Flash officially dies as of December 31, 2020. Support for the format will be gone from all major browsers by that date, which effectively means that all your misspent hours with those free PC games from Newgrounds will be lost like so many Flash animations in the rain. Of course, internet historians won’t let anything truly be lost from this world, and a new Internet Archive collection has already preserved hundreds of items, with more to come.
The Internet Archive collection consists of “animations, games, and toys” which you can launch directly within your browser, just like it’s 2005. Everything runs through the Flash emulator, Ruffle, which means you don’t need to try to get a Flash plugin installed, or worry about the security problems that helped speed the death of Flash to begin with.
Projects like Flashpoint have already secured tens of thousands of Flash games and animations in archival formats, but that requires you to download a big standalone program and save everything you want to play to your hard drive – which isn’t really the true Flash experience.
No, the true Flash experience is clicking on things like Caramelldansen, Homestar Runner, The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny, All Your Base Are Belong To Us, or Loituma Girl and immediately spending about three minutes watching something extremely silly.
The Internet Archive has begun emulating Flash Animations, Games and Toys in a new collection. It's at https://t.co/9oM0KtxYVY and it's going to be past 1,000 items in 24 hours. You can add your own and get them running, and the animations have never ran smoother or better. pic.twitter.com/ptO6Igd6V6
— Jason Scott (@textfiles) November 19, 2020
The collection is expected to reach over 1,000 items by November 20, with more to follow as users submit further items. Check out the blog post for more info on the effort.