Luckily, if you're a fan of Flash – in particular the animations and games it was used to create – the Internet Archive is making sure you can revisit everything that made the early web weird, wild, and where Flash games were concerned, extremely juvenile.
Flash thrives in simplicity, which is why games like Helicopter are some of the best examples of how Flash games can go right. Helicopter is a side-scrolling obstacle game that tasks players with navigating a helicopter through a tunnel without crashing. The format of Helicopter is repeated in more mobile games that you can count and was an early precursor of just how addicting and lucrative the objective "don't hit things" can really be.
Here's another perfect example of the unique confluence of Flash games which is heavily influenced by remix culture. It's Pac-Man, it's Neon Genesis Evangelion, it's Neon Genesis Evangelion Pac-Man. This one doesn't really need an explanation unless you're not familiar with Neon Genesis Evangelion (it's a very popular anime), but it stands as a shining example of how developers used the simple tools to do, well, whatever the heck they wanted.
Frogger might not be a flash game in origin, but it makes this list for the same reason dozens of other Flash ports might. Flash games brought the joy of retro classics to web browsers everywhere, often adding their own twist to create something new or at the very least, something tongue-in-cheek enough to capture our attention.
If having a sense of humor is a key facet of the Flash era then Don't Shoot the Puppy should have been up for whatever the equivalent of an Oscar is for novelty games. The goal of the game is exactly what it sounds like: don't shoot the cute animated puppy. There's a hitch, however, which is that interacting with the game in any way obliterates your furry friend and sends you back to level one. The only way to win is to sit idly by and watch the puppy walk to safety, giving players a lesson in patience or conversely, schadenfreude.
Remember the good ol' days? Where all it took to have fun was a swath of bubble wrap and an opposable thumb? Putting Bubble Wrap on this list is admittedly a liberal interpretation of the word "game", but if you're judging Flash products by their simplicity and ability to create dopamine in every click, well, Bubble Wrap is a shoe-in.
Flash games were epitomized by a few things, chief among them simple mechanics, and of course, extreme cartoon violence. Kitten Cannon, regardless of your feelings on cats, nails both of those things (no pun intended). Launch a cat toward spikes (bad) and explosives (good), and see how far it goes, it's like McDonald's for the teenage brain which is to say, something you will want to consume, but should probably not.
In Bowman 2 (the sequel to Bowman) players are face-to-face with a bow-wielding opponent – either a computer or a friend. The object? Nock your arrow and fire with the hopes of making your adversary "gush geysers of blood." Bowman was a mix of tension and finesse, allowing players to judge their shots with force and trajectory measurements or just pull back the mouse, say a prayer, and hope that you've condemned your opponent to a gory end.