Let’s briefly go over the story again, in case you didn’t see it the first time.

Flash games were huge. Massive. Games went viral. Developers jumped into the spotlight, many moving onto greatness in the wider industry. Genres were created. Communities formed, large and small. And that’s just the games — Flash animations took up an even larger spot, and arguably an even larger place in the early internet cultural realm.

But as time wore on, Flash’s dilapidated codebase of worm-eaten wood and rusted metal resulted in security leaks, performance problems and the outright denial of entry onto mobile platforms. Eventually, the death knell sounded. By the year 2020, Flash will disappear from most desktop internet browsers.

At this time last year, I didn’t know anyone who was making an effort to save this unmatched historical artifact of 2000s internet society. You would see someone here and there saving a few SWFs, but it was otherwise complete silence from the usual crowd. So I started Flashpoint - an all in one archival project, museum and playable collection of Flash games, as safe as possible from the eventual death and server shutdowns of Flash game sites.

A few months of struggle and a sudden relocation all were worth it in the end, when I wrote my other article on the subject.

That article wasn’t intended to be more than “send it to a few games sites / big names and see if we can get the word out”. Medium had other ideas. At the time I wasn’t aware that it was practically a social network of its own, and within a few hours thousands of people had the idea of saving Flash stuck in their minds.

Our Discord was flooded with thankful pilgrims and former developers, giving us the leg up we needed to keep working. We went from one man maintaining the archive to over fifty people contributing in some way, from adding games to new features and testing.

And that was just the first month. Through a constant influx of new members, requests and ideas, Flashpoint has been evolving at a rate I didn’t believe was possible. Let’s go over just the highlights.