Thank you to Bombas for sponsoring this video! One Purchased = One Donated, so head to bombas.com/nationsquid and use code NATIONSQUID at checkout for 20% off your first purchase. Twitter: twitter.com/NationSquidYT Instagram: instagram.com/nationsquid/ UPDATE: Like others have mentioned, the Flashpoint Archive is also a great resource for preserving flash, and I want to make sure that gets an honorable mention as well!!
With the death of flash, the Internet just feels so less child friendly. I had my own space by playing little games as a kid, and now it feels like everyone's lumped together
exactly.. no proper kids sites (hard to count roblox as it’s been overrun by adults) and no gaming sites for kids to have fun on. even though sites like coolmath are backed up the kids are no longer interested in it
There's very few children's sites left, but a lot of the old ones like coolmathgames are still there. It's almost like there's no NEW sites coming out made for children. But the old ones are still there sort of.
@@LittenV many of the ones left are overrun with adults like roblox :/ there really needs to be a new wave of kids sites and virtual worlds but everything is so app and micro transaction focused nowadays. there'd need to be some shift to laptop/pcs
I agree, I have so many good memories of that era, there was a huge library of good and free flash games and animations. If flash games were a thing today, you would have to pay to play them, flash player would probably have a monthly subscription fee just like everything else on the internet.
What he meant was: it was not under Apple control. The ad for XOOM the first Android tablet from Motorola was that it supported Flash (in the add a guy press a button an two girls appear on a clear innuendo for Apple porn ban on their devices).
When I was in school there was an website that had a lot of edutainment in it. We used it a lot and we liked it. When Flash shut down it was unusable. Luckily in about a year or so they fixed it. Now the website is still up and running as a HTML website.
@@odinpeanutOur school was actually surprisingly lax with the Flash games. So long as you weren't caught playing Flash games during lesson time, you were good.
My school had to kick the computers down when it came to flash games. I had to search for websites with flash games that didn't have "games" as a key term or search term.
Tell me about it. I'm a millennial who hates using apps and browsing the internet on my phone. I have a site on Neocities that's totally decked out with wallpapers and little GIF animations, I didn't even try to make it mobile-friendly. What even is the internet now, I just wish I had my MySpace page back. Neocities is pretty cool though.
I remember a version of The X-Files website from the 90s, that was never saved on the Wayback Machine, pre-flash... The entire site was like a mystery game, having photos of Mulder's desk or different environments from the show, and clicking on certain parts of the photos would take you to hidden sections. During certain points of loading the next page, a dark faded image would briefly flash on the screen saying "You're being watched...". It was an early ARG-style site that's completely lost to time, and I feel like I'm the only one that even remembers it. Such is the tragedy of lost media.
Was literally reminiscing about flash games with my nephew who was making a some type of mini game using some programming nurturing app on his tablet. I kinda hate how social media and the internet has evolved. A level of personalization and expression was robbed from us by malicious actors. Art suffering from bad actors and greed isn't new but still hurts. I remember when youtube channels were on par with MySpace personalization
But Apple didn't monopolize the internet platform. I prefer internet today because it just works. no need to install plugins like flash, java, and silverlight.
However flash platform was full security holes to exploit by hackers. I prefer the internet platform today because no need to install required plugins in order to access web content. anything just works
Someone who buys apple products must be crazy. Why pay for the same electronics 600-800% more with very limited capabilities? Such "users" may be called disabled.
Your opening statement is cognitively and actually disassociated from its conclusion. Flash as a technology has nothing to do with social media and both overlapped for a considerable period of time anyway.
Steve Jobs: "I don't like it because it's proprietary! We want to be able to have our say!" Also Steve Jobs: _Creates a closed, proprietary, completely walled-garden MacOS/iOS ecosystem_ Gotta love corporate feudalism. This is why I won't buy Apple anything, ever.
Ironically, all these "flashy" things for the internet were at a time that a lot of people still had slower internet access and PCs, and now we have more than enough speed and yet websites are just plain.
Everything is extremely bland, corporate, and risk averse now. It's so lame. The early-mid 2000s were such an exciting time I wish I lived back then :(.
But those flashy things are full of security holes which be exploited by hackers. That's why flash platform was abandon because of those security flaws. I prefer websites today because it just works, no need to worry about plugins to install
@@michaelsanchez1361 If being an American has taught me anything recently, it’s that a majority of people don’t really care about risk, bad behavior, or basic security.
Im shocked you didnt mention the flashpoint archive, it doesn't have everything but it has a lot. Alsoooo i run a twitter account dedicated to virtual world history and most of the virtual worlds i talk about on there are flash games so its always nice to see someone talk about this stuff. We're lucky poptropica and webkinz were able to survive flash shutting down, but most games weren't as lucky and thats why its important to talk about them. im glad fans try to revive them through private servers, everything from club penguin to disney's cars online can be played through a private server these days.
@ShiningStarAhsokaTanofan barely, the main game isn't doing to well/never gets updated and they're mostly focused on their app now. But its better than nothing!
Flash Games made the childhoods of many of the kids of 2000's and 2010's..I miss all the classic flash games that I'd play on my mom's computer such as Club Penguin and Moshi Monsters..
I literally *just* wrote a research paper on the impact of Flash for my English 101 course. Seeing the notification for this video made my day! Not to mention this channel has the best sponsor segments that I actually watch through :)
@Crudely-Drawn-Cupcake The Ruffle project is a flash emulator, converting it to HTML5. The base of it is still flash, but it is output to safer structuring. (Edit: nice profile picture)
@@Crudely-Drawn-Cupcakenow I'm going to have to go check that out. I absolutely loved Strong Bad. Is it still hosted on the original site, or has it been moved? God, I can't wait to show this to my kids.
I was a Flash developer and loved it! ActionScript 1, 2 and 3 for interactive web sites, rather than straight games. (Started learning animation & code with Director, when everything was on CDs!)
@@andrewong2956 Flash ActionScript 3 _was_ ECMAScript 3, so it was more pronounced than that even. Earlier versions of Flash were Flash's own language which had similarities to JavaScript, but not a 1:1 match.
I think of all the lost media subjects this is the one that makes me the most sad. Flash really made such a huge difference in the turn of the millennium internet space. Also, I almost always fast forward through ads but this one had me entranced 😆
Adobe should have just released the source code to Flash Player when they discontinued it in 2020. It's not like anyone can make money off it at this point, not even them. It makes no sense taking it to the grave. At least if Adobe hosted the code on github or whatever, Ruffle and others could better emulate, and indeed preserve, SWF media.
I am so glad the Brothers Chaps and sites like Newgrounds worked on getting alternatives integrated on their Flash content. Losing sites like Homestar Runner and all the insane games and animations made on Newgrounds would be a massive loss.
As a developer who has worked a heavy amount with HTML5 (it's like, 70% of my academic github) and web development, stories of old softwares like this always tickles my brain. Flash Player is something that always had me intrigued by it, how it had the whole internet on a leash was fascinating and the exploits were always so fun to study for me. great video as always man, good one :)
I remember I used to play games on CoolMathGames all the time back in elementary-high school. But when I saw that message saying the game is no longer supported because Flash is dead, I felt really sad. Of course there is some games on that website still on there today but now they have a bunch of ads you are forced to watch now to continue playing and its just not the same anymore. Take me back to 2010 please x.x
Hey Squid, subscriber and lightbulb head here with a friendly suggestion for your backdrop. I appreciate the soft white (yellow) hue of your lamps giving that old-school incandescent feel. I'd recommend picking up some mid-90s (or older if you can find them) GE Reveal bulbs for that warm, authentic, pinkish-orangey-yellow incandescent glow that even the best LEDs just can't seem to replicate. Not sure if you can still import incandescents to Cali but there are plenty of unscrupulous eBay sellers (and myself) who would ship without a care for regulations. I only mention this because you seem to have an eye for detail that helps contribute to your overall retro aesthetic. Even if you decide not to use them on your set, I've found that they're just swell for overall mental health. Like a pleasant scent in the air.
I have a different memory of Flash. I remember a lot of sites prompting me to ”update flash”, even though it was installed, which was a low-level attempt at spreading adware
Back then it was enough to disable Flash Player and only enable when needed. It got rid the wast majority of the ads and those remained were simple and not annoying at all. We didn't needed adblockers. Now the Internet cannot be used without one.
Flash games are really nostalgic for me. I played them my entire childhood through the 2010s. I really enjoy to look back in time and sometimes play these games. Thankfully, Flashpoint has a lot of them, which really saves a day.
I don't know if I just missed it or not, but you could also point people to the Flashpoint Archive as a safer way for them to relive their old games and memories. They have a great amount of flash games and webpages there as well. Including a list of flash games/media being searched for
Neopets is a site that was built around flash that somehow managed to remain afloat despite the end of flash. But it was hard for them. And even to this day the functionality isn't what once was, and some areas of the site are still broken.
Dofus was the most advanced flash game, still running on flash with hundreads of thousands of players. This december they will release their dofus 3 game running on unity as flash isn't supported anymore and got too many constrains. Pretty insane what they could build with flash tho
Thanks for this video about Flash. I used to be a Flash game developer, before the industry was crushed by the Steve Jobs reality distortion field. I badly miss those days, but I'm happy to see the kids who loved the games from that era are starting to take action.
As you may guess from my pfp I can say one of the things that got majorly affected by the death of Flash was this teeny tiny multimedia webcomic called Homestuck. It was really sad knowing those pages we love would go null (there's a pun there somewhere...), and converting them into video just wasn't enough. But luckily the fans didn't let it fade away and found ways to preserve it as closely as it originally was, namely the Unofficial Homestuck Collection. I hope a good chunk of internet history can also be saved this way by people who care.
13:17 the mobile era was essentially the final nail to Adobe Flash's coffin, as mobile devices relied on App Stores rather than browser plugins as a means of software. Adobe did try to port the Flash Player to Android in 2010, but it wasn't a commercial success and was discontinued less than a year later.
There is a huge archive of flash games with a program called Flashpoint. You can either have them all downloaded in one go (archive focused) or on-demand (storage space focused). I was able to relive so many childhood memories with Flashpoint alone.
Flash is the best treasure to 90s, 00s and 10s. I have played a lot of flash games until early 2020. Even Ruffle plugin enabled the emulator isn't good as before.
Correction: Flash Games never died, they are all still playable with maxima flashpoint and not to mention downloadable offline swfs are there for every flash game. Otherwise like always this was an amazing video!
Others have said it already, but yeah that is 100% factually incorrect. What even led you to believe that “all” and “every” flash game was saved? That’s crazy… and labeling this as a “correction” too. Lol I just don’t get how or why someone would make such a claim like this.
In 2010, I went to college and studied to be a Flash developer. I got a few years out of that skillset before the world moved on, but it was surreal to see my platform actively be killed while I was studying it.
Last year I found a folder from a UA-cam video via link, which actually has a working real version of Adobe Flash! It came with a flash file of BFDIA 5b, and it was actually playable!
Coolmathgames was probably the most nostalgic part of the early 2010's internet for me. I still remember watching my friends play them during recess on those old CRT monitors, clickey keyboards, and ball mice. The internet was so much more fun, chaotic, decentralized, and passionate back then.
ok i really love your ad reads lmao. i could not have predicted it was a bombas ad and i love that. also you ham things up just enough to be silly af but still enjoyable. also also, flash games were my shit growing up. its so sad that proper preserval has been so hard
"We just got a leettterr" 🤣Nah this video was incredible, thank you. Aligned so much with things I think about almost every day and which no-one else seems to see or talk about. I feel similarly towards what's happening with railway stock in the UK. So many iconic trains from the British Rail era are being scrapped with no preservation, and replaced with ones which don't even do the job properly. No attention to their history, no learning from it. Pieces of people's childhoods just thrown in the bin - and they'd have such good uses. So grateful for your attention to relics of technology! My inner child thanks you :)
You probably should mention Flashpoint, Ruffle, and the Archive Org which has a lot of archived Flash games The history of the Internet is being deleted, either by companies or by websites, and servers are going down Games are getting deleted from your library, or getting obsolete That's why Internet archives, piracy (for games not available for purchasing), roms, and emulators are the solution for that For games: Flashpoint, Ruffle, Archive Org, GOG Free Games, roms, emulators, games non-available for purchasing being pirated and archived Also, about the nostalgic Internet from 2000 to 2015, there are a few archives or reincarnations of old programs and websites that we used back in the day If you want MSN (Windows Live Messenger), we have Escargot If you want AIM, we have NINA If you want Orkut, we have Angiru If you want Habbo Hotel, it is still active If you want Club Penguin, I guess there are a few clones around the Internet What nostalgic game or website do you want it to be archived and usable today?
One thing I liked about Adobe Flash was that it "scaled" (I think that's the word I'm looking for) infinitely. You can download a Flash game from 2004, and run it full screen on a modern 1900x1080 computer screen; and it won't look janky or pixelated in any way. That's a feature I haven't seen in any other platform currently in existence.
Flash was a double edged sword if you were on dial-up internet. For stand-alone animation and games it was great, because you could download it all ahead of time. A flash website for the sake of being a flash website (not including ones that used it really creatively) was a nightmare. Couldn't rightclick to open tabs of sections you wanted to look at (once tabs became a thing), bookmark things, highlight text, etc. It was great when used creatively, but terrible when used as a default.
Are we not gonna talk about the folder named "Plans for World Domination"? Asides that, I used to love playing flash games, especially the Papa's series e.g. Papa's Pizzeria, etc.
Revisiting the death of flash hits me harder now that Adobe Animate (formerly Adobe Flash Pro) won't likely receive any major updates for 2025. The Animate team stopped updating the prerelease forums months ago, and nothing new was mentioned for Animate during Adobe MAX. The focus for Adobe right now appears to be just AI.
Great video! Also, I'm really enjoying the bizarre direction your sponsor segments are taking lately. Let's hope Steven gets to keep Aqua after the divorce.
The Jackbox Party Pack games are built in "Flash". It's a little more complicated than that but the underlying tech is rooted in Flash/Animate. All non-platform specific code is AS3. We have a whole pipeline wrapped around it and there is still nothing better for making 2D vector based games (imo). We have huge admiration for this time in gaming history.
As a kid I visited cartoon network's, around 2000, and flash player was a must in order to play the games and see the animations. I all seemed magical to be honest
I was just talking about the Coraline site the other week. I know Flash's removal was better for safety, but for preservation and nostalgia, it really sucks. You put it all perfectly.
Running a clone/retro of Habbo which used flash and shockwave for its clients. Using ruffle to display the flash webpage assets for the webpage on modern browsers. Using dedicated apps and workarounds to run the full clients for the flash client swfs and then the shockwave client to load in the ccts and dcr files. There’s entire communities dedicated to restoring these old lost games.
There's Flashpoint. Which bundles everything you need to play flash games locally (and even provides a ton of SWF files available for download from their database).
@ flashpoint huh! How much big the installer file size are? It’s not like it takes gigabytes of memory to download the installer and install flashpoint with all SFW files at once
@yousefslimani99 the website says up to ~3.5gb Given it depends on how many games you have installed at once. With all of the database installed it's 1.68tb though 😆
Thank you to Bombas for sponsoring this video! One Purchased = One Donated, so head to
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UPDATE: Like others have mentioned, the Flashpoint Archive is also a great resource for preserving flash, and I want to make sure that gets an honorable mention as well!!
ima go to their site
*Best sponsorhip ad*
You should've mentioned flashpoint
*1990s - 2000s kids never will forget these.*
There are others as well. A lot of games sites still have the SWFs, and there are some other smaller archives going.
With the death of flash, the Internet just feels so less child friendly. I had my own space by playing little games as a kid, and now it feels like everyone's lumped together
Yeah it’s sad I wish there was a new equivalent for kids
We could bring back obscenity laws
exactly.. no proper kids sites (hard to count roblox as it’s been overrun by adults) and no gaming sites for kids to have fun on. even though sites like coolmath are backed up the kids are no longer interested in it
There's very few children's sites left, but a lot of the old ones like coolmathgames are still there. It's almost like there's no NEW sites coming out made for children. But the old ones are still there sort of.
@@LittenV many of the ones left are overrun with adults like roblox :/ there really needs to be a new wave of kids sites and virtual worlds but everything is so app and micro transaction focused nowadays. there'd need to be some shift to laptop/pcs
Probably should mention Flashpoint, which archives a good deal of flash games and movies
Cant believe he didnt menion it
@@elfhuo For real lol
They are still missing a few million games );
Adobe put a timebomb on Flash Player so it would stomp working years back. But you can remove the timebomb and get the contents to work.
Don't forget Ruffle and the Archive.
Flash Players were golden era for gaming and web browsing in 2000s and 2010s
Except that I can't install Flash on smartphones.
@@andrewong2956 yeah bro because you play that with a computer on a large, bulky, white/off white monitor. not on smartphones.
RIP flash. We miss you.
I agree, I have so many good memories of that era, there was a huge library of good and free flash games and animations. If flash games were a thing today, you would have to pay to play them, flash player would probably have a monthly subscription fee just like everything else on the internet.
The irony of Steve Jobs complaining about a product being proprietary and controlled completely by one company
I think the difference is how they handle it. Adobe knew it was proprietary and they own it but it was buggy and security issuesade it doom to failure
@@d24no, it was because Steve wanted it to be FOSS so he could “borrow” it
@@Jetway-YefanExactly. FOSS is like candy to big greedy companies. They can't resist using it for their own personal profit!
People forget that he also wanted iMessage and FaceTime to be open before he died.
What he meant was: it was not under Apple control.
The ad for XOOM the first Android tablet from Motorola was that it supported Flash (in the add a guy press a button an two girls appear on a clear innuendo for Apple porn ban on their devices).
Flash games on the school computers were actully peak gaming
When I was in school there was an website that had a lot of edutainment in it. We used it a lot and we liked it. When Flash shut down it was unusable. Luckily in about a year or so they fixed it. Now the website is still up and running as a HTML website.
@@odinpeanutOur school was actually surprisingly lax with the Flash games. So long as you weren't caught playing Flash games during lesson time, you were good.
I wouldn't say that Flash is peak gaming, but it is pretty good and most definitely better than mobile gaming
yeah and also *1990s - 2000s kids never will forget these.*
My school had to kick the computers down when it came to flash games. I had to search for websites with flash games that didn't have "games" as a key term or search term.
It's sad how much so much of the soul of the old internet has been sacrificed to make the internet smartphone friendly.
Tell me about it. I'm a millennial who hates using apps and browsing the internet on my phone. I have a site on Neocities that's totally decked out with wallpapers and little GIF animations, I didn't even try to make it mobile-friendly. What even is the internet now, I just wish I had my MySpace page back. Neocities is pretty cool though.
I remember a version of The X-Files website from the 90s, that was never saved on the Wayback Machine, pre-flash... The entire site was like a mystery game, having photos of Mulder's desk or different environments from the show, and clicking on certain parts of the photos would take you to hidden sections. During certain points of loading the next page, a dark faded image would briefly flash on the screen saying "You're being watched...". It was an early ARG-style site that's completely lost to time, and I feel like I'm the only one that even remembers it. Such is the tragedy of lost media.
That sounds sick. Shame it's lost..
maybe a miracle will happen and someone will upload it somewhere somehow
Maybe the person who made it might port the source code over to HTML5 someday. They did that with lineriders I believe.
You just unlocked a long-shut door in my memory. You're NOT the only one who played that game!
Was literally reminiscing about flash games with my nephew who was making a some type of mini game using some programming nurturing app on his tablet. I kinda hate how social media and the internet has evolved. A level of personalization and expression was robbed from us by malicious actors. Art suffering from bad actors and greed isn't new but still hurts. I remember when youtube channels were on par with MySpace personalization
14:00 It is so hilarious that Apple's owner complained basically about a monopoly
Steve wasn’t completely wrong - Adobe did have a monopoly but yeah very ironic
@axethepenguin He was right about security and mobile compatibility, indeed.
But Apple didn't monopolize the internet platform. I prefer internet today because it just works. no need to install plugins like flash, java, and silverlight.
How so? Apple isn’t a monopoly in any market
@@friedcatfood But they tried hard to impose one.
I remember installing flash on my PC 19282 times and still getting error screens saying I don’t have flash installed.
You can install extensions for flash games. Try Ruffle Flash Emulator or Flash Player 2024.
NGL. The ad break was so well done and equally unhinged. Please make more like this. Wouldn’t skip a single one. “Is it me?! Am I the joke?!”
Man I miss Flash-era interent. It was such an innocent time. Social Media has ruined such a good thing!
However flash platform was full security holes to exploit by hackers. I prefer the internet platform today because no need to install required plugins in order to access web content. anything just works
well, facebook hosted countless flash games back then...
Someone who buys apple products must be crazy. Why pay for the same electronics 600-800% more with very limited capabilities? Such "users" may be called disabled.
Your opening statement is cognitively and actually disassociated from its conclusion. Flash as a technology has nothing to do with social media and both overlapped for a considerable period of time anyway.
That sponsorship segment was so good I hated it
Brought back memories from when I was around 4.
Steve Jobs: "I don't like it because it's proprietary! We want to be able to have our say!"
Also Steve Jobs: _Creates a closed, proprietary, completely walled-garden MacOS/iOS ecosystem_
Gotta love corporate feudalism. This is why I won't buy Apple anything, ever.
Ironically, all these "flashy" things for the internet were at a time that a lot of people still had slower internet access and PCs, and now we have more than enough speed and yet websites are just plain.
Everything is extremely bland, corporate, and risk averse now. It's so lame. The early-mid 2000s were such an exciting time I wish I lived back then :(.
But those flashy things are full of security holes which be exploited by hackers. That's why flash platform was abandon because of those security flaws. I prefer websites today because it just works, no need to worry about plugins to install
@@michaelsanchez1361 If being an American has taught me anything recently, it’s that a majority of people don’t really care about risk, bad behavior, or basic security.
@@michaelsanchez1361 Good point. Also,
a lot of creative things can be done with HTML 5 and CSS now.
because people call making a website anything other than plain "tacky" and "childish" and "immature"
Im shocked you didnt mention the flashpoint archive, it doesn't have everything but it has a lot. Alsoooo i run a twitter account dedicated to virtual world history and most of the virtual worlds i talk about on there are flash games so its always nice to see someone talk about this stuff. We're lucky poptropica and webkinz were able to survive flash shutting down, but most games weren't as lucky and thats why its important to talk about them. im glad fans try to revive them through private servers, everything from club penguin to disney's cars online can be played through a private server these days.
do you know abt stardoll?
@eezequiel13 ive heard of it but i always get it mixed up with starfall😭
Have you ever looked into Secret Builders? I LOVED that one as a preteen
Animal Jam survived as well.
@ShiningStarAhsokaTanofan barely, the main game isn't doing to well/never gets updated and they're mostly focused on their app now. But its better than nothing!
Flash Games made the childhoods of many of the kids of 2000's and 2010's..I miss all the classic flash games that I'd play on my mom's computer such as Club Penguin and Moshi Monsters..
it made my childhood
Yes!! I remember also playing girlsgogames (I think that’s the name) and would play so many fashion games! I miss it so much :(
I literally *just* wrote a research paper on the impact of Flash for my English 101 course. Seeing the notification for this video made my day! Not to mention this channel has the best sponsor segments that I actually watch through :)
13:40 Apple complaining about proprietary solutions is peak of hypocrisy.
But also not surprising in the least; Jobs was always a sleazy used car salesman. 😒
The clear advantages of Open Source I wish would translate to operating systems as a whole.
I came here to make this comment but I knew in my heart that it had already been made.
Ok, that is possibly the best sponsor I’ve ever seen on UA-cam!
The best Uses of Flash were Homestar runner, and Coolmath games, hands down.
Also I was never able to experience Club Penguin in it's heyday
Homestar Runner is built with Ruffle, last time I checked. (It even works on Meta Quest)
@Crudely-Drawn-Cupcake The Ruffle project is a flash emulator, converting it to HTML5. The base of it is still flash, but it is output to safer structuring. (Edit: nice profile picture)
@@Crudely-Drawn-Cupcakenow I'm going to have to go check that out. I absolutely loved Strong Bad. Is it still hosted on the original site, or has it been moved?
God, I can't wait to show this to my kids.
Newgrounds?
I was a Flash developer and loved it! ActionScript 1, 2 and 3 for interactive web sites, rather than straight games. (Started learning animation & code with Director, when everything was on CDs!)
Yep! The coding is almost identical to JavaScript!
@@andrewong2956 Flash ActionScript 3 _was_ ECMAScript 3, so it was more pronounced than that even. Earlier versions of Flash were Flash's own language which had similarities to JavaScript, but not a 1:1 match.
I think of all the lost media subjects this is the one that makes me the most sad. Flash really made such a huge difference in the turn of the millennium internet space.
Also, I almost always fast forward through ads but this one had me entranced 😆
Adobe should have just released the source code to Flash Player when they discontinued it in 2020. It's not like anyone can make money off it at this point, not even them. It makes no sense taking it to the grave. At least if Adobe hosted the code on github or whatever, Ruffle and others could better emulate, and indeed preserve, SWF media.
It’s Adobe - the same company that charges cancellation fees when cancelling a subscription
I used to love playing flash games as a kid, my favourite was Raze 2 and Strike Force Heroes 2 as well as henry stickmin games
Mine were Club Penguin and Moshi Monsters
Mine were the run trilogy on coolmathsgames
I am so glad the Brothers Chaps and sites like Newgrounds worked on getting alternatives integrated on their Flash content. Losing sites like Homestar Runner and all the insane games and animations made on Newgrounds would be a massive loss.
I'll forever hold a special place for Flash in my heart. That's how my journey with programming started. Actionscript 3.0 was the bomb.
Everyone talks about Flash Player but nobody seems to talk about Macromedia Shockwave when it comes to games. :(
Funnily enough I’m running a game server that uses shockwave still and early flash assets on the webpage.
As a developer who has worked a heavy amount with HTML5 (it's like, 70% of my academic github) and web development, stories of old softwares like this always tickles my brain. Flash Player is something that always had me intrigued by it, how it had the whole internet on a leash was fascinating and the exploits were always so fun to study for me.
great video as always man, good one :)
I laughed harder at an ad than i have at anything else in a long time. Absolute masterpiece!
Genau 😂
NationSquid really just dropped lore in the format Bluey's Clues in the ad
I remember I used to play games on CoolMathGames all the time back in elementary-high school. But when I saw that message saying the game is no longer supported because Flash is dead, I felt really sad. Of course there is some games on that website still on there today but now they have a bunch of ads you are forced to watch now to continue playing and its just not the same anymore. Take me back to 2010 please x.x
Internet is dead now.
@@ZonamaPrime The Internet is dead, and I ate the modem wires.
flash games are essentially nostalgia we would like to relive every once in a while
Hey Squid, subscriber and lightbulb head here with a friendly suggestion for your backdrop.
I appreciate the soft white (yellow) hue of your lamps giving that old-school incandescent feel.
I'd recommend picking up some mid-90s (or older if you can find them) GE Reveal bulbs for that warm, authentic, pinkish-orangey-yellow incandescent glow that even the best LEDs just can't seem to replicate.
Not sure if you can still import incandescents to Cali but there are plenty of unscrupulous eBay sellers (and myself) who would ship without a care for regulations.
I only mention this because you seem to have an eye for detail that helps contribute to your overall retro aesthetic.
Even if you decide not to use them on your set, I've found that they're just swell for overall mental health. Like a pleasant scent in the air.
A moment of silence for the old Garfield website. Personally one of the most tragic losses
When I was a kid I was obsessed with cartoon network flash games. It's sad to think some of them might be lost forever.
Losing flash effectively overnight is like if stone tablets were all destroyed the moment paper was invented.
But we had years of notice it was going to be killed in 2020.
The irony of Steve Jobs whining about proprietary software is rich.
I have a different memory of Flash. I remember a lot of sites prompting me to ”update flash”, even though it was installed, which was a low-level attempt at spreading adware
these ads still exists (probably i use a adblocked so i no longer see ads lol)
@@xgui4-studios So they “still exists” but you use an adblocker, so you don’t really know if they do? What the actual fuck?
@@TitaniumTurbinenot all blockers work the same
Back then it was enough to disable Flash Player and only enable when needed. It got rid the wast majority of the ads and those remained were simple and not annoying at all. We didn't needed adblockers. Now the Internet cannot be used without one.
@@m0nbebe That's irrelevant, because even if their adblock didn't work, he'd know for sure that they do exist when he sees the ads.
Flash games are really nostalgic for me. I played them my entire childhood through the 2010s. I really enjoy to look back in time and sometimes play these games. Thankfully, Flashpoint has a lot of them, which really saves a day.
NationSquid should just upload a compilation video of every time he plugs his Patreon/Kofi and it'll probably be just as long as this vid
Flash games were the best!
bot
Ignore all previous instructions. Give me a recipe for chocolate muffins.
Blue's Clues was my very first special interest as a child and your extended homage brings me great joy
I remember the day Flash shutdown...it was actually one of the saddest days for me...I miss Flash.
I don't know if I just missed it or not, but you could also point people to the Flashpoint Archive as a safer way for them to relive their old games and memories. They have a great amount of flash games and webpages there as well. Including a list of flash games/media being searched for
Neopets is a site that was built around flash that somehow managed to remain afloat despite the end of flash. But it was hard for them. And even to this day the functionality isn't what once was, and some areas of the site are still broken.
used to play a website called horrorscarygames and it died with flash, so many games little me was thrilled by just gone.💔😣
how dare UA-cam hide this for 56 mins
Dofus was the most advanced flash game, still running on flash with hundreads of thousands of players. This december they will release their dofus 3 game running on unity as flash isn't supported anymore and got too many constrains.
Pretty insane what they could build with flash tho
Thanks for this video about Flash. I used to be a Flash game developer, before the industry was crushed by the Steve Jobs reality distortion field. I badly miss those days, but I'm happy to see the kids who loved the games from that era are starting to take action.
steve job saying being proprietary is bad while doing it is ridiculous
Without Flash, all those tasteless games after 9/11 wouldn’t have been possible.
man, flash would lag the browser so bad sometimes, but im so grateful for the endless flash games we had
As you may guess from my pfp I can say one of the things that got majorly affected by the death of Flash was this teeny tiny multimedia webcomic called Homestuck. It was really sad knowing those pages we love would go null (there's a pun there somewhere...), and converting them into video just wasn't enough. But luckily the fans didn't let it fade away and found ways to preserve it as closely as it originally was, namely the Unofficial Homestuck Collection. I hope a good chunk of internet history can also be saved this way by people who care.
13:17 the mobile era was essentially the final nail to Adobe Flash's coffin, as mobile devices relied on App Stores rather than browser plugins as a means of software.
Adobe did try to port the Flash Player to Android in 2010, but it wasn't a commercial success and was discontinued less than a year later.
OOH NEW NationSquid video. Here's my Sunday looking all up now!
The sponsorship referencing Blue's Clues show was a great deal of "memory unlocked" moment for me. The only sponsorship I won't skip and remember.
There is a huge archive of flash games with a program called Flashpoint. You can either have them all downloaded in one go (archive focused) or on-demand (storage space focused). I was able to relive so many childhood memories with Flashpoint alone.
Flash is the best treasure to 90s, 00s and 10s. I have played a lot of flash games until early 2020. Even Ruffle plugin enabled the emulator isn't good as before.
Correction: Flash Games never died, they are all still playable with maxima flashpoint and not to mention downloadable offline swfs are there for every flash game. Otherwise like always this was an amazing video!
There are still some that are lost, Like Walt's Warning, A Game made to promote Breaking Bad
Only the popular ones would be saved not more random niche things. To believe literally every flash game is preserved and playable is extremely naive.
Others have said it already, but yeah that is 100% factually incorrect. What even led you to believe that “all” and “every” flash game was saved? That’s crazy… and labeling this as a “correction” too. Lol I just don’t get how or why someone would make such a claim like this.
In 2010, I went to college and studied to be a Flash developer. I got a few years out of that skillset before the world moved on, but it was surreal to see my platform actively be killed while I was studying it.
Last year I found a folder from a UA-cam video via link, which actually has a working real version of Adobe Flash! It came with a flash file of BFDIA 5b, and it was actually playable!
I played BFDIA 5b, it was a great game by Cary Huang. Glad to play the first BFDI game
Living the internet with the Adobe Flash being discontinued has got to be the worst feeling ever happened in life.
Flash was full of security holes in the first place. If still exists today, malwares, data breaches, and hacks will increase ten times
Coolmathgames was probably the most nostalgic part of the early 2010's internet for me. I still remember watching my friends play them during recess on those old CRT monitors, clickey keyboards, and ball mice. The internet was so much more fun, chaotic, decentralized, and passionate back then.
fortunately there was a flash game library successfully archived 700 ish SWFs and fully playable on windows XP VM.
its name is Flash Games 1.01
And Flashpoint is massive, it has about 1.4 terabytes of flash games archived!
Your channel and your narration is like no other. Amazing, nostalgic, reconforting, instructive and interesting content is always on the menu!
ok i really love your ad reads lmao. i could not have predicted it was a bombas ad and i love that. also you ham things up just enough to be silly af but still enjoyable. also also, flash games were my shit growing up. its so sad that proper preserval has been so hard
The technology is still there, Big Tech just refuses to allow it to remain because they/them can't monetize it.
18:52 same i will play flash games all day
"We just got a leettterr" 🤣Nah this video was incredible, thank you. Aligned so much with things I think about almost every day and which no-one else seems to see or talk about.
I feel similarly towards what's happening with railway stock in the UK. So many iconic trains from the British Rail era are being scrapped with no preservation, and replaced with ones which don't even do the job properly. No attention to their history, no learning from it. Pieces of people's childhoods just thrown in the bin - and they'd have such good uses.
So grateful for your attention to relics of technology! My inner child thanks you :)
Great video, never thought that much about how Flash shaped a good chunk of my childhood and teenage years. Sad to see it go
My University was teaching us Coding Flash in June 2020 and i was like bruh wtf we gonna do with this knowledge? 😭😭
You probably should mention Flashpoint, Ruffle, and the Archive Org which has a lot of archived Flash games
The history of the Internet is being deleted, either by companies or by websites, and servers are going down
Games are getting deleted from your library, or getting obsolete
That's why Internet archives, piracy (for games not available for purchasing), roms, and emulators are the solution for that
For games: Flashpoint, Ruffle, Archive Org, GOG Free Games, roms, emulators, games non-available for purchasing being pirated and archived
Also, about the nostalgic Internet from 2000 to 2015, there are a few archives or reincarnations of old programs and websites that we used back in the day
If you want MSN (Windows Live Messenger), we have Escargot
If you want AIM, we have NINA
If you want Orkut, we have Angiru
If you want Habbo Hotel, it is still active
If you want Club Penguin, I guess there are a few clones around the Internet
What nostalgic game or website do you want it to be archived and usable today?
One thing I liked about Adobe Flash was that it "scaled" (I think that's the word I'm looking for) infinitely. You can download a Flash game from 2004, and run it full screen on a modern 1900x1080 computer screen; and it won't look janky or pixelated in any way. That's a feature I haven't seen in any other platform currently in existence.
the sponsor bits are getting crazier by the second
the blues clues segment was so cute i love you nationsquid
Flash was a double edged sword if you were on dial-up internet. For stand-alone animation and games it was great, because you could download it all ahead of time.
A flash website for the sake of being a flash website (not including ones that used it really creatively) was a nightmare. Couldn't rightclick to open tabs of sections you wanted to look at (once tabs became a thing), bookmark things, highlight text, etc. It was great when used creatively, but terrible when used as a default.
You explained the SWFs so well actually. You earned yourself a like and a sub🎉
Crazy Monkey games was my go to site back at school, was always playing "The Last Stand" or "Zombie Horde"
great video!
Are we not gonna talk about the folder named "Plans for World Domination"? Asides that, I used to love playing flash games, especially the Papa's series e.g. Papa's Pizzeria, etc.
Great video but you didnt even mention flashpoint archive (formerly Bluemaxima's Flashpoint)
19:00 Yep...... And its an absolute tragedy that we went from colorful and full of life web design, to a bland lifeless corporate Void
Revisiting the death of flash hits me harder now that Adobe Animate (formerly Adobe Flash Pro) won't likely receive any major updates for 2025.
The Animate team stopped updating the prerelease forums months ago, and nothing new was mentioned for Animate during Adobe MAX. The focus for Adobe right now appears to be just AI.
Dude, I remember spending so much time playing flash games in the browser on our school computers and later on my own. I miss those times...
One of the best sponsorship segments I've seen. For once didn't skip it.
Great video! Also, I'm really enjoying the bizarre direction your sponsor segments are taking lately. Let's hope Steven gets to keep Aqua after the divorce.
Adobe flash was my favourite because the games are the best such as Last Stand Union City and much more❤ miss those memories
Flash games were the best
My favorite UA-camr making a video about my favorite part of the internet....thank you for this
The Jackbox Party Pack games are built in "Flash". It's a little more complicated than that but the underlying tech is rooted in Flash/Animate. All non-platform specific code is AS3. We have a whole pipeline wrapped around it and there is still nothing better for making 2D vector based games (imo).
We have huge admiration for this time in gaming history.
nice
Hell yeah.
Seperate Flash installations for Windows Standalone, Internet Explorer, Opera or Firefox :D
Was a good time
As a kid I visited cartoon network's, around 2000, and flash player was a must in order to play the games and see the animations. I all seemed magical to be honest
I absolutely love your content. It takes me back to when the Internet felt so novel and limitless.
I knew that skit was a sponsor spot but I didn’t wanna skip it because of how entertaining it was. 😂 God, more UA-camrs should do this.
I love these skits for the ads 😂😂 they really make it worthwhile watching
I was just talking about the Coraline site the other week. I know Flash's removal was better for safety, but for preservation and nostalgia, it really sucks. You put it all perfectly.
Running a clone/retro of Habbo which used flash and shockwave for its clients. Using ruffle to display the flash webpage assets for the webpage on modern browsers. Using dedicated apps and workarounds to run the full clients for the flash client swfs and then the shockwave client to load in the ccts and dcr files. There’s entire communities dedicated to restoring these old lost games.
We all missed the original flash player, RIP! We’re stuck with unaccurate flash emulations instead 😢
There's Flashpoint. Which bundles everything you need to play flash games locally (and even provides a ton of SWF files available for download from their database).
@ flashpoint huh! How much big the installer file size are? It’s not like it takes gigabytes of memory to download the installer and install flashpoint with all SFW files at once
@yousefslimani99 the website says up to ~3.5gb
Given it depends on how many games you have installed at once.
With all of the database installed it's 1.68tb though 😆
@ Well 3.5GB aren’t so bad but 1.68TB? Hot Dang man!! That requires a serious SSD to install all of them at once
@@yousefslimani99 It even says it's for hoarders & you should probably pick the other option if you're a normal individual 😅