gaming Flash Games

[Luna the Great of all the Russias 2,698]

As far as I am aware, Flash will be dead by this year (though I thought it already died) but there are several thousands of games that have been saved by large scale preservation efforts.

Did you play many Flash games? What are some of your memories of them? Some particular favorite games?

There are several I could mention (and many I most likely forgotten), but among the most ambitious Flash games I played was Super Mario 63. It is something like a 2D version of Super Mario 64, Sunshine, and Galaxy. The variety of actions Mario could do matched his official 3D counterpart, I remember the levels being well-designed, and it was a fairly lengthy game; I consider it extremely generous that this game is available for free because it would be well-worth buying. It also included a custom level design mode where the levels can be shared with others which was a nice bonus feature.

https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/498969

[Pentium100 2,056]

I don't think I played a lot of flash game,s other than some tower defense.

However, it is interesting to me that some software can be declared "dead" as if it would stop working. Nobody is coming with guns and forcing people to delete flash player or the various flash games. While browsers may no longer support it, there are other ways to run them.

I would understand if this was an MMO or something else that required a serer which is going to be taken down, but not standalone software.

Edited November 12, 2020 by Pentium100

[RDDash 18,859]

I used to. There's one game that I really like, however it has an offline copy.

[Cagey 4,205]

Every once in a while, especially when I’m stressed out by harder games, I play Flash games like Duck Life, Hanger, Dragon Simulator, Catch the Candy, This Is the Only Level, Home Sheep Home, and other low-effort games. 

[DixonTheAdversary 1,631]

I used to play a lot of Flash games when I was younger. I recently downloaded Flashpoint, which is one of the Flash Game preservation projects that has a pretty good selection.

[Jesse Terrence 2,963]

3 words

Tower of Heaven

[Misty Shadow 7,084]

I remember playing Sonic Flash games and a Street Fighter Flash game when I was younger. Only one I was ever addicted to at any point though was this old, Donkey Kong style Flash game called Sticky Wicket. 

[Nsxile 25,656]

On 11/12/2020 at 1:41 AM, Luna the Great of all the Russias said:

As far as I am aware, Flash will be dead by this year (though I thought it already died) 

Flash is only dead for those who do not have a standalone flash player that works with every or most versions of flash and can't be bothered to either download Flashpoint or a browser that will still run flash player past it's proposed death date (31st December).

Also, to answer your question, there were many flash games I played back in the day, such as;

wpnFire, Avalanche!, Skyfyre (1&2), Fugitive Takedown (1&2), Tactical Assassin, Madness Mod, Rainbow Dash Guitar, Dragon Flame 2, Flood Runner 3, Territory War, Interactive Buddy, Art Of War 2, Dolphin Olympics, Cosmic Crush, Dash, Tank Trouble, Co-operation, Gun Mayhem, Stick RPG, Madness Retaliation, One Man's Doomsday, Cannoncrotch, Knife, Pandemic 2, Electric Man 2: The Tournament Of Voltagen, Dynasty Street, Free Rider 2, Stickicide 2, Run, Iraq Attack, Bowman, Bowman 2, Blood Car! 2000!, Antcity, Nimian Flyer Legends and many more. 

Edited December 7, 2020 by Nsxile 🔥🐲

[Jon the VGNerd 842]

Honestly, with far more popular PC games being released (namely on Steam and Microsoft Store), Flash games has gotten less and less relevant and its already one foot away towards its inevitable grave. Yes, I have played flash games in the past, but, even it has to bid itself adieu eventually. Adobe has gotten less consumer-friendly and have gotten increasingly greedy. And with newer and far better games being released on PC (especially if its on Steam), Flash games as we know it have become nothing more than mere afterthoughts. Sure I could play old (and likely outdated because with newer PCs means older Flash games are barely recognizable to newer specs) flash games for the sake of nostalgia, but my interest with them have long since dwindled, and me playing them will just reduce my interest towards them.

Another milestone for Adobe's once success-turned-failure achievement. Gone and it will likely be forgotten.

[Jesse Terrence 2,963]

On 11/11/2020 at 10:50 PM, Pentium100 said:

I don't think I played a lot of flash game,s other than some tower defense.

However, it is interesting to me that some software can be declared "dead" as if it would stop working. Nobody is coming with guns and forcing people to delete flash player or the various flash games. While browsers may no longer support it, there are other ways to run them.

I would understand if this was an MMO or something else that required a serer which is going to be taken down, but not standalone software.

Hrm, still, I've seen some runtime problems with some flash games that download data as one progresses. That mainly on stand alone players, probably old ones. I can think of super filly adventure, for instance. I had problems playing the blank flank ending on stand alone players, and some crashes too.

Some other games have problems despite not downloading data mid run, mainly on the input. For instance, both the first and second last stand games gave me some problems when trying to swap weapons on a stand alone player. There are other games that have missing GUI elements and so, but that seems to depend on your player, so good luck having a bunch of players to run each game the best.

As I see it, not all games are likely to work properly once flash gets the boot this year. Several will die, and while we have several options to play the rest, we will miss many games, animations and even tools, and some of them have a lot of historical value, moreso in the history of our fandom. We were born because an animation studio saw flash as a very profitable tool and managed to ace it for profesional animation to quality levels that were seen as unprofitable in such a scale. Remember FiM came out around when Total Drama was a thing too, and Total Drama was the industry standard for tv shows made on flash with their super rigid puppets and sharp assets. Flash made pony what pony is today, and without Flash easily available on whole functional players, a bunch of brony history will pass from something you can experience yourself anytime to merely something you can read about and maybe watch. Brony history is about to lose a lot because experience will never be the same.

[Nsxile 25,656]

 

On 12/8/2020 at 4:01 AM, Jon the VGNerd said:

Adobe has gotten less consumer-friendly and have gotten increasingly greedy.

This is true; however, it was Adobe's decision to attempt to remove flash player (and from what I've heard, is doing everything in it's power to attempt to stop it being used from January 12th onwards).

On 12/8/2020 at 4:01 AM, Jon the VGNerd said:

And with newer and far better games being released on PC (especially if its on Steam), Flash games as we know it have become nothing more than mere afterthoughts.

Newer does not necessarily equal better (e.g. Air Control) and there are many classic flash games that are better than some Steam games out now imo - also flash games tend to lack microtransactions, unlike quite a few steam games. And even with the removal of flash player from mainstream browsers (like Firefox and Chrome), older versions can still be used on other browsers, like Palemoon, and there is also Flashpoint and other Flash preservation projects.

On 12/8/2020 at 4:01 AM, Jon the VGNerd said:

Another milestone for Adobe's once success-turned-failure achievement. Gone and it will likely be forgotten.

With the actions taken to preserve Flash content, it won't be forgotten and certainly isn't gone.

On 12/8/2020 at 4:41 AM, Jesse Terrence said:

I had problems playing the blank flank ending on stand alone players, and some crashes too.

Have you tried using Flash Player 11.2 r202?

On 11/12/2020 at 4:50 AM, Pentium100 said:

However, it is interesting to me that some software can be declared "dead" as if it would stop working.

Adobe has apparently added a killswitch to the newest versions of Flash Player in recent months: https://datahorde.org/?p=1856. Older versions of Flash Player (older than June 2020) should still work after 2020 though (provided you disable any updates for it) and are using a browser that will still run it past Dec 2020/Jan 2021.

[Pentium100 2,056]

5 minutes ago, Nsxile 🔥🐲 said:

Adobe has apparently added a killswitch to the newest versions of Flash Player in recent months

Over time reasons to not update stuff just increase. I'm pretty sure I have some old versions of Flash lying around, not that I updated it recently anyway.

[TVAPotato 85]

Flash games? Well, if I should name a few, they would be Ultimate Flash Sonic, all of the Red Ball games, Super Mario Crossover, and many more. Didn't play them since I got a better computer and discovered Minecraft.

[Jon the VGNerd 842]

@Nsxile 🔥🐲 Even if there are some Steam games that have microtransactions, the majority of them do not and often have DLC expansion packs that have more content to add (though there's also a handful of games that don't have it but are either being updated still or are still popular such as the original Half-Life and its episodic contents). As great as flash games were, it's only a matter of time before it ceases to exist (unless it can be done through emulation, but even that would require serious effort since they're unlikely to work on newer OS).

[Pentium100 2,056]

14 minutes ago, Jon the VGNerd said:

since they're unlikely to work on newer OS

It's great that old PC hardware can be had for almost free 

[CypherHoof 26,479]

1 hour ago, Pentium100 said:

It's great that old PC hardware can be had for almost free 

Sometimes literally free, if you know who to ask.
Modern recycling rules mean companies need to pay to dispose of old computers; they have negative value, so often an IT department is happy if employees want to take old kit (wiped and re-imaged with a blank operating system) off their hands at no cost...

[Pentium100 2,056]

Just now, CypherHoof 🐎 said:

Sometimes literally free, if you know who to ask.

Yep, but even without contacts you can get old computers for very cheap because people want to get rid of the old PC and figure that getting a few Euros for it is better (and les wasteful) than just recycling or throwing it in the trash.

[CypherHoof 26,479]

1 minute ago, Pentium100 said:

Yep, but even without contacts you can get old computers for very cheap because people want to get rid of the old PC and figure that getting a few Euros for it is better (and les wasteful) than just recycling or throwing it in the trash.

Yup, or via freecycle etc.

Often if you get a non-laptop for free though, it won't come with a monitor; one useful way to work around that is to get a SVGA to HDMI adaptor, and just use a tv set (if it doesn't have a SVGA input anyhow; many older ones do, although HDMI is increasingly dominant)

[Pentium100 2,056]

Just now, CypherHoof 🐎 said:

one useful way to work around that is to get a SVGA to HDMI adaptor

LOL, for me it is the other way around as my monitor only has VGA, but yeah, you can connect a modern TV to a PC easily.

So, no problem running an old OS to play an old game. Unless the game is really old and only runs on a 286 or something, but in that case it probably can be emulated or virtualized.

[Dark Bun 681]

Flash games are almost all I played back in 2006-2009. Mostly played stick figure games from a variety of genres. The Henry Stickmin games  stick out, even before the Steam release it was one of my favorites. Causality was another one that I remember quite well, which was a puzzle game about killing everyone in the level. I also recently went back and found Chaos Faction, after forgetting the name for so many years.

I could go on and on with all the Flash games I played back then. These games were a big part of my childhood.

[Yoshi89 5,290]

I used to play a lot of Homestar Runner's flash games. Spent a lot of time on Peasant's Quest. Stickdeath also had some pretty good games.

[ZiggWheelsManning 7,352]

Too bad none of the Sega Game Gear titles can be played on a high tech computer  

[EpicEnergy 22,072]

I used to play a ton of flash games, but now they are gone and that makes me sad. It was my childhood as a gamer where I played a ton of flash games.