The Internet Archive, the non-profit digital library known for the Wayback Machine – has announced that it has begun archiving Flash animations and games, ahead of the planned removal of Adobe Flash from all web applications at the end of 2020.
The Internet Archive will display this content as it once did, preserving critical elements of early Internet culture for programs browsers that can no longer run.
The Internet Archive reports that you can already browse in more than 1.000 games and animations it has saved, such as the classic "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" and "All your base belong to us".
The organization says that the simulation is possible from an evolving Flash called Ruffle, and has been integrated into its system. Ruffle developers say that at the moment it is not compatible with the majority of Flash projects developed after 2013, having access to the culture that defined adolescence and adulthood is certainly a small victory.
Flash was almost essential for the creativity of the early web, giving pages of text and images motion, but as the Internet Archive notes, Flash was really important because it was relatively easy to use:
The software allowed beginners to make amazingly complex and versatile performances graphics and audio that ran beautifully in web browsers without requiring deep knowledge of individual operating systems and programming languages.
