Adobe Flash Player: The end of childhood
It’s 2013. A young kid and his friend are sitting at a computer playing games on the classic site Miniclip. They’re smashing the arrow keys until they won’t work anymore, and hitting the space bar so many times the finish has worn off. They play until the sun sets and then come back tomorrow for more.
Hundreds of thousands of kids across the globe will share this same wonderful experience. Whether you were six years old or 14, at school or at home, alone or with friends, most likely you loved games utilizing the Adobe Flash Player; flash games for short.
Created all the way back in 1996, the Adobe Flash Player allowed 70 thousand online games to run. However, this priceless program is gone – killed off by Adobe on December 31st, 2020, and not supported by any major browser shortly after. This single program being shut down renders thousands of websites practically useless, as now none of their games are playable.
A favorite game of many kids in Champaign-Urbana and around the country was “Poptropica,” a puzzle-solving game where players worked their way through a map, playing out the storyline to solve whatever type of mystery was happening.
Urbana High School senior Andrew Mancuso played Poptropica “religiously.” “I was on my 3rd or 4th playthrough of Skullduggery Island and I lost my account info. I cried for about three days but then I remembered my password and was eternally happy,” he said.
Parkland College sophomore Caleb Benedict can look back and reminisce about flash games. ”[I] Can’t tell you how many hours passed by playing the point and click adventure games or super mario 63”. Benedict has a very similar sentiment as other kids. “Flash games really were our childhoods. Sad to see that it’s gone now”
While you might not be able to go back and play games like Interactive Buddy, Electric Man 2, and Jacksmith, the memories from them live on.
Naturally, the children of tomorrow will find a new way to entertain themselves and in all likelihood it will be just as magical to them as flash games were to 2000s kids. But a chance to connect with a new generation through simple computer games has been lost. A chance to bond over something that a generation before enjoyed so much. Flash games are gone forever, but the memories from them live on.
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