alt Hacker NewsWhile I can appreciate the general concept of designing withing limitations, 1.44MB just isn't quite the limit it's being presented as. Look at Pico-8 games, for example. With the full Pico-8 runtime environment bundled in, typical games still clock in well under 1MB for Windows builds, and even smaller for Linux (macOS builds bloat up to 3+ MB, unfortunately). That's an entire virtual console + a full game, and still half a meg to spare on a floppy.
POOM, the DOOM clone, is a "multi-cart" on the Pico-8 and still only comes in at 1.2MB on Windows. I guess what I'm getting at is, if someone wants a fast-track to meeting the challenge of 1.44MB, make a Pico-8 game.
If the best someone can do within that 1.44MB constraint is a pico-8 game, then so be it. But I bet we're going to see much more impressive stuff!
Competitions for 16KB games exist. as well as 64KB. And likely everything between 0KB and 1440KB. It doesn't reduce the fun to have multiple tiers, in my opinion.