The Java 4K Game Programming Contest (aka 'Java 4K' and 'J4K') is an informal contest that was started by the Java Game Programming community to challenge their software development abilities. The goal of the contest is to develop the best game possible within four Kilobytes (4096 bytes) of data. While the rules originally allowed for nearly any distribution method, recent years have required that the games be packaged as either an executable JAR (software) file, a Java Webstart application, or a Java Applet.