This project is saving thousands of Flash games from death
Flash is about to die – but these games aren't
As you probably know, Flash is on its way out. The media format was the one of the most iconic parts of the early internet, particularly when it came to gaming, but creator Adobe is pulling it in 2020 – meaning thousands of games are going to be completely obsolete come the end of the year.
But now an emulator looks to save the day (or save our ability to play classic Frogger, anyway). Flashpoint is a downloadable tool that allows you to play nearly forty thousand Flash games – including some real old classics.
And it works whether you're looking to recreate the joy of a particular game or are more of a purist – you can either download games as you go, or get the entire archive if you want to preserve them all.
Perhaps fairly obviously, commercially sold are not part of the archive. But with forty thousand games to choose from, that hopefully isn't too much of a loss.
It also leads to interesting questions about archiving the internet and much we stand to lose if projects like this don't take place. We once believed – and were incessantly told – that everything that ever went online would stay there forever. But as technology develops, that's proved to not be the case, making projects like this even more important.
The list of games is here – and if you want to download the emulator, you can do so here.
