Flashpoint Launcher Features Over 36,000 Rescued Flash Games

Miss the days of Flash games? Flashpoint may help you recreate some strange memories.

A new initiative intends to preserve the strange (yet significant) history of Flash games before the medium dies.

Let’s go back to a few years ago when Adobe confirmed that they intend to end support for Adobe Flash in 2020 due to a myriad of problems and some helpful technological advancements. For the most part, that announcement was met with acclaim, but some did wonder how this was going to affect years and years worth of browser-based Flash games. How would we play those strange pieces of internet and gaming history once Flash bites the dust. 

Well, a new launcher/fan program known as Flashpoint aims to solve that problem. The launcher allows you to access over 36,000 rescued Flash games via your computer. Considering that it will take about 288GB to download all of those games from the launcher, you may opt to temporarily download each title as you elect to play them. 

You can take a look at the list of supported Flash games via this webpage, but don’t be surprised if you don’t see your nostalgic favorite someone on that sheet. Not only does this whole project rely on some iffy licensing rules that allow a developer to remove their project via request, but there are just so many Flash games in the history of the internet that it’s basically impossible to preserve all of them. 

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Having said that, we have nothing but admiration for this effort. We’ve noted that the creation of Adobe Flash and the rise of Flash games is one of the most important innovations in PC gaming history, and we stand by that assessment. Though typically painfully simple and often exploitative in some way, Flash games allowed young indie developers to get their visions out there and create often memorable titles that may fall just short of ranking among the most significant PC titles ever, but are a part of a generation’s childhood. 

So download Flashpoint and take a try to find that game you secretly played during computer class or laughed at with your friends over a 56K connection.

Matthew Byrd is a staff writer for Den of Geek. He spends most of his days trying to pitch deep-dive analytical pieces about Killer Klowns From Outer Space to an increasingly perturbed series of editors. You can read more of his work here or find him on Twitter at @SilverTuna014