The age of Flash Games

A tale to tell to kids who grew up on Fortnite

Flash games were the precursor to modern HTML5, Javascript and CSS games. (We'll call those HJC.) They were games that you could play on your web browser, as long as you had the Adobe Flash Player software installed. They were not only called so because they needed the player. They were created using the software Adobe Flash for Windows and macOS. The player was available for those platforms, as well as Linux distros. You could also create animations with Flash. Not only were there amateur animations uploaded to the internet. The software was, and still is, used to create some TV cartoons. For example, Teen Titans GO, Johnny Test, and My Little Pony. However, as Flash is getting obsolete, games are now made with the modern HJC technologies, and newer cartoons are now made with Toon Boom Harmony. (And amateur animations are now either drawn with digital drawing software and put together with a video editor on PC, or made with FlipAClip on mobile.)

I think 2010-2017 was my school's flash game phase. I think it started fading away when HTML5 was introduced and flash-less computers with Windows 10 were introduced. I think it stopped completely when Fortnite was released. I have heard many people have nostalgia for a flash games website named "Cool Math Games". (Despite the name, many of its games were not math-related. Possibly so that schools would not block the website >:)) But we never went on Cool Math, instead, Friv was the most popular website.

Screenshot of Friv homepage

I myself, preferred A10, as it did not remove a game should it be too unpopular. Even though those websites had differing names from Cool Math, they shared much of the same games. The most popular games were (in no particular order): Fireboy and Watergirl, the Papa's series of games (e.g. Papa's Pizzeria), and Red Ball. I remember playing the game "Stealing the Diamond" when I was a child. I also played the prequels (Breaking the Bank, Escaping the Prison and Infiltrating the Airship) when I was older. There's also a new game called "Fleeing the Complex". I've only played it a little bit.