Korean outfit hosting 1.44MB game development contest to honor the floppy disk — entrants must confine entire fileset, including resources, engine, and library, to miniscule storage format

There’s a new “open to everyone” floppy disk-size game development competition with cash prizes for the best three submissions. You’ve read that right: the freshly prepared game must be able to squeeze onto a single HD floppy disk- that’s just 1.44MB. Cash prizes look massive, but as the competition is hosted by the Korean games culture site 2P_Game_Arcade, the currency you see is Korean Won, meaning the ₩1.14 million prize pool is only about $750. Remember, it’s the taking part that counts.

There are few restrictions on the new, original game that you submit as an entry beyond the defining floppy disk capacity. All participants must ensure that the games and any resource files, such as game engines and libraries, fit within these severe (for 2026) confines. Also, games that rely on a browser or stream any data aren’t eligible. The whole purpose of the contest is for devs to stretch their skills and ideas within the 1.44MB shackles.

However, your choice of technology such as game engines, development tools, programming languages, and so on, is completely open. Of course, all entrants must also be the legal owners or licensors of the images, audio, and other IP resources used in the game.

2P_Game_Arcade reckons its competition is a good chance for participants to rethink the essence of enjoyment in gaming. It is looking forward to a broad range of entrants from pros, indie creators, and students alike. Entries are submitted via the website, and the competition closes on September 4 at 23:39 Korean time.

In 2018, itch.io ran a similar developer competition dubbed the FloppyJam.

Demoscene developer traditions live on

Older readers who cut their teeth on 8- and 16-bit home computers before PCs stole the show will probably be familiar with the long history of “size competitions” at demoscene coder meetings. The 2P_Game_Arcade is just an extension of this kind of coding philosophy with a fun 1.44MB limit and a complete self-contained game as the goal.

In the tradition of these demoscene competitions, with size limits imposed all the way down to a minuscule few bytes, non-interactive demos were usually the most popular entrants. However, in the long history of such competitions, games have sometimes been the fruits of the skilled coders’ labors.

In terms of more traditional demo releases, my mind was recently boggled by “16 bytes of x86 real-mode DOS assembly” released at the Outline Demoparty in May 2026. Then there was the port of Snake that was only 56 bytes and fit in a QR code. For some more practical size-skillz strutting, take a look at Dave W. Plummer’s RetroPad, a “full-feature-parity version of Notepad from XP” in just 2,749 bytes.

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