Cartoon Network Flash Games

(webdesignmuseum.org)

236 points | by willmeyers 6 hours ago ago

74 comments

  • darkmarmot 6 hours ago ago

    Doh, I did some work on some CN games back in the day -- but don't see any of those here. Hopefully they keeping adding to it!

    • rafabulsing 2 hours ago ago

      My favorite three aren't in there. All Dexter's Lab themed, now that I think about it.

      One was puzzle game where you had to bounce a laser off of mirrors to pop balloons. The second was kind of a Chip's Challenge kind of deal I think, where you as Dexter were running away from an out of control robot, and had to collect some computer chips or something.

      And in the third game, Dexter was running, inexplicably, a record store? Dunno if it was a tie in for a specific episode I don't remember now, but it's quite a funny premise, and a fun game too.

      If you worked on any of these games, thank you! I spent so many hours back then on those, and many others.

      I still had dial up back then, and I couldn't stay online for long. Eventually I figured out that if I kept the website open, then disconnected (rather than closing then disconnecting, which was what my parents taught me), the games would still work. Which is obvious to me now, of course, but as a 6~7 year old, who had no idea of how any of this worked, I felt like an actual, proper hacker. I literally just had the thought, "wait, what if..." and was promptly rewarded. I've been chasing that high ever since :)

      From then on, my evening routine after school was connecting, picking the 3~4 games I wanted to play for that night, letting them load, disconnecting, and playing to my heart's content. If I hacked anything that fateful night, it was my parent's main excuse to get me off the computer!

    • pgporada 6 hours ago ago

      If you made the adventure one with the Power Puff Girls, Dexter, Cow & Chicken, etc then thank you.

      • marklar423 3 hours ago ago

        Something about a pool party? I remember that one

        • honeycrispy 3 hours ago ago

          I think you're talking about the summer resort games, which are also my favorite.

          You can play here: https://mattbruv.github.io/ccsr/

          I don't know if it's nostalgia or what, but I still have fun playing it. Which can't be said for a lot of games.

          • mattbruv 2 hours ago ago

            I made this port, thanks for sharing it! The reason this game doesn't appear in the original list is because it was made in Shockwave, not Flash. I'm curious if there is any kind of emulator for Shockwave being worked on like what Ruffle is for Flash.

            • honeycrispy 2 hours ago ago

              Thank you for bringing back a piece of my childhood!

    • giancarlostoro 6 hours ago ago

      Thank you for being a part of my childhood then! I probably played (like everyone else my age) most if not all CN games. It's a shame they didn't do any sort of effort to preserve them officially.

    • Klonoar 6 hours ago ago

      Did you by chance work on Cartoon Orbit?

    • jjice 4 hours ago ago

      Please tell which ones! I be lots of great memories of the late aughts and CN flash games

    • gaudystead 5 hours ago ago

      From someone who likely played your work in my younger years, thank you for it!

    • weard_beard an hour ago ago

      Same! I added leaderboards to a couple titles and did minor upgrades. Bible Fight, Brak headkicker, and the Inuyasha shell game specifically.

    • oceansky 6 hours ago ago

      Thanks for all your work!

  • Moomoomoo309 2 hours ago ago

    If anyone wants to see more of these flash games, check out the Flashpoint archive.

    https://flashpointarchive.org/

    • Wowfunhappy 35 minutes ago ago

      Is it possible to just download individual SWF files?

  • cateblanchett 5 hours ago ago

    RIP to TV networks and other media entities having free online computer games. Clone-a-doodle-doo and code of the samarai were my games.

    ESPN also used to have great flash games. they had one where you'd skate on the roofs of houses and one where you had a BMX game that I think had a racing version and a freestyle version.

  • regus 4 hours ago ago

    If you want some more Cartoon Network nostalgia, enjoy this VHS recording of Cartoon Cartoon Fridays:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwcQH5bF1LI

  • helterskelter 5 hours ago ago

    Does anyone remember that Gorillaz flash game? You basically just had a dune buggy and drove around in a 3D world over some randomly scattered obstacles and terrain.

    That was my entire computer class in 9th grade.

    (that and harrassing teachers with netsend)

    • dole 5 hours ago ago
      • helterskelter 5 hours ago ago

        Omg thank you, this is giving me flashbacks.

    • baigy 5 hours ago ago

      No but, this reminds me of gorilla.bas (basic). If you remember THAT, that's something. My first ever game, written in basic :-)

      • noumenon1111 5 hours ago ago

        QBasic Gorillas was poggers, but I'm more of a Nibbles guy myself

        • vunderba 5 hours ago ago

          I remember being introduced to QBASIC as a kid, and at the time the use of extended ASCII characters for the graphics in Nibbles.bas was legit next-level to me.

    • amarant 5 hours ago ago

      Netsend! I almost wonder if we were classmates!

      I have unfortunately forgotten the gorillaz game though

    • idontwantthis 5 hours ago ago

      Yes that was one of those bizarrely high tech experiences back then.

  • saarons 5 hours ago ago

    If anyone remembers gToons from Cartoon Orbit there's also this: https://gtoons.app

    • willmeyers 5 hours ago ago

      This is incredible. Thank you for sharing this. I played Orbit so much.

  • arionmiles 5 hours ago ago

    Thanks for whoever preserved these! The CartoonNetwork website was one of my most fondest memories from my childhood.

    These days the official website redirects to their YouTube channel which I feel is very sad. There used to be places for kids on the internet, now everything is heading towards major platforms which I honestly feel is going to be damaging the youth in the long term.

    • rightbyte 2 hours ago ago

      > major platforms which I honestly feel is going to be damaging the youth in the long term.

      What about the short term? Even edgy angst flash movies like Sallad fingers on Newgrounds is pretty cutsie by modern big tech standards.

  • gavinray 4 hours ago ago

    There were a Dragon Ball Z turn-based game and a Powerpuff Girls basketball game that used to be on CN that I had a blast playing very young.

    Sadly, these two seem to be missing

    • cootsnuck 4 hours ago ago

      Yes! I was just about to comment the same thing. I sank so many hours into that Dragon Ball Z game. Was called Dragon Ball Z Tournament. And its background music was an instrumental version of Sisqo's Thong Song. Wild.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cdaf8ehjuX4

    • pgoggijr 4 hours ago ago

      I loved that Dragonball Z game so much. Would love to play it again to see if it’s anything like I remember!

  • ikesau 5 hours ago ago

    Wow, awesome.

    There's also a few on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_flash_unsorted?t...

    (In case the OP also made you think of Teen Titans Battle Blitz for the first time in 20 years)

  • tofuturkey2600 5 hours ago ago

    Flash games on CN, Miniclip, and Mofunzone kept young me very entertained. Love to see this.

  • hoten 5 hours ago ago

    The Halloween trick-or-treating maze-type game was my favorite from CN.

    The summer resort games (iirc one big trade quest) were nice too.

  • Pikamander2 3 hours ago ago

    While we're mildly on the topic, one of my favorite old Flash games was the Nick.com trading card game.

    It wasn't really a game in the TCG sense, but more of a collecting/bartering game similar to the Grand Exchange in Runescape.

    There isn't much surviving media of it since people rarely recorded game footage back then, but someone made a website of it with some screenshots:

    http://www.animeexpressway.com/rugrats/ecards.htm

    (Sadly, it doesn't have any screenshots of the trading screen, which was the fun part)

  • maplant 41 minutes ago ago

    There’s on called “sonic boom: link and smash?”

  • Night_Thastus 3 hours ago ago

    I played the CN flash games so much as a kid. Between that and Armor Games, Nitrome, Crazy Monkey Games, etc - I was spoiled for content. It does make me sad to see so much of it lost to time - though I also understand flash was bad and really did have to die.

  • roflchoppa 2 hours ago ago

    There was also https://www.coffeebreakarcade.com/ !

    they had a really good fighter jet game back in the day.

  • oceansky 6 hours ago ago

    Where's Courage the Cowardly Dog: Creep TV and Summer Resort? Those were the best ones.

    • Klonoar 6 hours ago ago

      https://mattbruv.github.io/ccsr/

      Someone already did it awhile back.

      • clarle 4 hours ago ago

        So much nostalgia on Cartoon Cartoon Summer Resort. That was how I got into adventure games in the first place.

    • Shalomboy 6 hours ago ago

      Creep TV was my favorite too!!!

      Gosh, what a nostalgia trip.

  • tracerbulletx 38 minutes ago ago

    Where is my beloved Unicorn?

  • axus 5 hours ago ago

    Tried the Courage the Cowardly Dog game, after a nicely animated plane-landing, the game logic was broken and no enemies appeared. Never played the original, perhaps it had the same problem :)

    • switchers 4 hours ago ago

      Ruffle doing ruffle stuff, I'd be surprised if the original didn't work.

  • Dwedit 3 hours ago ago

    I guess the Adult Swim games like "Robot Unicorn Attack" don't count here?

  • Soulsbane 3 hours ago ago

    Oh man that's nostalgia! I got interested in Anime because of DBZ airing on Cartoon Network.

  • notaustinpowers 4 hours ago ago

    Praying for Teen Titans Battle Blitz to be listed here at some point. The version on the Internet Archive is broken unfortunately.

  • onlytue 4 hours ago ago

    Wild to see this.

    Anyone remember what happened to Steppenwolf and the other games? I do not remember the publisher, I think WB?

  • king_geedorah 5 hours ago ago

    It's just nostalgia I'm sure but, damn if these didn't coincide with the peak era of the web as a user.

  • wilfredk 5 hours ago ago

    I am looking for the DBZ one from back in the day...

  • ourmandave 5 hours ago ago

    My daughter was addicted to Ben 10 and would play for hours.

    I'd forgotten a bunch of those shows, like Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends.

  • WillAdams 5 hours ago ago

    I really wish someone would bring back _Bembo's Zoo_, ideally by translating it to scripted HTML5 or animated SVG....

  • antdke 4 hours ago ago

    As a kid, I could type their URL from muscle memory with my eyes closed - that’s how much I loved this site.

    Good times.

  • susrev 3 hours ago ago

    man.. these are like some of the first games I actually remember playing as a kid

  • FlamingMoe 5 hours ago ago

    Who remembers postopia? Great games there as well circa 2002

  • johnea an hour ago ago

    I wasn't Cartoon Network, but we played a lot of LEGO's MataNui flash game.

    It was my first experience with what became known as Ambient Games...

  • alentodorov 4 hours ago ago

    i remember mailing webmaster@cartoonnetwork.co.uk asking them what “sourcery” have they used to allow for zoom-in on a website.

  • s900mhz 6 hours ago ago

    This is awesome!

    I hope they can restore the cartoon cartoon summer resort games.

  • saos 4 hours ago ago

    well this brings back memories! Thank you

  • alex1138 5 hours ago ago

    Some of it was the death of Flash (though with Ruffle now there may be hope) but the web now just feels much less diverse.

    Or possibly I just miss being a teenager. Or some combination

    • tombert 15 minutes ago ago

      I really feel like there are fewer websites now.

      When I was eighteen, I went to Something Awful, Newgrounds, ThatGuyWithTheGlasses, GameTrailers, Cinemassacre, YouTube, and SpoonyExperiment daily. Nowadays it's basically just YouTube for all that stuff (though I haven't watched Spoony for quite awhile).

      Newgrounds is still around, I probably should make more of an effort to go there, and I do have stairs in my house, but I definitely don't go on as many different sites as I used to.

      I certainly miss the days when everyone had their own web page.

      • chadgpt2 3 minutes ago ago

        Do you have your own web page? Not just you, the parent commenter, but also you, the random HN reader. If not, why not?

  • xiaod 2 hours ago ago

    Interesting approach. The key question for adoption is usually about the migration path — how painful is it for existing teams to switch, and what does the intermediate state look like?

    • mattbruv 2 hours ago ago

      When GPT gets its threads mixed up