With the death of Adobe Flash this year, one Flash game developer is preserving his games in a unique way: by porting them to the original Gameboy. Flash Player faced a slow death, taking over nine years to be formally phased out by every major web browser and finally by Adobe themselves. This left tens of thousands of Flash games up in the air, with fans scrambling to preserve them.
Some fans took it upon themselves to start up their own archival projects. Flashpoint is one such project and it has already built up a library of more than 36,000 Flash games, archiving from numerous sites like Newgrounds and ArmorGames. Other fans have worked to port games from Flash to other platforms, such as HTML5. However, many Flash games have unfortunately been left behind, leaving them unplayable.
Prominent Flash game developer Antony Lavelle went with a more unique option for his own games. Lavelle is known for his work on over 70 flash games, including Shift, Upgrade Complete, and IndestructoTank. Disappointed by the end of Adobe’s support for Flash, he quickly went to work and released IndestructoTank to both web browser AND the original Gameboy, providing a free ROM for the game along with its source code. He goes on to describe that the Game Boy version is the most definitive version of the game yet and any proceeds he makes off selling the source code are going to be donated to charity.
Although Lavelle is just one of the many Flash developers whose games have now become unplayable, this just goes to show that not all hope is lost for these dead games. Some developers have been quick to port to other platforms, like Frog Factions being released on Steam, but given the relatively simplistic gameplay of many such games, the Gameboy might just be the platform to go to. It has never been easier to load up a flashcart with homebrew ROMs and perhaps this could lead to a resurgence of popularity for the platform.
Even if it does not though, it is still nice to see these old Flash games getting some love. Many of us grew up playing them and seeing them just killed off without any sort of second chance is definitely disappointing. That’s why projects like Lavelle’s or Flashpoint are so important, preserving the games so future generations can enjoy them too. Not even Flash’s death could kill Neopets, so surely there is hope for these other classics.
Source: Antony Lavelle/Reddit