Your favorite Neopets Flash games are back

theverge.com:

By Ash Parrish, a reporter who has covered the business, culture, and communities of video games for seven years. Previously, she worked at Kotaku.

Neopets is back in a big way. I don’t mean the revamped website or even the weird bit of news where Arthur lookalike John Legend has become Neopets’ first influencer. I’m talking about the games. Over 50 web browser games from the site’s past have been restored via an emulator and are playable right now.

These games’ triumphant return is a part of Neopets’ “new era” that began when Neopets’ parent company, NetDragon, allowed the site to spin off into its own fully independent company. Under this new leadership, The Neopets Team began working immediately to revive the flagging site that’s been around since — brace yourself, elder millennials — 1999. The team worked on fixing bugs, implementing community feedback, and announced it would transition away from the poorly received NFT game Neopets Metaverse. And one of the biggest, top-of-mind goals for the team was to bring back the old browser games that have languished in digital purgatory since Adobe stopped supporting Flash in 2020.

Now, using the Ruffle emulator, all your favorites — Meepit Juice Break,Hasee Bounce,Meerka Chase II,Faerie Caves II,Faerie Bubbles — are back, and by extension, we, too, are so back. (FYI: You will need an account to play the classic games.)

Neopets games were my jams. I spent so much time before, during, and after school playing games like Meerca Chase II and Hasee Bounce. I distinctly remember playing Hasee Bounce with tears streaming down my face because the little hasee creatures were so stinkin’ cute.

Just today, when I heard the news, I immediately booted up Faerie Caves II and was