The demise of Adobe’s long-running plugin and creative tool, Flash, has been hailed as imminent from as far back as most of us can remember. Despite that view, and the likes of Apple dropping it from its smartphones years ago, Flash has soldiered on in a select few places, continuing to support the creation of games and animation despite more contemporary alternatives. However, with recent security holes revealed after the Hacking Team hacking, it’s end now seems closer than ever.
That’s put the willies in some of its longest-running fans. Even fans who have been absent for some time while their creators worked on other projects, like Homestar Runner and Strongbad, two characters that wouldn’t even be alive if it wasn’t for Flash. Now they’re going to have to move over to HTML5 and that could take some time.
Related: Enough is enough: Mozilla blocks Flash in Firefox until Adobe fixes security holes
Fortunately, Strongbad claims that with his old pal F-Sack, he’s managed to collect enough motion tweens to keep the series running until that time, but it could be touch and go for a while.
While the creation of the animations might now require different tools, we can all watch them far more easily now on YouTube, which means that all of the classics, as well as any new creations will be safe — even if not all of the Easter Eggs may work as intended.
Of course HomeStar and Strongbad aren’t the only two characters that Flash gave us over the years. Alien Hominid helped start the game-making careers of Tom Fulp and his fellow Newground alumni with their Behemoth company. There was Brackenwood and Bitey, not to mention the ever-popular Madness series of games and short films.
What are some of your most memorable Flash cartoons and games?
