The Flash Games Preservation project Flashpoint

Martin Brinkmann
Aug 28, 2018
Games
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31

Adobe Flash will be retired in 2020 and browser makers such as Google, Mozilla or Microsoft started to phase out Flash support already in the browsers they create.

Think of Flash what you want but the technology was used to create a number of impressive games. Problem is, if no modern browser supports Flash, no one can play those games anymore unless they use browsers that still support it or find other ways to preserve the games and play them.

Even if browsers still support Flash, Flash itself will not be updated anymore and any security vulnerability found will remain unpatched.

It is possible that Flash content will be removed on many sites once Flash is gone for good; this would mean that many Flash games would be lost forever.

The Flash Games preservation project

The Flash Games preservation project is an attempt to preserve Flash games so that they remain available and playable.

The project is huge; the current full distribution of Flashpoint has a size of 31 Gigabytes. You can download a smaller collection with a size of just 2.2 Gigabytes if you prefer. The main difference between the two is that Infinity is configured to download Flash games that you select from Archive.org. The upside to this is that you won't have to download more than 30 Gigabytes of Flash files directly before you can start playing games.

The main downside is that it takes longer on first start to play games as they have to be downloaded first to the local system. Also, some games won't work with Infinity and are not displayed because of this.

The project maintains a Game Master List that is updated regularly. The current full version comes with more than 4000 games including many classic games. The developer has more than 2 Terabyte of Flash dumps on Google Drive from sites such as Gamepilot, JayIsGames, Newsgrounds, Kongregate, Armorgames, or NotDoppler.

Some Flash games can be saved to the local system and run from there without any issues provided that a browser or the standalone Adobe Flash projector is used for that. Others won't run because they rely on servers or have DRM baked into them which prevents local playback without modification.

The project uses the interface of LaunchBox and Apache web server capabilities to provide access to Flash games on Windows.

The launcher displays the list of games that are available, and users may click on any to look them up, and on play to start the game locally.

The distribution takes care of DRM, sitelocked games, games that have server requirements, and games that require external files. The developer and volunteers test games, download required external components, and hack the games if required so that they will run on the local system.

Flashpoint requires Windows 7 or newer versions of Windows. It does require the .NET Framework 4.7 and a Visual C++ redistributable. You find copies of those in the arcade folder after you have unpacked the package on the local system.

Linux users may run Flashpoint as well. Instructions are found in the readme.txt file that is included in the distribution.

How Flashpoint works

Flashpoint changes the system proxy while it is running; this is required to get games to run that are locked, with DRM, or have dependencies that are not locally available.

You can run the custom redirector or the Fiddler redirector. The main difference between the two is that Fiddler is more reliable but also more interfering with network traffic while Flashpoint is running.

The developer suggests that no mission critical networking operations are run while Flashpoint is running.

Note that this will do certain things to your network traffic while Flashpoint is open, and while we maintain that we do not use this proxy or your network traffic for any kind of nefarious purpose, and we do believe that network traffic should remain relatively normal while Flashpoint is open, we do recommend that you do not do any sort of 'mission critical' networking while you're running Flashpoint, and if you do use a system proxy on the computer you plan to use Flashpoint on, we recommend making a copy of your settings somewhere in case something goes wrong.

The way things are set up can be cause for concern. If you are concerned, consider running Flashpoint in a virtual machine on the system or a spare PC if you have one.

Games are listed with screenshots and information; very useful. A quick test of the Infinity edition was completely positive. I played several games, and while it took a while before downloads completed, playing them worked fine and without any issues.

Closing Words

With hundreds of thousands of Flash games around on the Internet, and 2 Terabyte of data sitting on the author's Google Drive account, it is clear that Flashpoint is a massive project that will take a long time before the majority of games have been included.

The project offers an excellent option for gamers to play classic Flash games even after the technology has been put to rest finally.

Now You: Do you play online games?

Summary
Flashpoint
Article Name
Flashpoint
Description
The Flash Preservation project Flashpoint created a solution to play thousands of Flash games on Windows and Linux machines after Flash's retirement.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. Xavier Jiang said on February 19, 2021 at 11:10 am
    Reply

    Well, archive for archival purposes, the good old Flash games only awakens memories.
    As per Christmas 2020, I pulled up my 2009 version of Adobe Flash Player (isolated in a 10-year-old flash drive wow) and loaded up a few of the flash games I downloaded earlier.
    I also downloaded a few more — mostly were by Nitrome.
    Why is it important? It was the old days of free videogames floating everywhere. And the advertisements don’t pop up on their own (save for VERY few “modern” flash games). They also offer no copy protection so they can be transferred from here to there.
    It was … all the glory of the old Internet. Same goes with thrustssc.com.
    And now we had moved on, some people (or a portion of our minds) refuse to leave that awesomeness in the dark, we spent some efforts … so that they end up archived.
    I’m with it, but meanwhile, I agree that there are more interesting (and “worthwhile”) ways to waste time.

  2. Anonymous said on October 14, 2020 at 8:44 pm
    Reply

    Is there a site where I can give suggestions for games I want to available on Flashpoint.

  3. Pete Davidson said on August 20, 2020 at 1:58 am
    Reply

    Is this still a thing? I’d love to help. Got a gee for archiving and retaining things.

  4. Anonymous said on June 30, 2020 at 4:23 am
    Reply

    You can not download html5 games. not without receiving, an html code file, in place of the download. Which you then, have to delete. Because, you never wanted the code, in the first place. You just wanted to play
    offline.

    I, work for Newgrounds, and yeah, it warms my heart knowing, that my games, that I developed, may be preserved on Flashpoint.

    That is why, this project, means so much to people.

    Once html5 does take over, everything will be web based. Meaning, those who care about privacy, will always have Internet Companies, breathing down their necks.

    Those of us, who care about the internet as a whole, see the internet, as the last bastion of freedom.

    If we let Companies, take over the internet, there is no freedom.

    The same logic, is applied to A.I.,

  5. I don't want my name shared said on February 18, 2020 at 12:16 am
    Reply

    They’d better save the Miniclip games too.

  6. SlipDip said on January 10, 2020 at 7:08 am
    Reply

    I found something spooky that may or may not be a genuine virus. Might open a VM and test it later, but just letting you know for the time being, there is some shady shit on this project.

    1. SlipDip said on January 10, 2020 at 7:09 am
      Reply

      was everything safety tested before put onto this

  7. Isabella Vidal said on November 18, 2019 at 9:26 pm
    Reply

    HTML5 games are garbage and I don’t want to lose the old Steffne and Princess Peachie games from Deviantart. Not to mention, losing something forever is one of the worst feeling on earth, at least for me. And, by the way, I mean losing positive or neutral things. It’s not like Flash games are a disease.

  8. ButterCat said on November 10, 2019 at 11:14 am
    Reply

    they better bring mechanical commando, blosids 1 and 2, mike shadow: i paid for it and most importantly: balloon bomber game. Those games always bring back memories

  9. Anonymous said on October 1, 2019 at 5:49 am
    Reply

    Hope Raze 1/2/3 gets preserved, those games were so lit

  10. Anonymous said on August 10, 2019 at 8:48 pm
    Reply

    Damn it! Flash games have been part of the fun online I;’ve enjoyed since like I was 12 years old. When Adobe retires flash, will another business rise up to take it’s place? I wonder if all online games will become browser games only : – ( ? At least the flash game preservation project will save some but probably not all flash games.

  11. Koosaj.com said on August 1, 2019 at 2:57 pm
    Reply

    And how we gonna play online Super Mario now!?!?
    This is so unfair!!

  12. Anonymous said on July 12, 2019 at 7:07 pm
    Reply

    What are the legal aspects of this archiving project?

  13. DarkStar18 said on June 6, 2019 at 7:30 pm
    Reply

    I was terribly sad when I learned that Adobe (for good reasons, but still) was putting the axe to Flash. I fondly remember sneaking onto Flash portal sites at school or showing my parents that yes there really were all these great games for free (we had little spare money) that loaded in decent time with our dial-up connection.

    They are a piece of the past that is worth preserving. Not just for nostalgia, but as a lifeline to all the effort put into the animations and games so that they aren’t simply wasted.

  14. Anonymous said on June 4, 2019 at 10:19 pm
    Reply

    Anything that is worth preserving can and should be ported to HTML5 or Webassembly. These Flash games are remnants from a distant past, so it’s better to put them out to pasture.

    1. dave said on February 7, 2021 at 4:13 am
      Reply

      You throw around the word “worth” when it has multiple meanings. There is monetization worth to the developer, versus worth to the person who enjoys a game. Some developers have long since moved on, are not maintaining their swf games because they had no reason to, once completed they were finished works that wouldn’t have stopped working without some artificial termination effort.

      Remnants from the past are called history and it is foolish to pretend it is better to abandon history. There really isn’t anything better about modern games in HTML5 if the swf games are equally enjoyed and pose no security threats in the way you use them. Same as anything in life, it’s all in how it’s done. To break something is foolishness if breaking it does not serve a purpose. Disabling swf on a local host serves no purpose.

  15. Wolfie0827 said on August 30, 2018 at 2:15 am
    Reply

    I just use SWF Opener from UnH Solutions with flash stand alone to play flash games. But then I don’t play many that require server connections. and no server connections or running flash through the browser (Not needed with this setup) means security vulnerabilities are not an issue.

    1. dave said on February 7, 2021 at 4:08 am
      Reply

      Thank you for mentioning SWF Opener. Now that Adobe and popular browsers have disabled swf support, I was seeing suggestions to get Adobe’s debugger player, or their regular player, but neither of those play some of my swf files while the SWF Opener does play them.

  16. John Fenderson said on August 28, 2018 at 5:20 pm
    Reply

    I rarely play online games, but when I do, they’re usually small flash games that I play for a short time as a sort of mental break. I may download this collection so that I can still have a access to those sorts of games no matter what. Thanks, Martin!

  17. Anonymous Someone said on August 28, 2018 at 3:22 pm
    Reply

    It boggles the mind why so many Video/Movie sites still use flash. Not small time sites either, things like HBO etc.

  18. Yuliya said on August 28, 2018 at 10:34 am
    Reply

    I’m all for preserving things like these flash games 😊

  19. nosamu said on August 28, 2018 at 10:21 am
    Reply

    Thank you for covering the project, Martin ;)

  20. Graham said on August 28, 2018 at 9:11 am
    Reply

    We already have a site that preserves Flash games. It’s called Newgrounds.

    1. Joe said on March 14, 2021 at 7:06 am
      Reply

      so how will you play them?

  21. Weilan said on August 28, 2018 at 8:52 am
    Reply

    I don’t know who would nowadays willingly play there other than young children or elders. The games may have been OK, for the time period of around 2006-2008, but now they pale in comparison, even HTML5 games are better.

    1. Anonymous said on August 29, 2018 at 5:10 am
      Reply

      There’s some Flash games that were really good. The Bloons games for example, and GemCraft. I never found as good non-Flash tower defense games as those.
      Well, until ports of those were actually released as native games.

      1. Anonymous said on October 10, 2019 at 12:46 am
        Reply

        And a ton more. SSF2 (even though you can also download it), Super Mario 63, Line Rider, Fancy Pants Adventures, just to name a few. And also games like Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac that evolved into full not-Flash games.

    2. John Fenderson said on August 28, 2018 at 5:22 pm
      Reply

      @Weilan

      I play them, so you know (sortof) one adult person who does!

  22. Pierre said on August 28, 2018 at 7:54 am
    Reply

    The answer is no

    1. polikatsin said on August 28, 2018 at 6:03 pm
      Reply

      The answer yeah holla and nope.

    2. Akane said on August 28, 2018 at 3:58 pm
      Reply

      The answer is yes

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