Adobe Flash

Flash began as FutureSplash Animator, a small vector animation program by FutureWave Software. Macromedia bought FutureWave in 1996 and renamed it Flash, and Adobe took it over when it acquired Macromedia in 2005.

The Flash Player plug-in was installed on almost every desktop computer for over a decade. Its vector graphics kept files small enough for dial-up connections, and ActionScript turned it from an animation tool into a platform for games and interactive websites. Sites such as Newgrounds, Miniclip, Kongregate and Armor Games hosted tens of thousands of Flash games, and many well-known independent developers started there.

Flash never made the move to smartphones. Apple refused to support it on the iPhone, HTML5 took over its role on the web, and Adobe ended support on 31 December 2020. Browsers removed the plug-in and Flash Player itself now refuses to run content, which left a huge library of games and animations with no official way to play them.

Today there are two good ways to play Flash content. Ruffle is an open source Flash Player emulator that runs as a desktop application or in the browser, and many sites now use it to keep their Flash games online. Flashpoint Archive is a preservation project that has saved more than 200,000 games and animations and bundles everything needed to play them offline.