How to play that one Flash game you used to play back in the days

A few days ago I featured the game 400 Years, and someone asked me how to play it today. I answered by listing a few useful links and moved on, thinking the answer was pretty obvious. But then I kept thinking about it the following days. Sure, it is obvious for me, but not really for most internet users. Many people remember games they used to play when they were young, and don’t know how to play them today. That’s why I decided to write this guide. It is not a definitive professionnal guide, but more or less what I do when I research web games for the Museum of Screens.

Note: I won’t discuss anything related in any way to cr*pto or en/eftee, I don’t want to have anything to do with this crap. So if you wonder why I don’t mention Kongregate, well here is your answer.

Now that’s out of the way, let’s get into it. You remember a Flash game and want to play it today. So what do you do ?

Is the game available on Newgrounds ?

It is the easiest and most obvious solution. Newgrounds was (and still is) the main website for anything Flash-related, or at least for the most popular Flash games out there. The website has been around for more than two decades, and during that time, most Flash games were published on it, even from competing websites. The big advantage is, every Flash game posted on Newgrounds is still playable in some form. Thanks to the automatic inclusion of the Ruffle emulator, most Flash games made with ActionScript 1 and 2 are still playable with no additional software required. Flash emulation is still a work in progress, so many games are still not available with it, but even thoses are still playable, providing you download the free Newgrounds Flash Player. If you’re looking for a specific Flash game, I would say there is a 50% chance that it is on Newgrounds. But if not, there are other ways.

Is the game available on Flashpoint ?

Bluemaxima’s Flashpoint is best described as a Steam-like platform for all web games. You can find pretty much everything on it: Flash, Shockwave, Java, HTML5, and so many more obscure game engines. There are two version of the software but for obvious reasons I would advise you to download Flashpoint Infinity, and not the full 1.76 To archive. The software is quite easy to use, providing you installed it correctly and included some exception to your antivirus. All you have to do is to use the search engine, pick a game and just press the play button. The software take care of everything else. The archive is very extensive, like, VERY extensive, most Flash game you can ever think of is in here and it is updated frequently. There are exceptions, including some we will discuss later, but most of the time you will be able to find what you’re looking for.

But what about the other websites ?

Newgrounds is not the only website to care about Flash preservation. Many game studio that started as Flash game creators dropped any support of Flash, like Miniclip or Adult Swim Games, but other websites such as Armor Games works to make their catalog still available. But unlike Newgrounds, they only make available their game fully emulated with Ruffle, the other ones are delisted, at least for now.

Nitrome, the famous creator of Flash games, is taking a different approach. They asked not to be included in any preservation project such as Flashpoint, but pledged to convert all of their Flash games to HTML5. This is no small task, that’s why they partnered with the game studio Poki to work on the project. Currently they converted about 50 games out of litteraly hundreds, but they seem really commited to the task, also promising to made the games playable on mobile.

And if you still can’t find what you’re looking for, there is still the Internet Archive. The advantage is that anyone can upload Flash files on the website and play them with the Ruffle emulator. The library is quite small for now, but they are a lot of files you won’t find anywhere else, including things that are not games: animations, websites, toys… Things we often forget when we talk about Flash preservation.

And when all else fail ?

The game you want to play is not available anywhere. It was never uploaded to Newgrounds, and it has not been uploaded to the Internet Archive or Flashpoint. So, what can you do ? Don’t worry there are still workarounds. If the website you used to play the game is still around, you can look at the source code of the web page and download the SWF file of the Flash game. If you manage to download the right file, there is 80% chance the file could be playable, if you upload it to the Internet Archive, or if you run it on an offline Flash player such as the Adobe Flash debbuger.

And if the website you’re looking for is no longer online, don’t forget about the WayBack Machine, probably the best creation of the Internet Archive. You can find archived version of almost every website out there. If you’re lucky, an archived version of the Flash file you’re looking for is in here, but you have to look very carefully.

With all of theses, I would say you will be able to play 99.99% Flash games out there. Everything else would fall under the lost media category. I am not a big fan of the Lost Media communities online for many reasons, but the fact is, a lot of lost web games have been recovered thanks to them. There are many other Flash archive project, I haven’t looked into them too much, some looks legits, a lot of thems sounds like scams, you you have to be careful. But the softwares are websites above have been verified and are certified legits by none other than me.

So have fun with all of theses Flash games of the past. And if you’re stumbling into a Flash game that hasn’t been archived yet, don’t forget to preserve them !