I remember the hours I spent on Flash Games in my childhood. I wasn’t really allowed much access to proper, full-fledged games during my allocated PC time, but Flash Games offered a loophole for me—it loaded on Internet Explorer, no installation required. Of course, Flash is about to die soon, with Adobe hitting the final nail in the coffin when announcing that it will stop distributing and updating Flash Player from 2021 onwards.
Still, fret not. Hundreds of games are still available, thanks to the folks over at Internet Archive. By using an emulator called Ruffle, there are now a wide range of classic games built on Flash that you can access—even in 2021, and beyond.
You’ll be able to play these games with just about any browser, and even without Flash support, they should run well enough.
The Internet Archive archives (obviously) copies of billions of web pages, along with collections of copies of old DOS games, plus older console titles. The addition of Flash games to its collection means that those of us who spent hours wasting away our childhood can now continue to do so, with over 800 games in the collection as of now.
The decision to cut life support for Flash was made back in 2017, but its demise was already notable by the time Steve Jobs decided not to include Adobe Flash on the iPhone. According to Wired, Jobs felt that it was too insecure, and not suited to a touchscreen device—which in hindsight, was clearly the way forward.
So, if you’ve been itching for some Pac Man or Tetris, there are a bunch of options for you to choose from—or, if you’d like to relive some old Mario platformers. Of course, don’t expect too much from the graphics of the games. I mean, Flash is going redundant for a reason, after all.
