Thank you to Bombas for sponsoring this video! One Purchased = One Donated, so head to bombas.com/nationsquid and use code NATIONSQUID at checkout for 20% off your first purchase. Twitter: twitter.com/NationSquidYT Instagram: instagram.com/nationsquid/ UPDATE: Like others have mentioned, the Flashpoint Archive is also a great resource for preserving flash, and I want to make sure that gets an honorable mention as well!!
With the death of flash, the Internet just feels so less child friendly. I had my own space by playing little games as a kid, and now it feels like everyone's lumped together
exactly.. no proper kids sites (hard to count roblox as it’s been overrun by adults) and no gaming sites for kids to have fun on. even though sites like coolmath are backed up the kids are no longer interested in it
There's very few children's sites left, but a lot of the old ones like coolmathgames are still there. It's almost like there's no NEW sites coming out made for children. But the old ones are still there sort of.
@@LittenV many of the ones left are overrun with adults like roblox :/ there really needs to be a new wave of kids sites and virtual worlds but everything is so app and micro transaction focused nowadays. there'd need to be some shift to laptop/pcs
I remember a version of The X-Files website from the 90s, that was never saved on the Wayback Machine, pre-flash... The entire site was like a mystery game, having photos of Mulder's desk or different environments from the show, and clicking on certain parts of the photos would take you to hidden sections. During certain points of loading the next page, a dark faded image would briefly flash on the screen saying "You're being watched...". It was an early ARG-style site that's completely lost to time, and I feel like I'm the only one that even remembers it. Such is the tragedy of lost media.
Was literally reminiscing about flash games with my nephew who was making a some type of mini game using some programming nurturing app on his tablet. I kinda hate how social media and the internet has evolved. A level of personalization and expression was robbed from us by malicious actors. Art suffering from bad actors and greed isn't new but still hurts. I remember when youtube channels were on par with MySpace personalization
When I was in school there was an website that had a lot of edutainment in it. We used it a lot and we liked it. When Flash shut down it was unusable. Luckily in about a year or so they fixed it. Now the website is still up and running as a HTML website.
@@odnpntYTOur school was actually surprisingly lax with the Flash games. So long as you weren't caught playing Flash games during lesson time, you were good.
Im shocked you didnt mention the flashpoint archive, it doesn't have everything but it has a lot. Alsoooo i run a twitter account dedicated to virtual world history and most of the virtual worlds i talk about on there are flash games so its always nice to see someone talk about this stuff. We're lucky poptropica and webkinz were able to survive flash shutting down, but most games weren't as lucky and thats why its important to talk about them. im glad fans try to revive them through private servers, everything from club penguin to disney's cars online can be played through a private server these days.
@Crudely-Drawn-Cupcake The Ruffle project is a flash emulator, converting it to HTML5. The base of it is still flash, but it is output to safer structuring. (Edit: nice profile picture)
Flash Games made the childhoods of many of the kids of 2000's and 2010's..I miss all the classic flash games that I'd play on my mom's computer such as Club Penguin and Moshi Monsters..
I was a Flash developer and loved it! ActionScript 1, 2 and 3 for interactive web sites, rather than straight games. (Started learning animation & code with Director, when everything was on CDs!)
I am so glad the Brothers Chaps and sites like Newgrounds worked on getting alternatives integrated on their Flash content. Losing sites like Homestar Runner and all the insane games and animations made on Newgrounds would be a massive loss.
I remember I used to play games on CoolMathGames all the time back in elementary-high school. But when I saw that message saying the game is no longer supported because Flash is dead, I felt really sad. Of course there is some games on that website still on there today but now they have a bunch of ads you are forced to watch now to continue playing and its just not the same anymore. Take me back to 2010 please x.x
I literally *just* wrote a research paper on the impact of Flash for my English 101 course. Seeing the notification for this video made my day! Not to mention this channel has the best sponsor segments that I actually watch through :)
I think of all the lost media subjects this is the one that makes me the most sad. Flash really made such a huge difference in the turn of the millennium internet space. Also, I almost always fast forward through ads but this one had me entranced 😆
I have a different memory of Flash. I remember a lot of sites prompting me to ”update flash”, even though it was installed, which was a low-level attempt at spreading adware
Correction: Flash Games never died, they are all still playable with maxima flashpoint and not to mention downloadable offline swfs are there for every flash game. Otherwise like always this was an amazing video!
Last year I found a folder from a TH-cam video via link, which actually has a working real version of Adobe Flash! It came with a flash file of BFDIA 5b, and it was actually playable!
Steve Jobs: "I don't like it because it's proprietary! We want to be able to have our say!" Also Steve Jobs: _Creates a closed, proprietary, completely walled-garden MacOS/iOS ecosystem_ Gotta love corporate feudalism. This is why I won't buy Apple anything, ever.
I don't know if I just missed it or not, but you could also point people to the Flashpoint Archive as a safer way for them to relive their old games and memories. They have a great amount of flash games and webpages there as well. Including a list of flash games/media being searched for
As a developer who has worked a heavy amount with HTML5 (it's like, 70% of my academic github) and web development, stories of old softwares like this always tickles my brain. Flash Player is something that always had me intrigued by it, how it had the whole internet on a leash was fascinating and the exploits were always so fun to study for me. great video as always man, good one :)
Adobe should have just released the source code to Flash Player when they discontinued it in 2020. It's not like anyone can make money off it at this point, not even them. It makes no sense taking it to the grave. At least if Adobe hosted the code on github or whatever, Ruffle and others could better emulate, and indeed preserve, SWF media.
Flash games are really nostalgic for me. I played them my entire childhood through the 2010s. I really enjoy to look back in time and sometimes play these games. Thankfully, Flashpoint has a lot of them, which really saves a day.
Hey Squid, subscriber and lightbulb head here with a friendly suggestion for your backdrop. I appreciate the soft white (yellow) hue of your lamps giving that old-school incandescent feel. I'd recommend picking up some mid-90s (or older if you can find them) GE Reveal bulbs for that warm, authentic, pinkish-orangey-yellow incandescent glow that even the best LEDs just can't seem to replicate. Not sure if you can still import incandescents to Cali but there are plenty of unscrupulous eBay sellers (and myself) who would ship without a care for regulations. I only mention this because you seem to have an eye for detail that helps contribute to your overall retro aesthetic. Even if you decide not to use them on your set, I've found that they're just swell for overall mental health. Like a pleasant scent in the air.
theres used to be an offline swf player to load swf files aswll! also old browsers used to support them aswell dno how to get them old things and the update but im sure itl be windows xp related lol
The Jackbox Party Pack games are built in "Flash". It's a little more complicated than that but the underlying tech is rooted in Flash/Animate. All non-platform specific code is AS3. We have a whole pipeline wrapped around it and there is still nothing better for making 2D vector based games (imo). We have huge admiration for this time in gaming history.
Ironically, all these "flashy" things for the internet were at a time that a lot of people still had slower internet access and PCs, and now we have more than enough speed and yet websites are just plain.
My fave Flash game was Lego Junkbot which I used to play all the time 20+ years ago. I recently rediscovered it on Flashpoint along with its sequel Junkbot Undercover.
Neopets is a site that was built around flash that somehow managed to remain afloat despite the end of flash. But it was hard for them. And even to this day the functionality isn't what once was, and some areas of the site are still broken.
i remember playing ABCY and CoolMath games like run, run 3 and Jellytruck. but sadly i can't play Spongebob Run cause the flash game isn't supported anymore. it was a game where you run and collect pickles. and i played papa's pizzeria. to sad that some of the flash games can't be played anymore.Some good times
Are we not gonna talk about the folder named "Plans for World Domination"? Asides that, I used to love playing flash games, especially the Papa's series e.g. Papa's Pizzeria, etc.
Revisiting the death of flash hits me harder now considering Adobe Animate (formerly Adobe Flash Pro) won't likely recieve any major updates for 2025. The Animate team stopped updating the prerelease forums months ago and we didn't hear anything new for Animate during Adobe MAX. The focus for Adobe right now appears to be just AI.
I had a lot of great memories playing Flash games throughout the 2000s and 2010s. It's a shame that the plug was pulled, which only added to the catastrophe that was 2020.
ok i really love your ad reads lmao. i could not have predicted it was a bombas ad and i love that. also you ham things up just enough to be silly af but still enjoyable. also also, flash games were my shit growing up. its so sad that proper preserval has been so hard
Man, as someone who learned Flash animation as Job, it still annoys me to no end. Nothing said in this video is wrong, but apparently no one knows that there was never a "successor" program as capable as flash for animators and designers, running on HTML5. I can't code, I could do sooo much with flash. Build whole frameworks for things all timed and triggerd with animations and a couple of stops and gotoAndPlays and plays. A decade later and all HTML5 tools are still garbage. Half of them don't even support nested animations. So I couldnt even learn a different program and continue what I did before. And the internet was filled with people telling me to "just use HTML5" ...just no, that's not how any of that works. Something died and was never replaced and people don't even know.
Thank you to Bombas for sponsoring this video! One Purchased = One Donated, so head to
bombas.com/nationsquid and use code NATIONSQUID at checkout for 20% off your first purchase.
Twitter: twitter.com/NationSquidYT
Instagram: instagram.com/nationsquid/
UPDATE: Like others have mentioned, the Flashpoint Archive is also a great resource for preserving flash, and I want to make sure that gets an honorable mention as well!!
ima go to their site
*Best sponsorhip ad*
With the death of flash, the Internet just feels so less child friendly. I had my own space by playing little games as a kid, and now it feels like everyone's lumped together
Yeah it’s sad I wish there was a new equivalent for kids
We could bring back obscenity laws
exactly.. no proper kids sites (hard to count roblox as it’s been overrun by adults) and no gaming sites for kids to have fun on. even though sites like coolmath are backed up the kids are no longer interested in it
There's very few children's sites left, but a lot of the old ones like coolmathgames are still there. It's almost like there's no NEW sites coming out made for children. But the old ones are still there sort of.
@@LittenV many of the ones left are overrun with adults like roblox :/ there really needs to be a new wave of kids sites and virtual worlds but everything is so app and micro transaction focused nowadays. there'd need to be some shift to laptop/pcs
The irony of Steve Jobs complaining about a product being proprietary and controlled completely by one company
I think the difference is how they handle it. Adobe knew it was proprietary and they own it but it was buggy and security issuesade it doom to failure
@@d24no, it was because Steve wanted it to be FOSS so he could “borrow” it
@@Jetway-YefanExactly. FOSS is like candy to big greedy companies. They can't resist using it for their own personal profit!
People forget that he also wanted iMessage and FaceTime to be open before he died.
Probably should mention Flashpoint, which archives a good deal of flash games and movies
Cant believe he didnt menion it
@@elfhuo For real lol
They are still missing a few million games );
I remember a version of The X-Files website from the 90s, that was never saved on the Wayback Machine, pre-flash... The entire site was like a mystery game, having photos of Mulder's desk or different environments from the show, and clicking on certain parts of the photos would take you to hidden sections. During certain points of loading the next page, a dark faded image would briefly flash on the screen saying "You're being watched...". It was an early ARG-style site that's completely lost to time, and I feel like I'm the only one that even remembers it. Such is the tragedy of lost media.
That sounds sick. Shame it's lost..
maybe a miracle will happen and someone will upload it somewhere somehow
Maybe the person who made it might port the source code over to HTML5 someday. They did that with lineriders I believe.
You just unlocked a long-shut door in my memory. You're NOT the only one who played that game!
Was literally reminiscing about flash games with my nephew who was making a some type of mini game using some programming nurturing app on his tablet. I kinda hate how social media and the internet has evolved. A level of personalization and expression was robbed from us by malicious actors. Art suffering from bad actors and greed isn't new but still hurts. I remember when youtube channels were on par with MySpace personalization
Flash games on the school computers were actully peak gaming
When I was in school there was an website that had a lot of edutainment in it. We used it a lot and we liked it. When Flash shut down it was unusable. Luckily in about a year or so they fixed it. Now the website is still up and running as a HTML website.
@@odnpntYTOur school was actually surprisingly lax with the Flash games. So long as you weren't caught playing Flash games during lesson time, you were good.
Im shocked you didnt mention the flashpoint archive, it doesn't have everything but it has a lot. Alsoooo i run a twitter account dedicated to virtual world history and most of the virtual worlds i talk about on there are flash games so its always nice to see someone talk about this stuff. We're lucky poptropica and webkinz were able to survive flash shutting down, but most games weren't as lucky and thats why its important to talk about them. im glad fans try to revive them through private servers, everything from club penguin to disney's cars online can be played through a private server these days.
do you know abt stardoll?
@eezequiel13 ive heard of it but i always get it mixed up with starfall😭
Flash Players were golden era for gaming and web browsing in 2000s and 2010s
14:00 It is so hilarious that Apple's owner complained basically about a monopoly
Steve wasn’t completely wrong - Adobe did have a monopoly but yeah very ironic
@axethepenguin He was right about security and mobile compatibility, indeed.
The best Uses of Flash were Homestar runner, and Coolmath games, hands down.
Also I was never able to experience Club Penguin in it's heyday
Homestar Runner is built with Ruffle, last time I checked. (It even works on Meta Quest)
@Crudely-Drawn-Cupcake The Ruffle project is a flash emulator, converting it to HTML5. The base of it is still flash, but it is output to safer structuring. (Edit: nice profile picture)
That sponsorship segment was so good I hated it
Flash Games made the childhoods of many of the kids of 2000's and 2010's..I miss all the classic flash games that I'd play on my mom's computer such as Club Penguin and Moshi Monsters..
I remember installing flash on my PC 19282 times and still getting error screens saying I don’t have flash installed.
I was a Flash developer and loved it! ActionScript 1, 2 and 3 for interactive web sites, rather than straight games. (Started learning animation & code with Director, when everything was on CDs!)
I am so glad the Brothers Chaps and sites like Newgrounds worked on getting alternatives integrated on their Flash content. Losing sites like Homestar Runner and all the insane games and animations made on Newgrounds would be a massive loss.
I remember I used to play games on CoolMathGames all the time back in elementary-high school. But when I saw that message saying the game is no longer supported because Flash is dead, I felt really sad. Of course there is some games on that website still on there today but now they have a bunch of ads you are forced to watch now to continue playing and its just not the same anymore. Take me back to 2010 please x.x
I used to love playing flash games as a kid, my favourite was Raze 2 and Strike Force Heroes 2 as well as henry stickmin games
Mine were Club Penguin and Moshi Monsters
Mine were the run trilogy on coolmathsgames
I literally *just* wrote a research paper on the impact of Flash for my English 101 course. Seeing the notification for this video made my day! Not to mention this channel has the best sponsor segments that I actually watch through :)
NationSquid really just dropped lore in the format Bluey's Clues in the ad
I laughed harder at an ad than i have at anything else in a long time. Absolute masterpiece!
Genau 😂
I think of all the lost media subjects this is the one that makes me the most sad. Flash really made such a huge difference in the turn of the millennium internet space.
Also, I almost always fast forward through ads but this one had me entranced 😆
Man I miss Flash-era interent. It was such an innocent time. Social Media has ruined such a good thing!
I have a different memory of Flash. I remember a lot of sites prompting me to ”update flash”, even though it was installed, which was a low-level attempt at spreading adware
flash games are essentially nostalgia we would like to relive every once in a while
A moment of silence for the old Garfield website. Personally one of the most tragic losses
When I was a kid I was obsessed with cartoon network flash games. It's sad to think some of them might be lost forever.
Correction: Flash Games never died, they are all still playable with maxima flashpoint and not to mention downloadable offline swfs are there for every flash game. Otherwise like always this was an amazing video!
Last year I found a folder from a TH-cam video via link, which actually has a working real version of Adobe Flash! It came with a flash file of BFDIA 5b, and it was actually playable!
13:40 Apple complaining about proprietary solutions is peak of hypocrisy.
Steve Jobs: "I don't like it because it's proprietary! We want to be able to have our say!"
Also Steve Jobs: _Creates a closed, proprietary, completely walled-garden MacOS/iOS ecosystem_
Gotta love corporate feudalism. This is why I won't buy Apple anything, ever.
I'll forever hold a special place for Flash in my heart. That's how my journey with programming started. Actionscript 3.0 was the bomb.
how dare TH-cam hide this for 56 mins
fortunately there was a flash game library successfully archived 700 ish SWFs and fully playable on windows XP VM.
its name is Flash Games 1.01
Hello to all my Club Penguin brothers and sisters!
I don't know if I just missed it or not, but you could also point people to the Flashpoint Archive as a safer way for them to relive their old games and memories. They have a great amount of flash games and webpages there as well. Including a list of flash games/media being searched for
Flash Games are, or were, the lifeline of ppl in class weather in early Covid or in general. Rip flash 😢
OOH NEW NationSquid video. Here's my Sunday looking all up now!
Everyone talks about Flash Player but nobody seems to talk about Macromedia Shockwave when it comes to games. :(
We all missed the original flash player, RIP! We’re stuck with unaccurate flash emulations instead 😢
used to play a website called horrorscarygames and it died with flash, so many games little me was thrilled by just gone.💔😣
As a developer who has worked a heavy amount with HTML5 (it's like, 70% of my academic github) and web development, stories of old softwares like this always tickles my brain. Flash Player is something that always had me intrigued by it, how it had the whole internet on a leash was fascinating and the exploits were always so fun to study for me.
great video as always man, good one :)
Adobe should have just released the source code to Flash Player when they discontinued it in 2020. It's not like anyone can make money off it at this point, not even them. It makes no sense taking it to the grave. At least if Adobe hosted the code on github or whatever, Ruffle and others could better emulate, and indeed preserve, SWF media.
It’s Adobe - the same company that charges cancellation fees when cancelling a subscription
Adobe flash was my favourite because the games are the best such as Last Stand Union City and much more❤ miss those memories
Flash games are really nostalgic for me. I played them my entire childhood through the 2010s. I really enjoy to look back in time and sometimes play these games. Thankfully, Flashpoint has a lot of them, which really saves a day.
Hey Squid, subscriber and lightbulb head here with a friendly suggestion for your backdrop.
I appreciate the soft white (yellow) hue of your lamps giving that old-school incandescent feel.
I'd recommend picking up some mid-90s (or older if you can find them) GE Reveal bulbs for that warm, authentic, pinkish-orangey-yellow incandescent glow that even the best LEDs just can't seem to replicate.
Not sure if you can still import incandescents to Cali but there are plenty of unscrupulous eBay sellers (and myself) who would ship without a care for regulations.
I only mention this because you seem to have an eye for detail that helps contribute to your overall retro aesthetic.
Even if you decide not to use them on your set, I've found that they're just swell for overall mental health. Like a pleasant scent in the air.
great video!
The irony of Steve Jobs whining about proprietary software is rich.
theres used to be an offline swf player to load swf files aswll! also old browsers used to support them aswell dno how to get them old things and the update but im sure itl be windows xp related lol
Fun fact blue clues dosent use actully letters now it’s FUCKING EMAILS 😭😭
7:38 I love how he has to have something beatles related in almost every video
It gives me life
The Jackbox Party Pack games are built in "Flash". It's a little more complicated than that but the underlying tech is rooted in Flash/Animate. All non-platform specific code is AS3. We have a whole pipeline wrapped around it and there is still nothing better for making 2D vector based games (imo).
We have huge admiration for this time in gaming history.
Flash games were the best
Dude, I remember spending so much time playing flash games in the browser on our school computers and later on my own. I miss those times...
Ironically, all these "flashy" things for the internet were at a time that a lot of people still had slower internet access and PCs, and now we have more than enough speed and yet websites are just plain.
My fave Flash game was Lego Junkbot which I used to play all the time 20+ years ago. I recently rediscovered it on Flashpoint along with its sequel Junkbot Undercover.
Neopets is a site that was built around flash that somehow managed to remain afloat despite the end of flash. But it was hard for them. And even to this day the functionality isn't what once was, and some areas of the site are still broken.
Living the internet with the Adobe Flash being discontinued has got to be the worst feeling ever happened in life.
Crazy Monkey games was my go to site back at school, was always playing "The Last Stand" or "Zombie Horde"
i remember playing ABCY and CoolMath games like run, run 3 and Jellytruck. but sadly i can't play Spongebob Run cause the flash game isn't supported anymore. it was a game where you run and collect pickles. and i played papa's pizzeria. to sad that some of the flash games can't be played anymore.Some good times
Are we not gonna talk about the folder named "Plans for World Domination"? Asides that, I used to love playing flash games, especially the Papa's series e.g. Papa's Pizzeria, etc.
Revisiting the death of flash hits me harder now considering Adobe Animate (formerly Adobe Flash Pro) won't likely recieve any major updates for 2025.
The Animate team stopped updating the prerelease forums months ago and we didn't hear anything new for Animate during Adobe MAX. The focus for Adobe right now appears to be just AI.
0:55 That banana flown on SpaceX's Ship 31
One of the best sponsorship segments I've seen. For once didn't skip it.
I once painstakingly archived over 2000 swf games from a gaming website back in 2012. I put them on an external hardrive which was prompty stolen :'(
rip flash :/
I had a lot of great memories playing Flash games throughout the 2000s and 2010s. It's a shame that the plug was pulled, which only added to the catastrophe that was 2020.
19:00 Yep...... And its an absolute tragedy that we went from colorful and full of life web design, to a bland lifeless corporate Void
ok i really love your ad reads lmao. i could not have predicted it was a bombas ad and i love that. also you ham things up just enough to be silly af but still enjoyable. also also, flash games were my shit growing up. its so sad that proper preserval has been so hard
The bionicles flash game altered the course of my life in ways so profound they cannot be put into words
It's sad how much so much of the soul of the old internet has been sacrificed to make the internet smartphone friendly.
Great video! Adobe Flash was so great for its time that even I didn't realize...
The good thing is that Ruffle Flash managed to revive the games, and there's Flashpoint too.
You explained the SWFs so well actually. You earned yourself a like and a sub🎉
The blues clues bit made me so genuinely happy you dont even know
the blues clues segment was so cute i love you nationsquid
"sister in scottsdale" lmao
16:07 greatest band of all time
Love your vids man. Nice work.
11:55 did he say "halfhazardly "? Isnt it haphazardly??
the sponsor bits are getting crazier by the second
Jobs was absolutely just salty that a different company had control over part of the internet because he wanted to control it all.
Still remember being on the death of flash
Thank god I grew up in the 2010s. Caught Flash games before they would be gone.
Man, as someone who learned Flash animation as Job, it still annoys me to no end. Nothing said in this video is wrong, but apparently no one knows that there was never a "successor" program as capable as flash for animators and designers, running on HTML5.
I can't code, I could do sooo much with flash. Build whole frameworks for things all timed and triggerd with animations and a couple of stops and gotoAndPlays and plays. A decade later and all HTML5 tools are still garbage. Half of them don't even support nested animations. So I couldnt even learn a different program and continue what I did before. And the internet was filled with people telling me to "just use HTML5" ...just no, that's not how any of that works.
Something died and was never replaced and people don't even know.
Great video but you didnt even mention flashpoint archive (formerly Bluemaxima's Flashpoint)
Oh man, big nostalgia in blues clues bit
Ahh, this brings me back…
I think I actually enjoyed the sponership skit more than the actual video XD couldn't have guessed where it was going
I remember our school used Adobe flash
the mailbox blues clues joke made my day lol
flash games were my life got me into fancy pants the henry stickmin games crush the castle the last stand games alien hominid etc my childhood
Steve Jobs complains about Flash being proprietary. The irony is palpable
I still love flash games
Petition for nationsquid to remake blue's clues
iOS is also proprietary as Apple controls its and doesn't license it to manufactures to use as Google does with Android
3 words ruffle flash emulator it's not perfect but it lets you play flash games in your browser just do it in a spare browser
6:14 holy shit this is great
I loved the flash games before it went out of support.
damn the logo and thought of this brought .....flashbacks