How to save Flash games

Even if Flash technology is now considered obsolete and is being phased out by all the major players in the hi-tech sector (primarily the software houses that develop browsers to browse the Web), you still enjoy a world with games in Flash, those that can be run directly from the browser and that, over the last few years, have accompanied you, making downtime in the office less “heavy”.

You are so fond of Flash games that, fearing that they may disappear at any moment, you would like to archive them on your PC and keep them, so that you can use them in the future, when they are no longer available on the web. I guessed it? Well then I am happy to announce that you have come to the right place at the right time!

In fact, in the lines that you are about to read, you will find all the information you need to find out how to save Flash games and how to play them offline on your computer: operations that you can easily perform on both Windows and macOS, using the right tools. . What are the “right tools” to which I refer? Nothing impossible to find, on the contrary: some web browsers among the most popular ones and free extensions for the latter to be downloaded in a few clicks. Read on and find out all the details.

Index

• Save Flash games with Chrome
• Save Flash games with Firefox
• Play Flash games offline

Save Flash games with Chrome

If you want to find out how to save Flash games and use the Chrome browser , first of all activate the playback of Flash content on the site hosting the game of your interest. Then download an extension for “capturing” SWF files and use it to download the title you want to play offline: everything is explained below.

Enable Flash content playback

Chrome, by default, only allows Flash content to be played on a small circle of sites. To enable the plugin to run on other sites, you need to access your browser settings and add your own addresses to the list of exceptions.

To add a site to the list of exceptions, type chrome: // settings / content / flash in the address bar of the browser and press the Enter key on your PC keyboard. Then make sure that the lever under the item Flash is active (otherwise activate it you) and click on the Add item located under the item Allow .

In the box that appears on the screen, type the main address of the site hosting the games of your interest, followed by a slash and wildcard characters [*] (eg. Https://www.sito.com / [*] ) , and click the Add button to authorize it to play Flash content.

Download Flash games

Once you have activated the display of Flash content for the sites of your interest, you can proceed to install the add-on that allows you to download games in SWF format offline. I recommend Video DownloadHelper , which is primarily meant for videos, but works very well for games as well.

To install Video DownloadHelper in Chrome, connected to this page of the Chrome Web Store and click first on the Add button and then on the Add extension button . As you can see, among the permissions required by Video DownloadHelper (and all other extensions to download Flash content) there is the one to read and modify all the data on the websites visited , which is potentially risky for privacy, therefore once you have downloaded the games in Flash, I recommend that you disable or uninstall the add-on from the More tools> Chrome extensions menu .

At this point you are really ready to take action! Open, therefore, a new tab in Chrome, connected to the page that contains the game you want to download on your PC and wait for it to load.

Once the game is displayed in the browser, click on the Video DownloadHelper icon located at the top right of the Chrome toolbar and, in the menu that appears on the screen, press the name of the game file (the one in SWF format ). Next, choose the folder in which to save the file, click on the Save button and the game should be done.

Since Chrome may deem SWF files potentially dangerous, you may need to confirm the game download by clicking the Keep button (which should appear at the bottom left).

If the Keep button does not appear at the bottom left , click on the Chrome … button (top right), select the Download item from the menu that opens and press the Keep button on the page that opens.

Save Flash games with Firefox

Do you prefer Firefox to Chrome ? No problem, as the Mozilla home browser also offers the possibility to download Flash games and keep them on your computer. Just install Flash Player, activate it for the site hosting the games of your interest and proceed to download the games using the appropriate free extensions: below you will find everything explained in detail.

The first step you need to take is to get an add-on to “capture” the Flash content available on Internet sites: I personally recommend  Video DownloadHelper , which works exactly like on Chrome (therefore, the recommendation is valid also in this case to disable it after downloading games, to avoid potential privacy issues). To install Video DownloadHelper in Firefox, linked to this page of the Mozilla Addons site and click first on the Add to Firefox button and then on the Install button .

At the end of the installation of Video DownloadHelper, open a new Firefox tab and connect to the page that contains the Flash game you want to download on your PC. You will be asked if you want to authorize the execution of Flash Player: to consent, first click on the Activate Adobe Flash item in the gray box that appears instead of the game (under the Lego brick icon) and then on the Allow now button which appears at the top.

Once authorized the execution of the Flash contents, wait for the game to load, click on the Video DownloadHelper icon located at the top right of the Firefox toolbar and proceed to download the game by first clicking on the name of the relative SWF file to the latter and then on the button Use the browser .

Within seconds, you should find the game’s SWF file in your computer’s downloads folder. You can follow the download progress by clicking on the arrow icon located at the top right of the browser toolbar.

If you encounter difficulties in viewing Flash content in Firefox, click on the browser’s Menu button (the button with the three horizontal lines located at the top right) and select Add-ons from the menu that appears.

In the tab that opens, select the Plugin item from the left sidebar and set the drop-down menu for Shockwave Flash to Ask before activating . Alternatively, if the plugin is not installed, proceed to download and activate Flash Player following the instructions I gave you in my tutorials on how to download Flash Player and how to activate Adobe Flash Player .

Play Flash games offline

After downloading the Flash games on your PC, to play them, you have to rely on Flash Player Projector : a free program developed by Adobe that allows you to play files in Flash format outside the browser.

Browsers like Chrome, in fact, are abandoning Flash technology and, to date, trying to drag a SWF or FLV file into them, they “refuse” to play it. To work around this problem, just download Flash Player Projector, which is compatible with both Windows and macOS and Linux.

To download Flash Player Projector on your PC, connect to the Adobe website and click on the Download the Flash Player projector link , found under Windows , if you are using a Windows computer, or on the Download the Flash Player projector link , which it can be found under Macintosh if you are using a Mac.

When the download is complete, if you have a Windows PC , start the flashplayer_xx_sa.exe executable and, in the window that opens, select the Open item from the File menu (top left). Then press the Browse button , select the Flash game to play and click the OK button to start playing it. Alternatively, if you want to do this first, grab the game SWF file and drag it into the Flash Player Projector window.

If you are using a Mac , on the other hand, open the dmg package that contains Flash Player Projector and drag the icon of the latter into the Applications folder of macOS. When the operation is complete, start the program, click on the Open button and drag the game to be played on its icon in the Dock bar (or, alternatively, select the game via the File> Open file menu located at the top left).

AUTHOR

Salvatore Aranzulla

Salvatore Aranzulla is the most widely read blogger and IT popularizer in Italy. Known for discovering vulnerabilities on Google and Microsoft sites. He collaborates with computer magazines and edited the technological column of the newspaper Il Messaggero. He is the founder of Aranzulla.it , one of the thirty most visited sites in Italy, in which he easily answers thousands of computer-related doubts. He has published for Mondadori and Mondadori Informatica.

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