The hardware limitations are what makes the demos what they are. If it were not for them, we'd all make pre-rendered animations.

There's a reason why you've got the 4Kb, 64Kb competitions. We want limitations because overcoming them is part of the art.

Lastly I made an Apple ][ demo. I could have learned the shader stuff, load tons of geometry, etc. But I much prefer limitations because I know my peers will check my code and hopefully will be astonished by what I do. (yeah, gratification !!!)

From what I saw, a lot of the demos have some type of interactivity or other dynamic or generative element to them.