alt.hn

2/15/2026 at 5:43:59 AM

Flashpoint Archive – Over 200k web games and animations preserved

 https://flashpointarchive.org

by helloplanets

2/15/2026 at 8:54:56 AM

God bless the Ruffle project, but it's so frustrating that they've covered almost everything in AS3 except the NetConnection class (and the .connect() call).

Lots of wonderful single player games were made in Flash, and it's awesome that there's a way to play them again. But almost all of my work was multiplayer or relied on amfphp or other Flash versions of XHR to draw in data for levels, multiplayer, music or graphics after my engine loads. I still have all the server code... but all we can resurrect still are games that are entirely self-contained. That's still alright but it relegates Flash to a museum.

by noduerme

2/15/2026 at 12:21:59 PM

Hi, one of Ruffle maintainers here. AFAIK, we do have most of NetConnection API implemented; but direct socket connections are just impossible in browsers. The games should (hopefully) work and connect when run via the desktop player. We also implemented socket emulation in the browser via WebSockets, so they should also start working there if you put a WebSockify proxy on your server (no need to touch the game server code).

by adrian17

2/15/2026 at 5:32:32 PM

Hi! You have done amazing work, and I'm ever grateful to your team for keeping AS3 alive!

I used sockets in some of my multiplayer games, but that's not where I ran into problems with Ruffle. Since those games only upgraded to sockets after an initial HTTPS connection, I haven't even gotten to the point of trying sockets yet. I mainly just used NetConnection.connect() for routine API calls, not to open a socket. AFAIK .connect() didn't open a socket, although I guess it had some two-way capabilities with Flash Media Server, but that's not how I used it. I just used it to initialize the NetConnection instance with the URI of a server endpoint that could receive AMF messages (usually translated on the backend with AMFPHP). I don't think it really left any sort of connection open. After that, you'd just make RESTful calls over that connection using netconnection.call(...args), and could send complex objects - even SQL result sets - back and forth without going through JSON or XML. But it was just a bunch of HTTP calls sending that data in Flash's own serialized format. You'd listen for NetStatusEvent or SecurityEvent to handle the results or errors. No sockets were involved. In conjunction with AMFPHP it was basically like a URLRequest without any structuring or destructuring needed to parse the results into AS3-friendly data types.

It would be amazing if only the RESTful kinds of NC connections and calls could work again through Ruffle, I think it might be all that's stopping my old games from running!

by noduerme

2/15/2026 at 5:39:41 PM

As a Ruffle developer who in my day job maintains some Flash-based websites, I'll note from experience that AMF serialization/deserialization in Ruffle has some definite issues, so that may be the issue for your games (the websites I maintain use https://metacpan.org/pod/AMF::Perl). See https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/issues?q=is:issue+state:....

by danielhjacobs

2/15/2026 at 6:07:29 PM

As far as I've seen, Ruffle never even makes the call out to the server... so at this point I don't think it's a serialization issue although some of what's in that list could potentially cause problems. The Ruffle compatability docs still say that NetConnection has 90% coverage... except for the .connect() call itself, which kinda makes me wonder why bother covering it at all?

https://ruffle.rs/compatibility/avm2

by noduerme

2/15/2026 at 6:52:04 PM

That documentation, for stubs, can be somewhat misleading. It just looks for the presence of an avm2_stub_method function call anywhere in the method, which may mean a method that's entirely a stub, or as is the case for NetConnection.connect, a method that is stubbed under specific conditions. NetConnection.connect is stubbed for specifically non-null, non-http commands (generally this is RMTP/RTMFP). See https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/blob/df11c2206bc6be0a329...

by danielhjacobs

2/16/2026 at 2:30:08 AM

Yeah, it's weird but I have an initial API call near the start of a program that makes a NetConnection.call() to an http address. The program should not run at all beyond that point until it gets a result from the server, after which it initializes a bunch of client-side variables and starts the main loop. With Ruffle, I see nothing go over the wire to that http address, but it's as if the client does get a result, because the rest of the program proceeds through the function defined in the Responder and onto the main loop. But it does so as if the server returned an undefined value, so then it just starts throwing errors related to those master values being undefined. Unfortunately there was no error-checking on the client side for that call; it assumed it either got some values or it failed to connect.

Maybe for some reason Ruffle thinks it's not a plain http call. I can start a GH issue if it would help.

by noduerme

2/16/2026 at 7:53:02 AM

Yes please open a GitHub issue and attach all materials needed to reproduce the issue. Thank you!

by nosamu

2/15/2026 at 8:23:24 PM

I am jolted, nearly shocked, that in 2026 you have to maintain some Flash-based websites. Can you share?

by strongbond

2/15/2026 at 10:41:42 PM

I mean I could decommission them but they're educational websites related to DNA and bioinformatics with interactive animations and my boss has a certain fondness for keeping them running if we can, as we used to get a number of grants that funded creating them in the first place as a nonprofit educational and research institution.

by danielhjacobs

2/15/2026 at 5:30:44 PM

Also a Ruffle developer here, though less involved with the actual emulation and more with the JS for browser integration. I'll add to Adrian's response that instructions for setting up the websockify proxy (by the webmaster of the site) can be found here: https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Qu....

by danielhjacobs

2/15/2026 at 9:07:43 AM

I assume this is because web API's don't allow such connections.

However with the source code and server code it seems like a perfect task to set an AI agent (IE. Please patch out these API's and replace them with websockets on both client and server, then recompile)

by londons_explore

2/15/2026 at 8:30:53 AM

I haven't gone through the games they have, but it makes sense to preserve ALL games for future generations. I'd even go so far as to offer games in an original variant; but also in modified variants, aka one being mostly focused on fixing bugs and doing modest upgrades (simplifying playability and SLIGHT improvements to the user interface), as well as slightly more aggressive upgrades, including UI, making them visually beautiful but retaining the spirit of the game. For instance, of all the simcities, the first one was IMO the best. The graphics lateron were much better of course, but playability wise I found the first one the most addictive; similar with colonization, first one was quite good. The last 3 releases had better graphics, but playability wise it felt like 100 steps back.

What I would love to see is that we retain old flash games too. HTML5 was promoted as "making flash obsolete", but they never fulfilled that promise. Many flash-games simply died and there was no replacement in HTML; similar with some java applet games. Or at the least I could not find a replacement (that's also a problem - with google search having become nearly useless, finding things is super-hard; and of course old websites tend to die, that is also a problem).

by shevy-java

2/15/2026 at 8:58:49 AM

Just an aside, but I've recently taken up Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition. To a large extent it's the same game I played as a kid. But with lots of quality-of-life improvements. Like better queuing of actions. But also modernized with better graphics, animations, matchmaking where the original servers of course are gone etc. But under the hood, it's the same engine and game, not just a reimplementation that's similar.

Great way of reviving a game. Because it's those small things that make it hard to go back to older games. Old graphics I can live with, but it often looks weird if made for crt. And the interface breaking on bigger screens etc is hard. But mainly it's often the nicer mechanics and QoL things one miss.

by matsemann

2/15/2026 at 10:03:57 AM

I think the interface breaking on newer screens is a key point - AOE2 definite edition looks great on a 4k screen now, but when I tried one of the other variants beforehand the UI didn't scale properly and so all the elements were tiny to the point of being unplayable without adjusting the resolution

by mnahkies

2/15/2026 at 10:53:58 AM

I play lots of old games, but the thing I have the hardest time with is playing in 4:3 on a 16:9 monitor. I didn't6 know why... Maybe I need to try an actual 4:3 monitor and see how I feel.

by glimshe

2/15/2026 at 4:20:58 PM

Have you tried 0ad by any chance?

by 2Gkashmiri

2/16/2026 at 2:04:58 PM

No, checked it out, seems like a cool project. But I'm not much of a gamer, hence the want of playing the same game as a kid and just relax that way without learning new mechanics, hehe.

by matsemann

2/15/2026 at 8:52:48 AM

Open source flash player emulator: https://ruffle.rs/

by mikestaas

2/15/2026 at 10:31:49 AM

Interesting, they have one of my games[0], but somehow managed to misspell my username. There must have been a manual process, or even OCR somewhere?

0: https://flashpointproject.github.io/flashpoint-database/sear...

by mollerhoj

2/15/2026 at 2:04:43 PM

What an amazing feeling to see my flash animations I made when I was 13 on this site. Great project! What a unique era that time on the internet was. Can hardly imagine what my life would be today had it not been for Flash.

by piazz

2/15/2026 at 6:03:06 PM

I never liked the idea of running Flash inside the web browser, but a single file .swf game format is almost as good as any ROM game dump.

Some games didn't mind running locally from an .swf file, but some others had a "URL protection", presumably to prevent people from embedding their flash games at other websites, and they didn't make an exception for localhost.

Long time ago I've fixed hundreds of such flash games using RABCDAsm and made them work in standalone Flash Player.

Took a brief look at Flashpoint Archive, it seems their way to fix URL check is to spin up a web server to present an address the game expects.

by Grom_PE

2/15/2026 at 7:04:52 PM

As a bit of background, flash games were often sponsored. The bigger websites would pay hundreds to thousands of dollars to put their (clickable) logo in the beginning of a game, and sometimes would also have either timed or permanent exclusivity to their website.

by AuryGlenz

2/15/2026 at 6:26:31 PM

when archiving, it's preferable to leave the files in the state you originally found them

by sghitbyabazooka

2/15/2026 at 6:58:08 PM

Is there a standard patch format for this use case, where you could keep the original files and have a second file that patches them at load time to make them runnable?

by kstrauser

2/15/2026 at 8:13:06 PM

As Flash files are often compressed, a patch wouldn't be any smaller than having an original and a fixed copy. You'd have to invent a new patch format that operates on an uncompressed SWF.

by Grom_PE

2/15/2026 at 10:28:21 PM

Perhaps naively, that seems tractable to me.

by kstrauser

2/15/2026 at 4:54:51 PM

Contributed to this project many moons ago, it's a truly awesome community effort. Highly recommend joining the discord to see what they've been up to.

by linolevan

2/15/2026 at 7:23:47 AM

A shame that they require a special software download. Do we not have any web-based Flash renderers yet? Seems like WASM should be able to do anything.

by tornato7

2/15/2026 at 7:34:31 AM

I thought the same. But it is necessary for the vast majority of games. It is not just an emulator for the .swf (and other formats) content you need, you often need bespoke proxy servers and server emulators to bypass some of the old DRM.

by TechSquidTV

2/15/2026 at 7:48:39 AM

There's ruffle: https://ruffle.rs/

iirc support is generally good, but some versions of flash/actionscript have issues (at least last time I checked).

by tovej

2/15/2026 at 9:19:19 AM

I sometimes watch (in horror) as my nephew uses his Dad's phone to play whatever shallow, glossy muck he finds in the play store. He spends as much time swatting ads, refusing to upgrade to the pro version and hitting 'back' to get out of the play store than playing the games. It's amazing to watch a 6 year old develop muscle memory on these things. I see him swat away an ad almost before I've even noticed that it wasn't part of the game. He has effectively learned to be an ad / upgrade swatting machine. That is the game. Because he has absolutely no "sticking power" with any game. It's the play store / game / ad version of doomscrolling.

I've realised that giving him a reduced hand-picked library of games, with no ads, no automatic prompts to try another game, might be a good idea. These flash games are easily as good as most of the junk I see him play anyway.

by raffraffraff

2/15/2026 at 1:51:30 PM

I don't mean to sound like the old fart that I am, but you keep describing games in terms of "junk" and "as good as [junk]": maybe instead of giving a bundle of ad-free junk, none of which actually captures his attention and all of which amounts to "doomscrolling," you might consider finding something that does get his attention and occupies it more usefully.

Swift Playgrounds was (is?) ad-free and teaches programming. There are music studio apps that let him compose his own music. Plenty of apps let kids create things actively instead of just playing games. There are also all sorts of non-electronic activities that could occupy his time more fruitfully, but I'll skip over that.

by Telemakhos

2/15/2026 at 6:34:07 PM

> Swift Playgrounds was (is?) ad-free and teaches programming.

But, the kid wants to play games, not build something.

You can get entertained by both, but doing only one of those things is boring.

by lelanthran

2/15/2026 at 1:57:45 PM

> Swift Playgrounds was (is?) ad-free and teaches programming. There are music studio apps that let ...

And that works until they have 1 conversation with other kids, in school or whatever.

by spwa4

2/15/2026 at 2:53:02 PM

Until they find that one other kid in school with the same interests. Then they find a lifelong friend, and they create things together.

by kQq9oHeAz6wLLS

2/15/2026 at 10:09:34 AM

I really like flashpoint but I wish there was a plugin for curation / recommendation. I have an index of games in my head from my childhood and so does my SO. Together we can play the games we know, but have little ability to discriminate between trash and gem. There are simply too many to reasonably pick at random. The old flash sites offered some curation.

by willis936

2/15/2026 at 1:49:41 PM

I'm feel old.. My library of childhood games in my head are from the 80s, for the Spectrum. Dizzy, Jet Set Willy, Operation Wolf, R-Type, and original movie/game conversations for Robocop, Batman etc.

What's odd is the apparent chasm between those games and the earliest flash games, but really it's just a few years. That's just a trick of the mind. When you're a kid, turning into a young adult, a few short years feel like a lifetime. Man, it speeds up after that...

by raffraffraff

2/15/2026 at 4:44:48 PM

But there are curated lists.

by nosrepa

2/15/2026 at 10:56:16 PM

You can create your own lists in Flashpoint and view lists created by some other people. Try it.

by scotty79

2/15/2026 at 7:48:36 AM

A bit sad not to find the whole collection of Larry Carlson's animations in there (only a few games.) Also, need full archive of Joe Cartoon!

by blackhaz

2/15/2026 at 10:15:01 AM

I had the same thought, and similar disappointment when I couldn't find anything referencing Trogdor and his burninating ways.

by stevekemp

2/15/2026 at 2:30:56 PM

I remember that years ago when the android phones started there was a app for flash games....I don't remember the name the app (and maybe this app does not run in current android phones)

Now thanks to https://f-droid.org/es/packages/rs.ruffle/ (it has high % compatibility but it is ok) another we have again a handful flash games in the phone.

by mdtrooper

2/15/2026 at 3:38:40 PM

There was a browser-streaming app that would play them remotely, can't remember what it was called.

There was an official plugin by Adobe on Android but it was awful, I remember watching them showcase it at a conference it was tragic even with their handpicked and simple example.

Then there was a transpiler that produced native apps from Flash, this was actually pretty good but Apple then banned transpiling which killed its viability entirely, six months later they un-banned transpiling but the damage was done.

But on the plus side, Apple got to monopolize transaction fees in Flash games like Farmville for nearly two decades!

by benoau

2/15/2026 at 7:18:21 AM

Can't tell if they have the entirety of Homestar Runner preserved, but I'm very glad to see they have some of it.

by rmunn

2/15/2026 at 3:02:50 PM

Homestar Runner isn't dead, and all the files are still around, so it should be back sometime within the next few years. https://homestarrunner.com/post-flash-update

by wizzwizz4

2/16/2026 at 4:32:12 AM

Yeah, I discovered that after I wrote the comment. Very glad to see that Ruffle + WASM has allowed the site to be resurrected nearly identical to how it used to look, so I can show my kids the same goofy stuff that was such a hit with my own group of friends in college.

by rmunn

2/15/2026 at 9:02:56 AM

I periodically check if Top Dog II (from teagames, now nonexistent) has been added as it was one of my favorite flash games, but it still isn't there. I admire the work and I really support preservation projects. Hope Top Dog II can be rescued one day, along with other teagames titles.

by integricho

2/16/2026 at 6:41:13 PM

Oh wow, the whole collection is 2.28TB. Super practical to archive!

by cadamsdotcom

2/16/2026 at 3:21:06 AM

GemCraft! That was always my favorite tower defense game but I never finished the sequel. Years ago I found a hosted version using Ruffle but back then it didn't work right, then I forgot about it. Maybe I can finish it now, all four of them say "Status: Playable"...

by Izkata

2/15/2026 at 3:45:44 PM

I believe that the art of the past, created by humans before the advent of AI, deserves a reevaluation. It seems increasingly rare these days to find works that reflect pure human effort. In that sense, I believe the effort to preserve these games from the past is well worthwhile.

by tomleelive

2/15/2026 at 12:22:42 PM

Was pleasantly surprised to find two of my games preserved here. Was over twenty years ago that I submitted them!

by samgdf2

2/15/2026 at 11:54:14 AM

Very disappointed that they don't have _Bembo's Zoo_

https://www.devicq.com/bembo-zoo/

https://soundeffects.fandom.com/wiki/Bembo%27s_Zoo_(Websites...

https://web.archive.org/web/20000816172409/http://www.bembos...

If there's a way to get it added, I'd be very glad of that (or if someone could figure out how to re-create it for the modern web)

by WillAdams

2/16/2026 at 1:37:31 AM

Pretty sure it would be working in the Wayback Machine, if archive.org had configured it right.

by Randomno

2/16/2026 at 2:34:31 PM

I am very sad that it isn't, and I really wish that I'd figured out how to get an archival copy back when it was still available.

by WillAdams

2/16/2026 at 5:14:19 PM

All the SWFs are archived (which is often not the case on Wayback). Just when the program is requesting to load one, archive.org is returning an HTML-wrapped file instead which fails to load. It would be quite easy to add to Flashpoint.

by Randomno

2/15/2026 at 2:07:41 PM

Kind of crazy that most of the huge mobile games draw roots to flash games from the decades prior.

by tgtweak

2/16/2026 at 3:00:10 AM

A few of my games from 2009 are on here! Very cool.

by azhenley

2/15/2026 at 1:08:37 PM

If you like RPGs, you gotta play Nekogame's "Parameters"! It's in there.

by glimshe

2/15/2026 at 7:29:26 AM

If you’re interested in legal torrenting but GNU/Linux images are too small for you, this is for you.

by trvz

2/15/2026 at 7:37:08 AM

Wouldn’t this still be technically a copyright violation? It seems unlikely this is all public domain stuff.

by vlovich123

2/15/2026 at 3:04:03 PM

Yes, but you'd have trouble finding someone who has standing and desire to sue.

by RunningDroid

2/15/2026 at 10:34:08 AM

Can anyone recommend sone Flash games to try out?

by Wowfunhappy

2/15/2026 at 1:02:53 PM

Attak by JohnnyTwoShoes[0,1], is one of the standout games from that era: super-saiyan type battles using an underlying physics/ragdoll engine with fully destructible buildings and terrain.

Half the strategy was digging out an underground bunker to shield yourself from your enemy's 500m vertical drop attacks. It was an incredible feat of programming for the time.

The game unfortunately is in that final tiny percentage of AS3 games with missing features and thus does not work with ruffle yet, I suspect because the game was so cutting edge.

0: https://flashpointproject.github.io/flashpoint-database/sear...

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTiO6o-NERw

by tetris11

2/15/2026 at 1:44:51 PM

Some of the recommendations here are good classics, but if you're looking for some REALLY good ones:

* Sonny 2 (really in-depth turn based RPG)

* Fancy Pants Adventures 1-3 (2D platformer)

* Larry and the Gnomes (Beat 'em up)

* Interactive Buddy 2 (Fun simulator toy)

* Final Ninja Zero (2D platformer)

* Bubble Tanks 2 (Twinstick shooter)

These really take me back...

by popcar2

2/16/2026 at 12:45:59 AM

> * Fancy Pants Adventures 1-3 (2D platformer)

Whoa, the animation in this is mesmerizing. I just beat world 1 and 2 in one sitting. Thanks for sharing.

by Wowfunhappy

2/15/2026 at 11:38:18 AM

Somebody already mentioned the Winnie's Homerun Derby. I also have fond memories of playing:

* N - https://archive.org/details/nv-12

* Ball Revamped - https://archive.org/details/1100_ballrevampedv2

* Mind Fcuk - https://archive.org/details/tf_20210127

* World's hardest game - https://archive.org/details/the-worlds-hardest-game_202310

* Canabalt - https://archive.org/details/canabalt_202012

* (If you're from one of the commonwealth countries) Stick Cricket - https://archive.org/details/stickcricket_flash

There's honestly a ton more, you can download the archive and go through the various community lists in there. I've spent a few evenings just having a few drinks and playing some old games! :D

by as1mov

2/15/2026 at 5:20:36 PM

It’s amazing how one tech, as imperfect as it may have been allowed so many types of creators to simply create.

It’s staggering to imagine that beginners, novices and experts all built these things in the same interface. No stack, build processes, or more.

by j45

2/15/2026 at 5:15:24 PM

no native linux support

by Western0

2/15/2026 at 10:53:17 PM

[dead]

by wiredpancake

2/15/2026 at 11:41:09 AM

Thanks for the archive, but the site needs to be mobile-friendly.

by vee-kay

2/15/2026 at 7:17:24 PM

Hi, website dev here. I admit the current website sucks in terms of usability (I designed it many years ago when I had no concept of responsive design). At the moment I'm working on a complete overhaul of the site that will look much nicer on mobile devices, among other things.

by WumboSpasm

2/15/2026 at 10:09:29 AM

Most of the good flash games later turned into something you could buy on steam. Great example of this was mud and blood, which has a proper steam based continuation.

by Der_Einzige

2/15/2026 at 10:10:50 AM

I wouldn't say most, but a good chunk yes.

by oceansky

2/15/2026 at 10:23:35 AM

You now hear Age of War soundtrack.

by dvh

2/15/2026 at 6:59:00 AM

Nice. Glad to see someone is doing this. Everyone on HN hates on things like Flash, but they were genuinely innovative technologies that showed the world what was possible online. And the content was unmatched. The Internet today can’t compare.

by SilverElfin

2/15/2026 at 8:25:17 AM

I hate html, wasm, css, javascript as much as flash when they're used to waste my battery, cpu and ram with pointless effects when I'm browsing.

Love them when they're either getting out of the way of my content or used to make a great game.

by nottorp

2/15/2026 at 10:17:29 AM

I think people hate(d) working with it and the security flaws it had.

I don't think I've seen people hating the content created with it.

by oceansky

2/15/2026 at 8:31:55 AM

> Everyone on HN hates on things like Flash

That's clearly not true. Is that a rhetoric expression? Because I just wrote about Flash games being great - and I wasn't the only one doing so either.

by shevy-java

2/16/2026 at 8:30:03 PM

[dead]

by phucnet

2/15/2026 at 12:29:04 PM

[flagged]

by phucnet

2/15/2026 at 12:32:48 PM

[flagged]

by phucnet