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Following a 2017 decision taken by Adobe, Microsoft, Google, and other industry leaders, 2020 will see the end of the Flash Player. Thankfully, The Internet Archive (of Wayback Machine fame) has come to the rescue and is using its platform to protect all the mad shit that was created via Adobe Flash over the last 20 years.

The non-profit organization has created a new collection dedicated to Flash that allows you to experience decades-old animations and games through a built-in emulator. It's essentially a museum of early internet culture, described as "a curated collection of interesting or historical Flash animations and games, provided as an easy dip into the world of Flash and what it represented throughout its lifetime."

You can already browse over 1,000 games and animations that it’s saved, including bonkers classics like “Peanut Butter Jelly Time” and “All your base are belong to us.” Of course, there are also the proto-memes such as Badger and Loituma Girl, so you can still live your life watching 12 badgers bounce in a field, or a girl spinning a leek, should your heart desire.

You can re-experience your favorite animations and games through the archive's built-in emulator, meaning you don’t have to worry about any of the security issues that come along with the notoriously insecure software.

That reputation ultimately led to its demise, but that's not to ignore the pivotal role Flash played in turning the internet into the creative space we know today. It transformed webpages into dancing pixel nightmares and, as The Internet Archive notes, it "allowed a beginner or novice to make surprisingly complicated and flexible graphic and sound shows that ran beautifully on web browsers without requiring deep knowledge of individual operating systems and programming languages."

So, if you're feeling nostalgic for the early internet days, you can take a dive inside the library here.

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