Kicking things off, Flash speedrunners Conor and Slush Puppy are hosting Flash Marathon 5: Revival of Flash this Saturday (February 20 at 13:00 UTC) at ttv/flashmarathon! The marathon will feature classics such as Cat Mario, Henry Stickmin: Fleeing the Complex and Papa’s Hot Doggeria.

A full list of games can be found on the marathon schedule available at: https://horaro.org/flashmarathon5/schedule. Also pay their Discord Server a visit while you are at it!

In other news, Flash Forward Jam has been extended into February. The goal of the jam is to make a game or (interactive) movie in Flash, to showcase Ruffle‘s emulation capabilities.

Tom Fulp himself recently submitted an entry together with a few other Newgrounds veterans. It’s called Drop Cannon and is probably the most unconventional matching game you haven’t played yet.

Speaking of game jams, one jam has recently concluded: Grow-On Jam, a jam dedicated to Grow series creator On Nakayama (EYEZMAZE). Although none of the games submitted were actually made in Flash, they were all themed around On Nakayama’s games.

Welcome to Grow-ON Jam, a celebration of the work of indie veteran developer On Nakayama (ON/EYEZMAZE), notable creator of the GROW series of Flash and mobile titles. Over twenty years ON has published dozens of freely available titles to a wide audience, and founded a unique genre of gentle games with layered progression systems.

If you’re feeling nostalgic after playing through all the submissions, you might also want to visit the jam’s Discord Server.

The jam has also brought attention to On Nakayama’s poor health, which has led to him requiring a heart surgery in 2019, which he is still recovering from. The good news is that things seem to be getting better for him based on recent Tweets.

Want to play through the original Grow games, but can’t run Flash? Check out the Flash Player Emergency Kit for tips and info on how to run Flash files post-EOL!

Even with Adobe having recently ended support for Flash Player, Newgrounds and many other websites want to preserve the tradition of Flash development and media, hence the name Flash Forward, a look into Flash’s future. This jam challenges game devs to develop a Flash game (or interactive movie), in 2021, long after Flash’s heyday.

The good news is that there are still tools for developing Flash media, such as HaxeFlixel which supports .swf exports, and Flash Player emulators such as Ruffle.

Here’s the rules:

• Make something interactive with Flash, either a game or interactive movie, which could include an animation collab with a cool menu interface, or something with decisions / alternate endings.

• Make it with ActionScript 2 and confirm it works via Ruffle before publishing. You will see a “Test with Ruffle” link on your preview page. Ruffle is what we use to run Flash on NG without the Flash plugin, you can read more about it below!

• Upload any time in January and tag it “Flash-Forward-Jam” to participate!

The jam will have three award categories:

• Game (Top 7 Ranked), with a grand prize of $700 and an interview with Newground’s own TheInterviewer.
• Movie with Interactive Element (Top 3 Ranked), with a grand prize of $200 and an interview with TheInterviewer.
• Best Mobile-Friendly Entry (Game or Movie), a $100 prize for the entry which works best on a smartphone, it wouldn’t be Flash Forward without overcoming some demons after all!

For more details see: https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1460728

Good luck and Flash on!