2P_Game_Arcade, a Korean games culture site, has opened a game development contest built around one unfashionable constraint: the finished game has to fit on a single 1.44MB high-density floppy disk.
The competition is open to all entrants, according to 2P_Game_Arcade, and will award cash prizes to the top three submissions. The total prize pool is ₩1.14 million, which the report values at about $750. That is not exactly venture funding, but the point here is less payroll and more pain, specifically the productive kind that comes from making every byte justify its rent.
The storage cap applies to the full fileset. 2P_Game_Arcade says the submitted game must include everything it needs within the 1.44MB limit, including assets, libraries and any engine files. A tiny launcher that calls home for the real game will not qualify. Browser-dependent games and entries that stream data are also excluded.
Within that ceiling, the toolchain is open. Entrants may choose their own programming language, development tools and engine, according to the contest rules described by 2P_Game_Arcade. The site also requires participants to have the rights or licenses for the images, audio and other intellectual property used in their submissions.
Entries are being accepted through the 2P_Game_Arcade website. The deadline is September 4 at 23:39 Korean time.
A modern contest with old constraints
2P_Game_Arcade frames the contest as a way for developers to reconsider what makes games enjoyable when storage is scarce. The site says it expects submissions from professionals, independent creators and students.
The format also lands in a long-running tradition of size-limited coding contests. Demoscene events have used tight byte budgets for decades, often asking programmers to produce audiovisual demos under constraints that make 1.44MB look indulgent. Those contests have usually favored non-interactive demos, but games have appeared in that culture too.
The broader small-code scene has produced examples that are absurd in the best possible way. The report cites a 16-byte x86 real-mode DOS assembly release shown at the Outline Demoparty in May 2026, a Snake port small enough at 56 bytes to fit inside a QR code, and Dave W. Plummer’s RetroPad, described as a Windows XP Notepad-equivalent program in 2,749 bytes of x86 assembly.
Itch.io ran a similar event in 2018 called FloppyJam. 2P_Game_Arcade’s version narrows the brief around a complete, self-contained game rather than a demo or technical stunt. That makes the engineering problem less glamorous and more practical: compression, asset discipline, dependencies and feature restraint all count. The floppy disk is the gimmick. The build system is where entrants will bleed.
This story draws on original reporting from Tom's Hardware.
