By Todd Russell
Always get a kick out of the names of some of these emulators. Ruffle (https://ruffle.rs/) seeks to solve the missing link to play all those defunct (not really) Flash games we used to be able to play in the browser and elsewhere.
Looking for more Flash preservation efforts?
Internet history and culture is important, and the web is evolving at such a rapid pace that what might be commonplace today could be obsolete tomorrow. This project is dedicated to preserving as many experiences from these platforms as possible, so that they aren’t lost to time. Since December 2017, over 170,000 games and animations have been preserved across more than a hundred browser plugins and web technologies.
Flashpoint Archive
I remember playing some of Paul Neave’s arcade game Flash efforts porting (unofficially) games like Namco’s Pac-Man.
Fortunately, The Internet Archive helps to restore some of these past Flash-enabled sites, see here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20050210085708/http://www.neave.com/games/pacman/
Neave Games also hand-coded versions of Asteroids and Space Invaders.
Being able to play full arcade games in the browser was quite the trip in the late 90s to early 2000s internet. Sure, in 2024 we have cloud streaming like Game Pass, Apple Arcade and for the retro/arcade stuff, Antstream, but 25 years ago, ironically, Flash seemed like much more than the flash in the pan it turned out to be.
Historically, Flash was taken down due to a number of reasons, being the target of hackers and really, Apple deciding not to support on their mega popular iPhone.
In 2007 Apple released the iPhone and made the historic decision to not support Flash on the platform. At the time, Flash was still very popular, so this move had a disruptive effect on the web, but the writing was on the wall. Flash was no longer necessary when browser technologies and dedicated native mobile apps would do the job instead.
Adobe Flash is Dead: Here’s What That Means (howtogeek.com)
These days, cloud streaming and HTML5 in the browser has taken over for deprecated Flash. Readers, any favorite Flash games you enjoyed playing? Or still play to this day using Ruffle or other Flash emulators?