Underappreciated Flash Games

By this year’s end, support for Flash will have ceased, which not only represents the end of an era, but also a potential threat to game preservation, as one by one these titles may begin to fade away. There is some hope: Newgrounds for example have developed their own player that should continue to deliver us "The Problems of the Future, Today", but not all sites are taking this approach, and many games will have already been lost.

Against this back-drop, I thought I would list some of the most interesting, innovative games I can recall from a misspent childhood on sites such as Newgrounds, Coffeebreakarcade and the like. Rather than listing games that everyone is already acquainted with, like Line Rider or Xaio Xaio 9, I’ve tried to focus on games that, while may have been beloved at the time, have know faded from the popular consciousness. Let’s go.

Alkaline Trio vs. Hell

Straight out of the gate, we have a poster-child for Flash game preservation, Alkaline Trio vs. Hell, AKA Emogame 1.5, the first spin-off in the then-popular Emogame franchise. The series seems to have been completely scrubbed from the internet, with the only lasting evidence of its existance being references on internet message boards, and this solitary blog-post from back in 2012 giving a sort-of ten year retrospective on the game, which also names Jason Oda as the designer (though he makes no reference to the games on his official website). Basically, this whole ordeal shows how easily parts of gaming history can be lost forever. And in the case of Alkaline Trio vs Hell, that really is a damn shame, as it was such an awesome game.

The game was in the style of a side-scrolling beat ‘em up with platforming elements. You take control of the members of rock-group Alkaline Trio who, after a tragic accident, find themselves in hell. You have to battle against the forces of darkness, and the many celebrities also condemned to the pit, as you seek to overthrow Satan, and possibly find your way home. Each member of the band has their own set of attacks and screen-clearing special moves, and when one is defeated, the next one steps up to take their place. Across the several levels (this was surprisingly long for a flash game) you could rescue and recruit more famous faces to the cause, and do battle with many more in the forms of mini-bosses. The only one I remember with any clarity is a fight against Hitler, who you come across giving a campaign rally, and he orders armies of Nazis to attack you from the podium.

I’m not sure if I ever managed to beat it (the whole game was difficult, and the final battle was absolutely brutal) but the game definitely seared itself into my memory. Instant classic.

Copter

Copter was, apparently just too far ahead of its time. If only it had waited a decade, ripped off Mario's assets and aesthetic and released on phones instead, it could have become known as one of the most popular games in the world. Sadly, while everyone remembers Flappy Bird, nobody remembers Copter, despite it being pretty much the same game. Here, give it a go if you don’t believe me: coptergame

While the above website is apparently from 2009, I definitely remember playing this at school, so the original release could be anywhere from 2001 to 2007, but in any event, long before Flappy Bird’s 2013 appearance.

Crimson Room

The Crimson Room was a point and click style adventure/puzzle game, all set within one room. It was very much a precursor to the many escape-room experiences you can visit today, it that you have one goal: escape. This is done by clicking around the room to pick up items, open drawers, and reveal hidden panels. It was short, but pretty clever. Unfortunatly, a lot of the difficulty came from figuring out what to click on to move your character around. Searching behind the mattress, for example, involved moving to the fixed camera looking at the bed, clicking the pillow to lift it, and then clicking on the precise piece of headboard in order to to move to look behind it.

The game was quite popular, and garnered a spin-off, The Blue Chamber, and a direct sequel The Viridian Room, which managed to not only make navigation a hundred times worse, but also had dreadful puzzles which either required clicking on things multiple times (ensuring you’ll miss them on a first pass) or outright moon logic.

There was apparently also a remake/sequel released a couple of years ago on Steam. I’ve haven’t tried it yet, and the reviews are not too encouraging, but I may still buy it out of nostalgia.

Fat Cat

This is the only game on this list from this decade, as I’d mostly moved on from Flash games by this point, but I just have to include this one because of just how exciting and innovating it is. Fat Cat is a shmup (a cute ‘em up, if you want to get specific) with a very interesting set of gimmicks.

The titular cat is controlled via keyboard, and is rather slow, and incapable of standard fire, possessing only a special weapon with limited use. Your main form of attack instead comes from the second character, the Owl, who is controlled via mouse, allowing for rapid movement, has a main gun for taking out enemies, and most importantly is invulnerable to bullets, allowing it to be used as a shield to protect the much more fragile Cat.

This alone would make for a fascinating game, but is instead a mere foundation for the rest of the game to be built upon! Not only is the Owl the main means of attack and defence, but is also capable of grabbing and manipulating objects in the environment. The first use of this is grabbing and rapidly moving the Cat, either to get it out of harm’s way, or to pick up valuable power-ups, but this quickly develops into sliding blocks back-and forth to reveal passages, crush enemies, or deflect lasers. Later on, switches appear which can be manipulated to turn lasers on or off, as needed. It reminds me of the Murphy levels from Rayman Legends, only less annoying.

This is one of the most unique shmups of the last decade, and deserves much more attention than it’s gotten.

Frank’s Adventure

There was a particular genre of Flash games that seemed to proliferate on gaming sites of the mid-2000s, games just as deserving of the moniker “walking simulator” as any of today’s artsy walking games. These “games” generally involved walking around a map, talking to people, and performing an endless series of fetch quests with little to no combat or actual “gameplay” than finding the next person to give stuff to. There were a few memorable examples, Legend of Zelda fangame The Lampshade of No Real Significance being a classic of the genre, and there was even one on Cartoon Network’s own game site where you had to walk around a topical resort, fetching and trading items with your favourite cartoon characters (which had some very catchy music!) None of these managed the infamy of Frank’s Adventure. The cause of this reputation? Dirty pics.

This was the entire basis of the game; fetch items for people, get given cartoon polaroids as reward, which you could then sell to a local magazine for big bucks. The quests varied from “catch a dog” to “assemble the exact combination of ice-creme flavours for me”. Oh, and of course the many, many women that just want cocaine in return for their nudes, because edgyness. The four games in the series varied in quality (the fourth in particular, was far too large, required stupid levels of grinding and was all-together too annoying) with the second entry probably being the best, in terms of puzzles and graphical flourishes.

Honestly, all of these games feel very alive, with lots of little details that really have no impact on the game at all, but are rather a labour of love. The skies are filled with planes, blimps, and helicopters, the seas play host to boats passing by, a man mows his lawn in an enclosing pattern, and people play tennis in the nearby courts. It’s weird to see this much effort put into the extra details, rather than making the moment to moment gameplay actually fun.

Still, this is from the same mind that brought us platformer Castle Cat 3 in all its messed up glory, and I recall enjoying that at the time.

Interactive Buddy

Interactive Buddy feels like what happens when a child runs out of flies to pull the wings off of, and turns to game development instead. The game features a person, made up of six circles, that you can shake the hand of, tickle, spray with a garden hose, or alternatively: punch, shoot, burn, explode, zap, bludgeon, or orbitally strike. What fun!

Every interaction with your buddy nets you money which can be spent on new toys, physics options, and implements of torture, so you’re encouraged to experiment, and find ways of earning money quickly to unlock more stuff. Among the unlockables are skins for your buddy, so you can instead beat up on era-specific targets such as Tinky Winky, George Bush, or Strawberry Clock (an early Newgrounds meme character).

The game was pretty popular when it came out, partially for its advanced (for the time) ragdoll physics, but mainly because it gave you the opportunity to sock Napoleon Dynamite in the mouth. It launched a bunch of imitators, including one that memorably allowed you to remove your buddies skin with a razor-blade item and then crucify them. Lovely.

Madness Interactive

I know I said no famous entries, but in my defence Madness Combat never managed to break into the mainstream in the way that the likes of Weebl and Bob or Charlie the Unicorn did, so it’s still cult, sorta? Anyway, the first Madness game managed to take what made the original cartoons work, and transfer it pretty accurately into videogame form. The only difference is, while Hank in the shorts manages to wreck havok for several minutes at a time, in the game, your avatar has a life expectancy of maybe a few seconds.

This game is hard as nails, which is compounded with issues such as your mouse cursor falling offscreen (you’re going to want to fullscreen this one). Everything on screen is out to kill you, all of them are armed to the teeth, and no sooner are you able to wrench a gun off one of their corpses you’ll find yourself out of ammo and stuck pistol whipping foes while jumping around like a lunatic, trying not to have your entire face removed with a sawn-off.

The game was very impressive regardless, featuring a wide variety of weapons and potential for show-boating. You can chuck a knife upwards, scoop an uzi from the ground, unload it into a foe flying in from above, throw the empty weapon at someone creeping up behind and catch the blade out of the air in time to flick it into the face of a bad that’s just spawned in front of you. There’s no rush quite like it, and well worth the several hours dicking around to reach that stage.

Spank the Monkey

Ah, Spank the Monkey. Slide your mouse in a whipping motion to get the momentum necessary to slap the inflatable monkey as hard as you can. That’s it, that’s the game. The early 2000s were a simpler time.

Stick RPG

Finally, we have Stick RPG, a classic top-down time-waster. You awaken one day as a stick figure in a 2D world, and said world is your oyster. Starting out as a lowly wage slave at McSticks, you can further yourself in life by studying at the local university to increase your smarts, work out to increase your strength, or just drink copious amounts of booze at the local bar to raise your charisma. From there, you can choose to climb the corporate ladder to become a CEO, live a life of crime sticking up stores and selling cocaine (I guess coke-dealing was an important part of 2000s counter-culture?) or become a champion brawler at the local pub, starting fights and looting the corpses afterwards. Between the 5 day prison sentence for holding up the store, and the total lack of any criminal penalties for knifing a guy and stealing his wallet in broad daylight, crime is taken much less seriously in stick-land.

Actually, while we’re still on the topic of the bar-fights, being able to summon fire-balls and chi blasts from your hands, in a bar-room brawl no less, is some next-level shit. Dragon Ball has a lot to answer for. I’m also equal-parts impressed and horrified by the little animated heart by each characters health bar, that starts pretty healthy and normal, to looking twisted and busted up, gobbing up lumps of blood and turning a sickening black colour.

What little bits of writing the game has is all in the same irreverent, misanthropic style that propelled GTA to success, and coupled with the open-ended structure of the game it’s kinda obvious what the main influences were.

Apparently the goal is to buy the most expensive house you can, eventually maxing out at a castle, but I never got anywhere near. Reaching that point would require well over an hour of mindless grinding, even with the most optimal play, and the novelty does eventually run out, but not before sucking you into a hypnotic state for the duration of your session. Like the Crimson Room, this also has a sequel available on Steam, but this one has overwhelmingly positive reviews, and by the looks of the trailer/description, probably a good ten times the stuff to do as well. I somehow doubt it’s worth the full asking price ($15, really?) but I’ve already added it to my wishlist in hopes of a sale, cause yeah, I’d be well up for a more refined, fleshed out version of this.

Going into this list, there were certain games I felt I had to include, only to find out on inspection that they weren’t Flash games at all, rather Shockwave or Java instead. So, that calls for a second list, coming soon to a browser near you!

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