Happy new year everyone!
We’ve (finally) reached the year 2021, and looking back we had a busy past year with a slew of SSF2 updates thanks to our recently concluded SSF2 Rotation Release Cycle. At this rate you must be asking: “What’s next in store for SSF2?”
The End of Flash Player
Many of you probably already know that the end of Flash Player support arrived today, with the full transition to being globally disabled arriving on January 12th, 2021. As the creators of one of the most ambitious Flash-based projects on the internet, it pains us greatly to see it go. Flash is what allowed SSF2 to blossom into the ultimate Smash tribute that you see today, and it’s also what put McLeodGaming on the path to being a real independent game studio in the early 2000s. We may never see a technology exactly quite like Flash again in the future, and we think it’s important to look back and appreciate how it allowed all sorts of creative individuals to express themselves, despite all of the negative press.
On the bright side, a project called Ruffle has been underway for quite some time to emulate the Flash Player in-browser without requiring a plugin. It’s made great strides supporting tons of games from the ActionScript 2.0 days, including an almost fully-functional Super Smash Flash 1 (go try it out!). It may be some time before we see SSF2 supported since the game is built in ActionScript 3.0, but in the meantime you can always download the game to play on your desktop using Adobe AIR in place of the Flash Player.
(By the way, if you’d like to support such an awesome project, we encourage you to check out Ruffle’s Open Collective page)
SSF2 Development
Rest assured, despite the demise of the Flash Player and the end of the Rotation Release development cycle, SSF2 isn’t stopping any time soon! While the team is going to start off a bit slower this year, there are plenty of content plans in the pipeline. Expect more news to come as we begin picking up the pace again.
Also in case you missed it, please make sure to follow SSF2’s new Twitter account and subscribe to our new YouTube channel so you don’t miss out anything!
That’s all for now, in the meantime have fun playing SSF2 v1.3!
