A long time ago, flash games were very popular, especially among school-age children. These were all flash games that could be played directly in your browser, featured some of the hottest IPs around, and sometimes were completely original. It wasn't until Adobe Flash disappeared and hundreds of titles disappeared.
But in a bid to fuel nostalgia and another hallmark of game preservation efforts, dozens of Cartoon Network Flash titles have been revived and made playable once again. The Web Design Museum is a site dedicated to preserving “past trends in web design that were prevalent on the Internet from the creation of the first website in 1991 until the mid-2000s.”
In total, 44 titles have been preserved, which are completely free and can be played in modern browsers. Titles range from Samurai Jack to The Powerpuff Girls, with Scooby-Doo, Ed, Edd n Eddy, and Dexter's Laboratory in between.
Retro games can save me from modern gaming fatigue
There is a retro games corner you can play now. Save me from the modern microtransaction hell that is Louie the Kangaroo from Bomberman.
The timeline of these titles spans from 2001 (Scooby-Doo: Scooby Snapshopt) through the mid-2000s until the end of Cartoon Network's browser efforts with a game based on The Amazing World of Gumball in 2015.
“Our goal is to preserve the creative legacy of millennial web designers for future generations, because Internet users of 2030 will have little idea how unique the design of websites in 2003 was,” the site asserts in its “About Us” section.
If you've spent a few hours on the Cartoon Network site, this is a must
All in all, it's a truly amazing effort. It's especially surprising how smooth it is to load and play games, as if you're back in the 2000s. Everything has been preserved as it was.
As someone who has spent a lot of time on the Cartoon Network site, taking another look at each of these was a trip down memory lane. Some have stood the test of time and others are definitely better in my head.
If you've never played this title, there's no better time than now. Who knows, maybe flash games will make a comeback?
