Lately I've been having a craving to play games, but nothing too high commitment like a massive RPG or anything since I've been pretty busy lately, so I've been playing some old flash games from my youth.
Unfortunately I've found a lot of them don't work, or have gated exclusive content to certain websites that don't even function properly anymore, but its nice when it works without hassle.
Right now I'm playing Epic War 1 and 2, Age of War, and recently finished up Sin Mark (suffers from the exclusive problem) and dropped Warlords because damn, its harder than I remembered, I must've went hard in beating that game as kid. Recently played The Last Stand 2 which was alright; wanted to play Gemcraft but way too much content was locked so I stopped.
Anyone got any great recommendations from the old days? (Or new ones too I guess, but the new ones I've seen so far look... off)
Before I recommend any flash games, I wish to promote Flashpoint Archive, formerly called "Bluemaxima's Flashpoint". It is a preservation project not just for flash games, but for potentially all games and animations that were uploaded to the web prior to the proliferation of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other sites such as Tumblr, etc. It is fairly easy to navigate, its built in search function works pretty well (if a bit particular), and it is in even more active development after being open sourced by its original creator (or at least given to other people to work on it in his stead). The version labeled "Infinity" is best for those who don't have entire hard drives to spare.
As for games, I recommend in no particular order:
*Requires going into the config tab and unlocking 18+ games, but you can specifically toggle the pron games as invisible.
Unfortunately almost all of that crap has been paywalled to hell or they've turned them into micro-transaction cancer. I know the type of games you're thinking of ( Let's be real we all played them in class ) and those are the ones you find on app stores and the modern versions are utterly bastardised versions.
WHAT YEAR IS IT?!
2003
Now load up BattleOn.
Jesus Christ I wish
I have a few that I saved over the years as I came across them. They were a popular thing to keep around on Navy ships for goofing off during slow periods. I really wish I had the original version of bejeweled, I was a monster at that game. I bought Bejeweled 3 on Origin, and played that for a while.
Not exactly what you’re asking for, but vimms lair lets you play any old console game through an in browser emulator
Super Mario Bros. Crossover
version 3.1.21
It is my favorite Mario fan game and my favorite fan game period.
The game is basically SMB 1 with many different playable characters from different NES games. The games SMB The Lost Level and SMB Special are included. And each game has "Hard Mode" maps if you want even more of a challenge. All the characters have multiple skins, some skins even play slightly differently, and there are multiple skins for the level maps, so there is variety in both visuals & gameplay.
You can play it using the program Flashpoint by BlueMaxima.
And you will need a program like Joy2Key to program if you want to use a controller.
The Last Spell is low comitment and I had lots of fun with it. Feels like the most glorious Flash game possible, but it runs like a normal PC game ( a mid-range laptop without a dedicated graphic card will run it flawlessly ).
You hire a bunch of random adventurers to defend a town in a dying world devoured by magic corruption.
In the town center, mages are casting The Last Spell in an attempt to save whatever is left of humanity from getting devoured by magic. If they succeed, magic is purged from the area.
There are multiple areas you unlock in a light story that dosen't get in the way. The different towns have different layouts and last-night boss. Each night in a run, town is attacked. Each day you can build and shop with ressources you got.
Each "run" is anywhere from less than 15 minutes to over an hour depending on difficulty. It is normal to "lose". I think tou are supposed to lose at some point ( I did. Often. ) You gain stuff for metaprogression even if your town center casters ring gets killed.
Graphics are rather cool, music awesome, sound effects and skills very fun. The metaprogression is well done. You can costumize difficulty as you wish. You can stop and resume later at any moment.
Advice : You're there to have fun. Click the "Limitless" mode once it's unlocked. You earned those bonuses. Use all the ones you want. ( "Normal" mode only allowes a few bonuses at once. There is no penalty for picking Limitless. ).
You can costumize your team's cosmetics and skin color ( you don't have to simp for diversity in Medieval gore fantasy ).
Sail the seven seas if you want to try it without buying.
The Last Stand series and Nerdook's old games like I Am Insane Rogue AI
Mastermind: World Conqueror.
That game had excellent voice acting. I'd say it's the best Evil Genius in a decade.
I absolutely recommend Epic Battle Fantasy 5 and 4 first and foremost. 5 have also been ported to phones. In addition Creeper Wars 3-4. Gemcraft seeies. Sonny 1-2. The Elephant Collection just released on Steam. Also Meatboy (the og prototype for SMB). Monsters Den. Robot Unicorn Attack and Canabalt if you want an endless runner. Off the top of my head. Several of these have a souped up Steam version if you want to support the devs.
depends on what you want. I'm still trying to find a functional version of budapest defenders.
That being said, If you like twitch-reaction games, I can't recommend any of the robot unicorn attack games enough (at least the ones released on the website before being ported to mobile)
I actually bought the first one when it made it to android, and make a point of hunting down the apk whenever I get a new phone, lol.
edit: add the old "Pengu" games to that list. Also newgrounds has a front-end for their old flash stuff
oh, and if you dig around a little bit, you can usually find the "adobe flash projector," which was a standalone player they released for "debugging" purposes.
Solarmax 1 and 2, Rebuild 1 and 2, Swordfall: Kingdoms, Haven: Prelude, Machiavellian Suns, Hex Empire, WarLight, Robotic Emergence, Hordes and Lords
You can play these over newgrounds.
Not a "flash" game in the technical sense of how it's coded, but I can't recommend There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension highly enough for some nostalgia and meta-humor on flash and various other games of that era.
Watch the trailer if you want, but otherwise it's zero commitment. Load it up and go.