I looked bored at my old computer hard drive at home earlier and found a folder full of .swf files. This reminds me of how passionate I was about collecting Flash games.
In July 2017, Adobe announced that it will stop supporting Flash at the end of 2020. At present, major browsers have also prevented Flash from running, which means that Flash will end this year. I actually don’t have any opinion on this. I think of the pop-up ads and bundled rogue software features of the domestic special version of Flash Player, and I can’t help laughing.
I remember something happy
It is no doubt that Flash should be eliminated, but Flash games are not only an important part of my childhood, but also have significant significance for the development of the game industry. It shouldn’t disappear with Flash being obsolete, it’s also a “game legacy” that should be preserved in some way.
In the memory of this generation, there must be Flash games.
For some very young Internet users, “Flash” is likely to be the same as “webpage advertising,” but it’s not the same as someone who experienced the time when Flash content was popular.
In that year, Han Han and Guo Jingming were popular among reading classmates. Students in the sports department worshiped Yao Ming O’Neill; the most popular “Animation Royal Family” on campus was “Naruto” “Gundam Seed” “Alchemist of Steel” “, The most popular rental room is” Naruto: Ninja Heroes of the Leaf “on PS2, and the most popular Internet cafes are” Warcraft 3 “” CS “and” Adventure Island “.
This year, I got an old computer from my college cousin. Affected by family ideas and economic conditions, I never had many opportunities to play games as a child. After owning a computer, I finally had a fourth other than “secretly going to Internet cafes and renting computer rooms”, “going to fellow scientists” and “taking computer classes.”Approach to the game.
However, there was no Internet at home and the performance of the old computer couldn’t run any games. Except occasionally opening the English version of Warcraft 2 without knowing who installed it, I could only watch it over and over My cousin forgot to delete the 480p “Fullmetal Alchemist”. Flash games became my main form of entertainment for a long time until I learned to save the Flash on a webpage locally in a computer class.
Thanks to the webpage time machine, otherwise I probably can’t get a screenshot of 21cn
Whenever I have the opportunity to go online at school or a relative ’s house, I will open the familiar games.21cn.com to find my favorite Flash games to download and take home. At the time, of course I did not know that these games came from ArmorGames, Newgrounds, CrazyMonkeyGames, Miniclip and other platforms. Whether it was free or paid games, they were strictly pirated.
Anyway, these .swf files, ranging from a few hundred KB to several MB, have brought me intense game fun, even if I had already experienced the most popular PS2 games and PC at the time in the rental computer room and Internet cafe. game. Let me show you what I have accumulated since then:
For example, this is an action battle game with the theme of “The Matrix”, which perfectly reproduces “Bullet Time”. It can use “slow motion” and “super slow motion” in combat. It also supports local 1v1 two-player and Double cooperation 2v2.
Cool
Another example is this, the 2D version of “Portal”, trying to reduce the dimensionality and reproduce the original puzzle level, various institutions, gels have been restored. I did n’t understand it at the time, but after I played the original work, I realized how good the Flash version is. (Unfortunately there are a lot of bugs) .
Also, this is a zombie theme survival shooting masterpiece. It is not bragging to say that “big masterpiece” is not bragging. There are professional systems in the game that will affect skills and character attributes. There are survival modes that must sleep and eat. You can also set a hardcore game where the zombie can only headshot and the character has only one life. Extremely playful.
It’s fun
The above are just a few examples from my collection. Many Flash games look “mediocre”, but they are quite fun to play. Considering the technical and expressive limitations of Flash, it is worthy of appreciation even by today’s standards.
Of course, I also admit that if I had the opportunity to choose between Heroes 3 and Flash games at the time, I would probably choose the former without hesitation. But all in all, they really gave me a good time in those days when there was no choice.
Without Flash, indie games may not have today
In the 20 years since Macromedia launched its first version in 1996, Flash has been inextricably linked to any entertainment that most people do on the Internet. In addition to games, various Flash animations and Flash MVs were popular back then, and many web applications rely on Flash support.
At the 2017 GDC conference, John Cone, the director of paid games at game portal Kongregate.com, shared (John Cooney) One statistic: In 2009, 99% of computers with a network connection installed Flash. Flash has an overwhelming advantage in this scale of installation, attracting countless programmers to use Flash for development in the first decade of this century. Even my computer class in junior high school teaches how to make simple Flash animation.
The original version of Flash “FutureSplash Animator” was originally born in a failed handwriting project, it was not designed for game production. It wasn’t until 2000 that it had a truly decent gaming toolset. The toolset has grown with the popularity of Flash animation and game portals like Newgrounds and Miniclip, and it has also exposed more and more developers to Flash.
< figure> FutureCap Splash Animator on Windows XP
Adam Salsman, developer of
Famous Flash game “Rush on the Roof” (Canabalt) (Adam Saltsman) mentioned in an interview that he started using Flash by chance. After a critical version update, Salsman fell in love with Flash. For those who want to develop quickly or iteratively, and want to share games, solicit feedback, and evaluate responses with the online community, Salsman described “this is like a dream come true.”
As long as you do n’t use large music files, the size of Flash games is quite small, like “Rush on the Roof” is only a few hundred KB. And because it runs on a browser, it’s okay to say it’s “cross-platform”. In addition, Flash’s cheap toolset is also very friendly to developersit is good.
“The Roof Run” by Adam Saltsman
Salesman says developers can make Flash games for free as long as they have a programming mind. This ecology has spawned many excellent third-party development libraries to help developers develop games more easily. Salsman himself released a free development library in 2009, which has been used for hundreds of games.
Talking about the benefits of Flash, Matthew Anner, co-founder of Nitrome, who co-developed the “Shovel Knight” I recall:
When I started Nitrome, I wanted to develop original games. Although I also tried J2ME on a mobile platform, Flash was indeed the only option at the time to develop small-scale original games and find enough audiences to make money.
In this context, many people who were interested in programming and new media art at that time chose to start their careers by making Flash works. Many of the well-known developers we know have more or less experience in developing Flash games:
Edmund McMillen, the creator of “Isaac’s Combination” (Edmund McMillen) was originally a Flash game creator , The predecessor of his famous work “Super Meat” is a Flash game called “Meat Meat”;ntent / 202002/15 / 200210705472.jpg? imageView2 / 2 / w / 1000 / format / jpg / interlace / 1 / q / 85 “data-w =” 1000 “data-h =” 563 “label =” picture notes ” > If we do n’t have Flash, maybe we wo n’t play this great work on Switch
In addition, there are Famous works such as Angry Birds, Tribal Clashes, and Lost City of Robots all came from the Flash version.
As open web technologies such as HTML5, WebGL, and WebAssembly mature, it is a general trend that Flash, which has many vulnerabilities, consumes many resources, and crashes easily, is eliminated. But for more than a decade, the imagination of countless developers has formed many concrete works through Flash. It would be a shame if they were buried with Flash.
Fortunately, someone is already doing protection.
The guardians of Flash games are already in action
In August 2019, the Flash portal Newgrounds unveiled a project called “Ruffle”. In short, Ruffle is a “Flash player simulator” that lets you play Flash on browsers that have Flash disabled. Mike Welsh, who developed Flash video HD tools for Newgrounds, is leading the team to overcome this project. (Mike Welsh)
Newgrounds has now enabled Ruffle on its own website. Initially, it started with weak interactive animation content and gradually expanded it to all Flash content. In addition, the project will track and investigate which Flash games are touch-friendly, and will expand Ruffle to mobile platforms later.
The Ruffle project is not the only effort people have made to keep Flash games.
At a time when Flash games have fallen out of favor, it may not be enough to just play Flash content on old pages like Ruffle in the future. BlueMaxima’s project Flashpoint takes a more thorough approach-backing up all Flash content locally.
Ben Latimore (Ben Latimore) has been working on the Flashpoint project since 2017. In his opinion, some of Flash portals such as Armor Games, Kongregate, Newgrounds, NotDoppler, etc. may survive, but they may not. In any case, when everyone’s computer cannot run Flash, Flash games will definitely disappear completely.
So Latimore tries to back up all the Flash resources that can be found on the Internet to the server and provides downloads for everyone. Of course, this may involve some copyright issues.
Flashpoint interface
Animal Friendship Society:
Luigi House:
Kaby of the Stars:
In addition, there are many well-known companies that are well known for promoting,