and-click, but the size difference was the real reason that came to mind.