From Homestar Runner to Salad fingers to badgers, stick figure battles, and the End of Ze World, this — dare I call it an artform? — was a cultural touchstone for a generation.
Flash made vector animation available to the masses, and internet distribution of the relatively small video files was a piece of cake. With the filetype now essentially deprecated, the creators gone on to bigger and better things, the distribution sites shut down, it is a dead form. Most of it will be lost forever, although there may be someone archiving some of it for posterity.
Guys, homestarrunner literally works again thanks to something called the Ruffle Project (just from reading the website). Enjoy the vector graphics and Easter eggs again
I use Ruffle on my personal domain to host my college flash web page again. I made the super Mario world map into a web page for an internet gaming group on campus and spent way too much time doing it. I was delighted I could host it again.
For creators that were still active some jumped ship to pre rendered videos, for example Salad Fingers lives on here:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9383CC2C6DBD902F
A major archival project for the whole flash era is Flashpoint Archive (formally known as BlueMaxima):
People jumped ship to prerendered videos even before the death or Flash, using Flash as the video player.
It’s been over a decade since I learned this, but if I recall correctly, SWF animations that were large enough had desync issues with the audio and frames. The solution was to export the animation as an actual video file and play that back.
Theres are some pretty massive archives already, including Flashpoint
If they were popular enough (like all the examples you’ve named), they probably have been converted to a more modern format already (like all the examples you’ve named).
You could also download the files and still watch them on a local machine using flash player to enjoy them in the original format, assuming the .FLVs themselves are still available. Makes me wonder if Newgrounds still has any of that somewhere, even if not accessible by the public. They’re still around, but they’re modern videos now.
I’m a little surprised nothing came to take the place of flash.
There are lots of animation tools that export to video, and there are WYSIWYG web editors that allow for interaction and movement.
But nothing really came out, built on html5, that let you easily create interactive motion narratives or games, so that you could just upload them somewhere.
I too have nostalgia for the animations of that era, but I do think a lot of those have been exported as videos and uploaded to YouTube. It’s not 100% the same but it’s better than nothing.
Hey, the badger is still alive and badgering!
So is Homestarrunner. Most of their flash stuff still works, too.
They’re still making videos on YouTube at least once a year too! One of the two brother chaps who created it went on to work on the animated show Gravity Falls too.
They both also worked on Yo Gabba Gabba, though one (Matt) has definitely appeared to do a lot more writing/production work (and a good bit of voice work)
Flash still got it good.
Consider the entire generation of 1970s and 1980s Betamax footage that is basically lost today.
When format wars snap to one side: VHS vs Betamax, HD-DVD vs BluRay, Flash vs HTML5, QuickTime vs DivX… The losing side basically loses a ton of footage.
For the most part, we know how to play Flash right now and mostly how to upconvert it or otherwise archive it. That’s not true of all formats.
What content was released on beta that wasn’t released on vhs or later on DVD or something else?
I don’t think it’s comparable at all.
First hit on Google was this list made by some Redditor: https://www.reddit.com/r/Betamax/comments/z8cun4/films_that_only_exist_on_betamax_or_alt_editions/
In any case: the big advantage of Betamax (and VHS) was how easy it was to get home-recordings done. An entire generation of family photos / family events (birthday parties, etc. etc.) are on Betamax and likely lost.
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Does anyone remember Xiao Xiao?
Certainly. I don’t think I ever watched or played it, but I remember young me pronouncing it “zack-see-oh zack-see-oh” every time it came up, which was a lot because I lived on Flash games.
Salad Fingers is on YouTube and it’s as creepy as ever. Maybe creepier as I get older.
Might I enquire about your spooooons?
They’re a pleasure for the TIPS!
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Yeah it is sad that we don’t have flash. But today I saw there’s a program Ruffle (written in Rust) that can run flash, and add support to browser through extensions or something.
A lot of the meme-tier flash from that period has been archived on dagobah.net.
Salad fingers is still coming put with new ones lol
