The Internet Archive – a for-profit digital library known for its webback machine – announced that it would now save Flash animations and games for Adobe’s planned demise of Defont Web software in late 2020. The archive will mimic the content so that it preserves the critical elements of the early Internet culture for browsers, which it uses to run what it cannot run.
The internet archive says you can already browse 1,000 limited games and animations including classics like “Peanut Butter Jelly Time” and “All Your Bases Are Ours”. The organization says that emulation is made possible by an in-development flash emulator called Ruffle that is incorporated into its system. While Ruffle’s developers say it’s not currently compatible with most Flash projects created after 2013, consuming any amount of culture that handles many people’s adolescence and youthful adulthood is a win for preservation.
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Flash was crucial for creativity on the early web, turning drab pages of text and images into full-fledged dreams of movement, but the Internet Archive notes that Flash was really important because it was relatively easy to use:
Software software allows a beginner or beginner to create surprisingly complex and flexible graphic and sound shows that run beautifully on web browsers without the need for deep knowledge of individual brow operating systems and programming languages.
Flash’s expiration date has passed since 2017 when Adobe announced that it was providing support, but with Apple’s announcement that it will not allow Flash on iOS in 2010, more time is being written on the wall. In later years, Adobe decided to end support for Flash on mobile. After a while, Chrome, Edge and Safari chose to default to HTML5 whenever possible, leaving the old standby to rot.
With this new emulation tool in its tool belt, the Internet Archive should be equipped to serve as a vessel for many endangered Flash surgeons. And it’s not alone: game publisher Congregate also plans to continue hosting flash games on its site for the foreseeable future.
