[Trixter]

It required a 386sx or better with 4MB of RAM, and EGA or better graphics card.

This is quite reasonable for 1992, and the extra ram was likely needed only for the graphics. DESQView itself could run on an 8088 system and didn't even require EMS (although if you did have an EMS board, and configured the system so that the EMS board backfilled the latter 512K, it could multitask much larger programs at the same time as that enabled it to swap entire programs in/out of lower address space instantly).

I've been a low-level 8088 coding hobbyist for many years, and DESQView is still incredibly impressive to me, especially since I know what it has to do under the hood to work and be stable.