An emulator will allow us to continue using flash to play old games
A team from Newgrounds is preparing a Flash emulator in order to preserve games. It will be able to execute any content for flash, from complete web pages to classic games.
Flash will eventually die, it is something that browsers have been delaying for years and finally we already have confirmation that Chrome, Firefox and other browsers will stop supporting it at the end of 2020. Then millions of pages that have not been updated but remain active will leave to work, and although that has forced the use of newer systems such as HTML5, a huge number of classic games will no longer be able to be enjoyed, losing a fundamental part of the past of the web and the video game.
To avoid being completely lost, a number of Newgrounds users have created the Ruffle project. It is about what could be considered today as a Flash emulator, which would mimic the behavior of the player program and eventually allow us to continue playing games that, although small, were the first steps for larger developers.
Don't let content just die
The project is being developed on the Newgrounds forums, a website known for being one of the first sites where people could upload Flash videos (mostly animations) and later, complete games. Some games on this site were the first releases from famous studios and creators, such as Alien Hominid , the first game from The Behemoth in 2002, who later created masterpieces like Castle Crashers.
The project for the moment already allows the reproduction of web pages and they are checking one by one if the games are played as they should. The emulator also has support for touch screens, which could make mobile phones able to play various flash games that could never be enjoyed.
These actions remind us of the complex process of digital preservation, which involves keeping older games accessible in one way or another to preserve a history that even today struggles to be considered culture by the general public. It's similar to finding prototypes of games from years ago and making copies of them so they can be played with modern emulators, allowing us to understand certain games from our history.
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