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You want flash games? YOU GOT 'EM!
I have probably a gig of flash games I've downloaded to my computer. A lot of it is crap, actually. But there are several that are quite addictive and I thought I would share.

Most of these you can grab and save locally. Since I had most of these saved, I just Googled for the game names and linked the first or second or third result that came up. Most I checked to make sure the site would load without popups and teh game was still there and would load. I included the name in case the result doesn't work as it should (such as a site getting slashdotted! - I could have used coral cache [.nyud.net] on these, but I was unsure if it'd work with the flash files as well. So, if one doesn't work, you can always Google the name. :p

Also, if you saved the flash files locally, you can also download a standalone flash player, courtesy of Adobe, so that you can play the games on your home PC as well. Standalone debug versions are apparently available for Mac, Linux and Windows.

Below is a list of some games I thought I'd share with y'all. Some have probably been mentioned (n, dice wars), but those that were in the main article (portal flash version) I've skipped.

Unreal - http://www.armorgames.com/games/unrealflash_popup.html

Unreal 2007 (Newer version of above) - http://www.addictinggames.com/unrealflash2007.html

Tactics Core (isometric turn-based rpg fighter) - http://www.ugoplayer.com//games/tacticscore.html

Tactics 100 (Newer version of above) - http://www.gamebrew.com/games/blogs/tactics100/play.php

The Batman: Cobblepot Captor (side scroller) - http://www.unoriginal.co.uk/batman.html

Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman (side scroller) - http://www.arcadestreet.com/play-batman-mystery-of-the-batwoman.htm

Russian Affairs (side scroller) - http://russian-affairs.freeonlinegames.com/
Space Bounty (side scroller) - http://www.diggygames.com/play-4434-Space_Bounty.html
The Professionals II (side scroller) - http://www.flasharcade.com/shooting-games/the-professionals-ii-game.html

http://neave.com/games/ (which includes cool old school games like Space Invaders, Tetris, Asteroids, Snake, Frogger, Simon Says, Tic-tac-toe, and... Hexxagon ? )

Tetris (Kind of like Tetris Grand Master, from what I can tell) - http://www.gdward.plus.com/site/flash/tetris/

Bubble Shooter - http://absolutist.com/online/bubbles/

PacXon - http://www.addictinggames.com/pacxon.html

Deal or No Deal - http://www.nbc.com/Deal_or_No_Deal/game/flash.shtml

Plumber - http://www.2flashgames.com/f/f-1082.htm

Bunch - http://www.miniclip.com/games/bunch/en/

Tanks - http://www.2dplay.com/tanks/tanks-play.htm

n game - http://www.harveycartel.org/metanet/n.html

Dice Wars (Risk) - http://www.gamedesign.jp/flash/dice/dice.html

One letter. N.

I'll second N. Edges out Cave Story as my favorite platformer of all time.

Best of all, the two are pretty drastically different, so it's worth trying both.

The greatest free cycle eater in the universe doesn't make the list? I can't believe it.

http://www.harveycartel.org/metanet/n.html

Average play time ranges from 30 seconds to 10 hours. Perfect for those long software builds when you've already checked your email 30 times in the last 5 minutes. No scrolling, just perfect stick-figure ninja goodness.

One thing that struck me recently is that the platformer is still a very fun game concept. Play N to see what I mean. It's an absolute pain in the ass, but very fun. Back to the old days, I say ;)

N, Way of the Ninja.
Here: http://www.harveycartel.org/metanet/n.html

I see this every time I dare to glimpse at the gaming press. The absolute worst of the worst are the TV shows, like GamerTV, Gamesville, and that old one with the woman with the weird hair. Here's the recipe: too many futuristic "swooshing" animations, episodes repeated ad-infinitum no matter how old they become, review after review of Yet Another 3D Platformer 4, and a clichéd, useless "We give it... 3 out of 5!"-type section.

You will almost never see a game like N, or Uplink reviewed, because they aren't backed by the big cartels like EA, whose latest player name update to FIFA will doubtlessly turn out to be a "worthy addition to this legendary series".

Nah, if you want an updated version of loderunner, try N at http://www.harveycartel.org/metanet/downloads.html . Imagine loderunner with a ninja an 500 levels.

3) But it's all mathematical calculations. ( Vectors, rays, fractals, ... )

Raster based = you use brushes. Unless it's a bitmap you're drawing with, the brush has to come from somewhere. Where you draw could easily be stored.

(Now we go off-topic and PS-bashing)

As it is I have PSCS2, and I happened to want to blend some screenshots together. So, we have an example.

132 screenshots, 24bit 800x600.

That would make it a moderate 181mb. (800*600*3*132)

If my commands were just saved, not much more memory would be needed.

This is not what happens, winXP says the memory usage is 360mb, but then a 1x1 image only opened it gives 65mb. 295mb then.

If I click on a layer, there's a half a second wait. When I click on "normal" to bring up the blending mode selection, then click "darken" there's a half a second wait.

The lag is seemingly... harddrive access time. But I have 1.7gb memory, with 1gb free? This is the reason <5.0 doesn't work with XP, reports "not enough memory", because you don't have a sickly huge swap drive. PS needs to use your hdd no matter what. Dated technology, just piled on crap since 1.0.

How is this related? Some people might like watching paint dry, but the reason I've heard of professional (payed) painters going digital, is simply because it was faster. But there could be load of improvements on that subject.

Of note is the psd (from Imageready, with its "import folder as frames(=layers)" option) is only 14mb. It's of N, some really undetailed graphics. Hypothetically, in the preview mode, in a 2d program that works like a 3d renderer, we could store the images as 8bit, even 6bit (64 colours) without much quality loss, but with 1/4 memory usage (45mb).

Example #2: Let's take something really simple, we want to fuck around with the hue.

In Gimp, I have to let go of the slider to see any change.

In PS, it updates in stages, takes a second or so. (Gimp has this too, which it has copied badly from PS, like 90% of the program)

Then I have an image database program (Thumbs+), which isn't made for editing images. Its capabilities there are basically the same since the windows 3.11 version. It updates in 1/10th of a sec.

I'll be trying out how Xara to see how it works with this now.

I should keep the list somewhere...

Cho Ren Sha 68k (shmup)
Kenta Cho's games (mostly shmups)
Destruction Desire (fighting game)
Mind Arms (fighting game)
Galax (Shmup)
Frequon Invaders (weird)
Doukutsu Monogatari (platformer)
Every Extend (kamikaze'em up)
Glace (platformer)
Frontline (sidescrolling shooter)
Minebot (... Action?)
N (Platformer)

Metanet has a cool 2D Ninja game: N

Global Defense Network

Wik and the Fable of Souls

Rocketbowl

N

http://www.steermadness.com/
Alien Hominid

Gish

Protothea

Looks like the only one (besides Gish, which I already knew) that runs on linux is N.

And why don't you put the damn links to the games?

Sorry. Meant to give a link to "N". You can find it here. I don't know how they came up with it, but it's just so much fun (and the graphics are very simple in a clean and elegant kind of way).

To me, stats are very important. They track my progress over time... one game, the one I play the most now, (N) tracks the fastest times for each level on my own machine, and the top 20 speeds for each level and episode (5 levels) which can be downloaded and viewed. If it weren't for the stats and the competition that came from them, I probably would've quit a long time ago.

And once you're done getting your ass kicked by that last blue drone, you can watch other people's high score runs to see a master ninja at work. Truely, some people are spectacular at this game.

If you enjoy speed runs you should check out the game N. It's free, and it was practically made for awesome speed demos. Your replay is recorded for every best run through every level, and the top 20 runs of every level (and episode, which is a collection of 5 levels) are saved online and downloadable in game. Trust me, its worth checking out.