Posted November 10, 2023
The Elephant Collection has just released on GOG, gathering ten remasters of John Cooney’s, also known as jmtb02, classic blue elephant games which you most probably played and loved during the Flash-gaming era.
With this awesome release, we had the opportunity to talk to the legend himself and ask him how his journey with Flash games started, how they impacted the video game industry, why we should preserve them, and more!
With ours and Armor Games’ shared efforts and passion for keeping classic games alive, it makes us incredibly happy to be a part of this adventure. We hope you’ll enjoy the interview as much as we’ve enjoyed making it.
The man himself – John Cooney!
Let’s start with something we all want to know. What drew the legend himself to the Flash games in the first place? How did that journey start?
When I saw a boy in an inner tube, floating in a sea of garbage. My friend in high school had learned to animate in Flash and that’s (wildly) what they decided to animate. I suddenly became very interested in animation and set out to make my own floating sea of garbage and boys (although my first was about a penguin going to Starbucks). Soon after I discovered Flash could also be used to make games, and my first game was about swatting away flies from a hot dog boiling in a pot of water (to a very unlicensed DDR track, the internet was very different back then). It was not a good game, nor was my second game called Ball, a twitch skill game about moving a ball to a goal against an onslaught of (extremely) questionable physics and obstacles.
A year later I would release the sequel Ball Revamped: Metaphysik to Newgrounds, and suddenly I had a hit. BBC World television picked it up, my website crashed from traffic, and I suddenly fell into a career in viral Flash games. I was 18 years old when this all went down and I’m still not quite sure what happened.
We believe that Flash games had a great (and potentially overlooked) impact on the video game industry overall. For many people, that was the first contact to such a form of entertainment and something that could’ve sparked the love and passion for either playing video games or making them altogether. What is your stance on that?
The first time many people open MS Paint they instinctively drag the cursor across the screen and like-magic they’re drawing. Flash is exactly the same, when you open Flash it looks just like MS Paint and there’s immediately drawing tools. Where it gets wild is all the other tools that are cleverly packed into Flash, and suddenly you’re diving into animation and programming without much thought. Much is intuitive and accessible.
These simple, accessible tools allowed more people to become creators. And with content portals like Newgrounds, Armor Games, and Kongregate we were encouraged to share and build communities around new developers and content.
So yes, Flash was magic for its ease of use and its prolific nature. Flash invited people to play and create. The industry often overlooks that value in Flash and we haven’t found a clear replacement even in modern gaming.
Where do you think Flash games’ impact is seen the most in the world of today’s gaming?
I would wager most players don’t know that the teams behind Among Us, Cult of the Lamb, Super Meat Boy, Samorost, Kingdom of Loathing, and other major titles came from backgrounds in Flash development. These are games that have transformed the gaming zeitgeist in colossal ways, and that alone feels incredibly impactful. But on a more foundational level it's the spirit of innovation and experimentation that these developers wielded with Flash and brought with them into the modern games space. The rapid cycles of development let greater risks be taken, the massive audiences cheered and groaned for every game, and that feedback loop let us further experiment and try new things. Game devs are curious creatures and Flash’s development loop nurtured that impulse.
And to touch more on the overlooked importance of them: Flash games aren’t the first thing that come to mind when there’s a talk about games’ preservation. Why do you think it’s important that we should bring more attention to them in that matter?
The intense amount of Flash content generated over decades coupled with the “Death of Flash” was a canary for the industry of how poorly we have prepared for preservation of games. This content is important, with Flash being foundational to many of the new and changing genres in modern games. And so many devs (including myself) came from Flash, and their modern hits are informed by the trail of Flash games that got them there. Games are stories in more ways than one, and for developers they share a thread of who they were as a developer. These beautiful slices of time and discovery are critical to preserve and continue to share.
With so many amazing Flash games under your belt as a developer - what made you choose these specific titles as the first of your personal catalog to be preserved and remastered?
When we first started on The Elephant Collection we had a wild idea to try to port about 35 Flash games. That ended up being an overly ambitious task as we started to plan, as the amount of work that goes into porting these titles isn’t simple (especially with us remastering, adding achievements, and dev commentary). So we considered the franchises that were most important to me and it was obvious that the Blue Elephant games should come first.
Are there any plans in your future to preserve some of your other Flash titles?
Yes! But with so many games it's hard to choose what would come next! We also didn’t port every Blue Elephant game so that seems like a simple next step.
What about your hopes for the future of preservation and restoration – both for Flash games, and other games – in general?
What I like about the current ecosystem of Flash preservation and restoration is how varied the approaches have been. I don’t feel there’s just one way we should preserve games, but we should try multiple ways to see how we can best ensure the games of yesterday are still playable today.
Emulation through Ruffle is amazing, because it requires no plugins and magically Flash games work in-browser just like they used to. Portals like Newgrounds are creating plugins that provide additional functionality to content that can’t be emulated.
Remastering games for PC is amazing in its own way because it allows devs to explore improving graphics and adding all the additional layers of achievements and other features they could never implement at the age of Flash. For The Elephant Collection it allowed us to go wild on achievements and developer commentary in a really neat way.
Large repositories (Flashpoint and the Strong museum curation) are providing that larger safety net for the vast amount of content that may be falling through the cracks.
This layered approach may be slightly uneven but gives the greatest chance of Flash games being appreciated for generations to come.
What tools, if any, do you feel are keeping the spirit of the Flash game era of design alive today? Are there any tools that are filling Flash's shoes today?
There isn’t a simple replacement toolset that accomplishes what Flash did. Flash thrived on its simplicity and ubiquity. However, I would stress that there is still deep innovation and experimentation going on in games. Places like Ludum Dare, modern Newgrounds, and Itch.io are still fostering that experimentation and providing a home for emerging design. The difference though is audience size, Flash games had a gigantic audience (at the height of Flash some games on Armor Games would reach a million plays in 24 hours).
Lastly, is there a message you’d like to send to our community?
Yes! Make video games! As players you have wild, creative ideas so crack open a game engine and see if there’s a rabbit hole you can tumble into. My adventure could only begin with a sea of garbage and so can yours, it's time to jump in
We’d like to thank John and Armor Games very much, both for this great talk and allowing us to have The Elephant Collection on GOG.
Just talking about the Flash-gaming era brought back all these amazing memories and joys that we’ve felt all those years ago. Now excuse us, while we’ll load up The Elephant Collection and feel the real thing!
We hope you all have a wonderful day, and as always, let’s keep making games last forever, together.
With this awesome release, we had the opportunity to talk to the legend himself and ask him how his journey with Flash games started, how they impacted the video game industry, why we should preserve them, and more!
With ours and Armor Games’ shared efforts and passion for keeping classic games alive, it makes us incredibly happy to be a part of this adventure. We hope you’ll enjoy the interview as much as we’ve enjoyed making it.
The man himself – John Cooney!
Let’s start with something we all want to know. What drew the legend himself to the Flash games in the first place? How did that journey start?
When I saw a boy in an inner tube, floating in a sea of garbage. My friend in high school had learned to animate in Flash and that’s (wildly) what they decided to animate. I suddenly became very interested in animation and set out to make my own floating sea of garbage and boys (although my first was about a penguin going to Starbucks). Soon after I discovered Flash could also be used to make games, and my first game was about swatting away flies from a hot dog boiling in a pot of water (to a very unlicensed DDR track, the internet was very different back then). It was not a good game, nor was my second game called Ball, a twitch skill game about moving a ball to a goal against an onslaught of (extremely) questionable physics and obstacles.
A year later I would release the sequel Ball Revamped: Metaphysik to Newgrounds, and suddenly I had a hit. BBC World television picked it up, my website crashed from traffic, and I suddenly fell into a career in viral Flash games. I was 18 years old when this all went down and I’m still not quite sure what happened.
We believe that Flash games had a great (and potentially overlooked) impact on the video game industry overall. For many people, that was the first contact to such a form of entertainment and something that could’ve sparked the love and passion for either playing video games or making them altogether. What is your stance on that?
The first time many people open MS Paint they instinctively drag the cursor across the screen and like-magic they’re drawing. Flash is exactly the same, when you open Flash it looks just like MS Paint and there’s immediately drawing tools. Where it gets wild is all the other tools that are cleverly packed into Flash, and suddenly you’re diving into animation and programming without much thought. Much is intuitive and accessible.
These simple, accessible tools allowed more people to become creators. And with content portals like Newgrounds, Armor Games, and Kongregate we were encouraged to share and build communities around new developers and content.
So yes, Flash was magic for its ease of use and its prolific nature. Flash invited people to play and create. The industry often overlooks that value in Flash and we haven’t found a clear replacement even in modern gaming.
Where do you think Flash games’ impact is seen the most in the world of today’s gaming?
I would wager most players don’t know that the teams behind Among Us, Cult of the Lamb, Super Meat Boy, Samorost, Kingdom of Loathing, and other major titles came from backgrounds in Flash development. These are games that have transformed the gaming zeitgeist in colossal ways, and that alone feels incredibly impactful. But on a more foundational level it's the spirit of innovation and experimentation that these developers wielded with Flash and brought with them into the modern games space. The rapid cycles of development let greater risks be taken, the massive audiences cheered and groaned for every game, and that feedback loop let us further experiment and try new things. Game devs are curious creatures and Flash’s development loop nurtured that impulse.
And to touch more on the overlooked importance of them: Flash games aren’t the first thing that come to mind when there’s a talk about games’ preservation. Why do you think it’s important that we should bring more attention to them in that matter?
The intense amount of Flash content generated over decades coupled with the “Death of Flash” was a canary for the industry of how poorly we have prepared for preservation of games. This content is important, with Flash being foundational to many of the new and changing genres in modern games. And so many devs (including myself) came from Flash, and their modern hits are informed by the trail of Flash games that got them there. Games are stories in more ways than one, and for developers they share a thread of who they were as a developer. These beautiful slices of time and discovery are critical to preserve and continue to share.
With so many amazing Flash games under your belt as a developer - what made you choose these specific titles as the first of your personal catalog to be preserved and remastered?
When we first started on The Elephant Collection we had a wild idea to try to port about 35 Flash games. That ended up being an overly ambitious task as we started to plan, as the amount of work that goes into porting these titles isn’t simple (especially with us remastering, adding achievements, and dev commentary). So we considered the franchises that were most important to me and it was obvious that the Blue Elephant games should come first.
Are there any plans in your future to preserve some of your other Flash titles?
Yes! But with so many games it's hard to choose what would come next! We also didn’t port every Blue Elephant game so that seems like a simple next step.
What about your hopes for the future of preservation and restoration – both for Flash games, and other games – in general?
What I like about the current ecosystem of Flash preservation and restoration is how varied the approaches have been. I don’t feel there’s just one way we should preserve games, but we should try multiple ways to see how we can best ensure the games of yesterday are still playable today.
Emulation through Ruffle is amazing, because it requires no plugins and magically Flash games work in-browser just like they used to. Portals like Newgrounds are creating plugins that provide additional functionality to content that can’t be emulated.
Remastering games for PC is amazing in its own way because it allows devs to explore improving graphics and adding all the additional layers of achievements and other features they could never implement at the age of Flash. For The Elephant Collection it allowed us to go wild on achievements and developer commentary in a really neat way.
Large repositories (Flashpoint and the Strong museum curation) are providing that larger safety net for the vast amount of content that may be falling through the cracks.
This layered approach may be slightly uneven but gives the greatest chance of Flash games being appreciated for generations to come.
What tools, if any, do you feel are keeping the spirit of the Flash game era of design alive today? Are there any tools that are filling Flash's shoes today?
There isn’t a simple replacement toolset that accomplishes what Flash did. Flash thrived on its simplicity and ubiquity. However, I would stress that there is still deep innovation and experimentation going on in games. Places like Ludum Dare, modern Newgrounds, and Itch.io are still fostering that experimentation and providing a home for emerging design. The difference though is audience size, Flash games had a gigantic audience (at the height of Flash some games on Armor Games would reach a million plays in 24 hours).
Lastly, is there a message you’d like to send to our community?
Yes! Make video games! As players you have wild, creative ideas so crack open a game engine and see if there’s a rabbit hole you can tumble into. My adventure could only begin with a sea of garbage and so can yours, it's time to jump in
We’d like to thank John and Armor Games very much, both for this great talk and allowing us to have The Elephant Collection on GOG.
Just talking about the Flash-gaming era brought back all these amazing memories and joys that we’ve felt all those years ago. Now excuse us, while we’ll load up The Elephant Collection and feel the real thing!
We hope you all have a wonderful day, and as always, let’s keep making games last forever, together.
