Say goodbye to the rest of your day. The Internet Archive uploaded your favorite childhood flash games. While the Internet Archive is always a cool place to explore history, it typically houses public domain movies, digitized books, obscure 1940s TV kinescopes, and the Wayback Machine. Then, it surprises you by saving you 1,000s of Flash games that will be unplayable December 31, 2020 when Adobe retires Flash.
Before you go down this rabbit hole, it is important to note that these games do not have the smooth graphics you find in a modern gaming console. In fact, these games make Nintendo Gameboy games feel advanced. They are clunky, confusing, and fascinating. Playing them makes you wonder why we spent hours at a time with these primitive games, yet nostalgia takes over and you remember why you were so fond of them in the first place. The thrill is that of playing an emulated version of 1990s Oregon Trail, not that of playing a new Call of Duty or Animal Crossing game.
These games are relics of 1996 to 2010 that would literally be lost forever if not for the work of digital archivers. For those specifically interested in the Flash’s history as a piece of software, how Steve Jobs killed it, and why it is necessary to preserve our Internet heritage, The Internet Archive details Flash’s rise, fall, and the emulator saving Flash-dependent media from drowning in the deep web.
Since we’re pop culture lovers at heart, we’re going to skip the coding aspect and go straight to the fun part. Because not everyone has time to go down the rabbit hole, we’ve dove into the archive and pulled out the games that were most representative of the time.
As a 90s kid, I instantly started clicking on the Nickelodeon Flash games. Of the 8 Nickelodeon games, six are SpongeBob games, one is a digital Rainbow Bright, and the last one is Black Licorice, which is less a game and more a digital Halloween card from 2002 that is, sadly, not fully functionally due to limitations in emulation. For Cartoon Network fans, there’s Ed, Edd N Eddy Stadium Spin, which is Robot Wars with tops.
Weren’t into SpongeBob? Were you a Sonic person? With games like Ultimate Flash Sonic and Sonic 2 Special Stage, you can procrastinate on your work like you used to avoid doing homework. As for Sonic games, not everyone is a winner. There is McDonald’s Sonic Speedway, which was given away with Happy Meals in 2003 and plays like an electronic edition of a Happy Meal Toy.
When companies weren’t attempting to sell products to impressionable 10-year-olds, Flash games could be more than a flash in the pan. Looking back, many game concepts that were pioneered in flash are still popular for casual gaming. There’s Bubble Shooter, which joins the archive under the name Blow up!, and the generically named Helicopter Game, which is a 2D side scrolling game that doesn’t violate the law of gravity. Of course, it would be PC-gaming without multiple Solitaire versions or Mah-jong, a game that Minute Maid sponsored for reasons lost to time.
Exploring the Flash game archive is fun and bizarre because many games made sense in the moment but leave people in the present day baffled. The weirdest relic may be Fritos Hoops Ring Toss!, a strangely addictive Flash game that promotes a product that you can only import from Canada.
Whether you are an Internet historian or a late-90s kid at heart, the Internet Archives Flash collection is an enjoyable romp through the past.
Could you please save BookWorm? So love that word game, you have no idea!
I had a game called Indiana Jones, which featured a hunt for treasure. You could vary his weapons. Wasn’t supposed to be playable on a Mac, but somehow my CD did. It was intriguing and the last time I played it was on my G4 Mac. I bought when the clamshell Mac was the latest model.
I also still have CD to a game called Shivers which was scary, Again not really supposed to be compatible to a Mac ,but I spent hours figuring out the puzzles and games in that version I had. This was in the era where you paid for the game and it was yours, never had to pay any more. I no longer buy games, as I can’t afford the continual costs. But wish these games were still available.
Shirley Becker – contributor