Editorial: Damn you Adobe Flash Player. Damn you for leaving us.

Last night, I experienced a kick of nostalgia for old gaming sites I used to fuck around on. You know, sites like GamesGames or Addictinggames, even Miniclip when the mood was right. I’d spend hours afterschool on these havens, gaming away the boredom and loneliness of an awkward 12-year-old.  

There were the classic escape room simulations, where you’d click around cupboards in increasing frustration. There were stressful action games, like BubbleTrouble, that took intense concentration and energy not to get killed off at any second. Then there were RPG games (my favourite) where you could run a small penguin pizza joint or animal shelter, date Adam Sandler or climb the social ladders of high school.  

But, as I soon found out, you can’t play these games anymore. And the reason all boils down to one simple answer: Adobe Flash Player. Adobe stopped supporting Flash Player in December 2020. I vaguely remember all the annoying pop-ups I’d get about it on my browser, but at the time I really wasn’t bothered. To me, it was the equivalent of all those “please back up your computer” or “your computer has updates ready to install” notifications I get. Sure, sounds like something I SHOULD check out, but that also sounds like a problem for another day.  

But now that day is here and I cannot play the games of my childhood. They’re lost behind grey boxes of “You need Adobe Flash Player to access this game”. Only that no longer EXISTS. Adobe Flash Player is dead. There’s no update, no simple download. The software is gone, along with my hopes of virtually dating Adam Sandler.  

This whole realisation is almost as devastating as the time my brothers sold my Simpsons Hit and Run Xbox game without telling me (yes, it’s been over 10 years and I’m still pissed about it, you little rascals).  

Sure, there’s been new games made since then on these sites. But let’s face it, they’re all a bit shit. I don’t want to virtually apply TikTok makeup to a baby’s face. I want to run a small farming village into the ground, dammit.  

Sometimes, there are people that care enough to somehow resurrect these games from the dead. Remember when Club Penguin was brought back from the dead? And not only that, but was made a socialist society through the elimination of membership? Or when old school RuneScape was offered alongside the newer, tackier one? These are the little things that keep me going through dark times such as these. But these resurrections happen few and far between, and only the big, publicly-backed games receive such attention. Not, you know, a shitty niche escape game.  

So, in the meantime, I just want to offer one final fuck you to Adobe Flash Player. You know what you did. You know what you took from us.  

X

Caroline