Neopets’ classic Flash games, dead for years, are back

polygon.com:

For years, tons of Neopets’ best games were unavailable in the wake of Adobe Flash’s demise. It was a reality that pained longtime Neopets players attached to the beloved classics as the site continued to decay. But times are changing in Neopia; with new management, Neopets is bringing back more than 50 classic Flash games that have been offline for years.

The Neopets team, now housed under an independent company known as World of Neopia, Inc., announced last week that it’s looking to bring the site back to its “glory days” — first, by bringing back fan-favorite mini-games.

Neopets in its heyday served as an early internet platform for kids to build communities and create around an overarching story filled with adorable creatures and faeries. Neopets’ Flash mini-games were big part of it all, serving both as entertainment and a crucial way to earn the ever-important currency of Neopoints. The Neopets team attempted to preserve some of its games by converting the site to HTML-5 after Flash shut down, but a majority of the classics didn’t make the cut. To bring these games back, the Neopets team added Ruffle integration into the website; Ruffle is a Flash emulator that allows the classic games to run without too much extra work.

That means beloved games like Snowmuncher, Meerca Chase, Turmac Roll, and Hasee Bounce are back. In total, more than 50 games that didn’t make the HTML-5 conversion have been added back into Neopets. Not all classic games are running perfectly, as several games aren’t fully compatible just yet, according to the Ruffle FAQ. A list of known problems is available on the Neopets website. Likewise, the Ruffle emulator is not built to work specifically on mobile, so players may have some trouble there.