There are a number of contests - both formal and informal - where people try to develop the most "bang for the byte". While each competition has its own rules, commonly the contestants are required to perform some task with a very restrictive limit on the final size of their program. The task is frequently graphical in nature and a typical restriction is 256 bytes (hence the name of this page) or 1024 bytes.
Consider that the above paragraph requires 441 bytes just to represent all of the characters in it and you get a sense for how restrictive 256 bytes is!
Below is a sample of executables from some of these contests. All of these are virus free.
| Name | Size (bytes) | Description/Comments |
| xmas.com | 308 | Fractal Trees and Falling Snow with sound - pretty chintzy. |
| meryxmas.com | 256 | Faster version of above - but still pretty chintzy. |
| octdemo | 1024 | Lots of stuff packed into a 1K executable. |
| yew.com | 236 | Very elegant visual effect - you can really a sense for the depth. |
| xmaspong.com | 256 | Bold graphics. |
| kfrns256.com | 250 | It's ragged with bad sync problems, but it's under 256 bytes. |
| kfrns257.com | 260 | An extra 10 bytes to get it sync'ed up. |
| kfrinal.com | 262 | An extra 2 bytes gets a lot more color. |
| oxlpka.com | 256 | Backlit clouds? Looks simple, but the shadow generation is quite a trick in 256 bytes. |