Long-dead Neopets Flash games revived after developer shift

Old Neopets games that degraded following Adobe Flash's death are being restored. 

As spotted by Polygon, over 50 games that were lost in the online platform's shift to HTML-5 in 2020 are gradually being brought back with full functionality. Back in the day, those minigames were a big part of Neopets' draw, and helped to build its enduring 23-year-old community of players.

World of Neopia, the new curators of Neopets, integrated a Flash emulator called Ruffle to revive the old games. Last week, the developer stated one of its first goals would be to revive titles that had previously degraded and been lost with Flash's demise. 

Reviving these games shows World's commitment to getting the platform back to its former, less considerably thorny glory. And more broadly, the return of these older titles marks another win for game preservation.

While there are still some issues to work out, such as Ruffle's lack of mobile support, these titles will be playable on PC as they were years prior.

Some games, such as Snowmuncher and Turmac Roll, are fully compatible, while others are still in the works. Ruffle's FAQ acknowledged that it's "improving the emulator to make more games run smoothly." A list of Ruffle-integrated games, and the known issues being tackled, can be read here.