When I first saw Another World, the animation was so incredible (for the time) that I figured it was one of those newfangled CD-ROM games. Then I bought a copy and was shocked that the whole thing fit on a single 1.2MB floppy -- most graphics-heavy games (like Wing Commander) shipped on several floppies before CD-ROM became prevalent.
I always wondered about the tiny executable, too. I think I just figured that it was a stub that loaded an overlay from the big data file. Guess I was wrong!
On the other hand, as a kid I was amazed by Sylpheed (megacd version) and always thought that it was 3d/vector graphics when in fact most of the visuals were pre-rendered videos (leveraging CD-ROM capacity obviously).
I always wondered about the tiny executable, too. I think I just figured that it was a stub that loaded an overlay from the big data file. Guess I was wrong!