Flashpoint Archive (formerlyBlueMaxima's Flashpoint) is anarchival andpreservation project that allowsbrowser games,web animations and other generalrich web applications to be played in a secure format, after all major browsers removed native support forNPAPI/PPAPI plugins in the mid-to-late 2010s as well as the plugins' deprecation.[8][9][10] The project contains over 200,000 applications from over 120browser plugins, most notablyAdobe Flash, which can be installed and played using the providedFlashpoint Launcher and its associated tools.
The project was initiated byAustralian Ben "BlueMaxima" Latimore in late 2017, initially as part of a separate project from theArchive Team.[11][12][13] The project has since developed a launcher for playing the archived games and animations, and has reached a total size of 1.68TB. The project allows games to be played through aproxy that receives and blocks any web requests and calls needed, bypassing anyDRM that relied on the web.[14][15] BlueMaxima stepped down as leader of the project in early 2023 in order to move on to other projects,[16] including finishing a book dedicated towards the early history of web games named after Flashpoint.[17]
While named after and mostly focused on Flash content, media using other discontinued web plugins are also preserved, includingShockwave,[18]Microsoft Silverlight,Java applets, and theUnity Web Player,[19] as well as software frameworks such asActiveX. Other currently used web technologies are also preserved in Flashpoint, likeHTML5. As of Flashpoint 14, 126 web technologies are listed as being preserved.[20]
The legality of the project has been described as "unclear" but creators who do not want their games included can ask for their removal.[8]Nitrome removed their games from the archive in 2020, as they were planning to remake their games underHTML5.[21][22]
There are two editions of Flashpoint that are currently released, Infinity and Ultimate. The Infinity edition is an official launcher that downloads and manages games for the user, which provides an alternative to downloading the entire archive. The Ultimate edition contains every archived game and animation preinstalled and is designed to be used by archivists.[23] Older versions of the launcher also included a Core edition, which was a version with limited content included, designed to be used by curators for adding games to the archive. This has since been merged into Infinity as a separate mode starting with Flashpoint 12.
Flashpoint has received acclaim for its dedication towards both its preservation project and the launcher it provides for easy access. Flashpoint has also led to the creation of a similar project, Kahvibreak, which is dedicated towards the preservation ofJava mobile games used onfeature phones during the 2000s.
