With the end of Flash support coming at the end of December 2020, many long-time flash game sites have had to prepare for the worst. And that’s why the biggest ones like Newgrounds and the Artix Entertainment family of games have prepared for this inevitability with branded Flash emulators.
The Artix Game Launcher, their branded Flash emulator, works very much like the SCUMMVM emulator for old adventure games. Like the SCUMMVM emulator, the Artix Game launcher opens to a menu of the entire Artix Entertainment flash game catalog, which includes Dragonfable, AdventureQuest, AdventureQuest Worlds, MechQuest, EpicDuels, Oversoul, AdventureQuest 3D, and IdleQuest. It also grants access to the full HeroMart, which is the full Artix Entertainment online store, which allows purchases of shirts, plushies and the all-important in-game currencies that Artix Entertainment has for their games. The game launcher also has the full official Artix Entertainment official site within it, so players can gain access to their official updates for their main focus games, as well as events coming to their umbrella of games. Artix Entertainment made emulating their games quick and easy for players to do, ensuring that their 17-year-old business model continues to go strong in this modern age.
Newgrounds, however, have their emulator function closer to a combination of DOSBox and SCUMMVM, though players will still need to go to Newgrounds in order to make use of the emulator. Players will need to go to the site, install the Newgrounds player, ensure that they have the stand-alone official offline Flash player from Adobe, and then, use the Newgrounds player to ensure full functionality of the old games. Players will need to have at least Windows 7 64-bit operating system to ensure that the Newgrounds player functions properly.
This does not mean that either of these sites isn’t prepared for the future, though. Artix Entertainment has a fully functioning mobile game department, with games such as AdventureQuest 3D, AdventureQuest Battle Gems, and Dungeonborne, a game similar to Reigns in gameplay. And Newgrounds allows content creators to submit games and movies made in Unity or Java now, allowing the site to continue to thrive in the changing world.
The end of Flash may be a scary time for older users since it was a huge part of the early internet as we know it. But between Youtube creating a thriving environment for animators and these emulators creating a safe place for these older games, there is nothing to fear from the end of Flash in December 2020.