Comment by darkmarmot

20 hours 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!

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!

  • The games you mention are Dexter's Laser Lab, Dexter's Labyrinth and Dexter MixMaster, by developers NetBabyWorld. Those games were originally their own game without the Cartoon Network branding. Labyrinth was based on Ninja Girl 1 and 2 and Dexter MixMaster was originally Tune Inn (that's why this one felt a bit off).

    Since they were Shockwave based games they're not playable on modern browsers but they're playable with the Flashpoint Archive project. Huge timewaster, be careful. Better look for the games on YouTube :)

    • Hah, that explains the out-of-left-field theme! I had no idea they were reskins of exiting games. Interesting how child me managed to unknowingly zero in into the games of a single developer.!

      And thanks for the game names as wel, although, I must admit that after posting that comment, I did go looking for them, and... Well, let's just say I've found my MixMaster skills to be quite rusty after all this time :p

  • This Dexter's Lab laser game was the first flash game I had ever played, and one of my first actual experiences with the internet. I remember seeing cartoonnetwork.com on the TV, understanding that there are games I could play online, and trying to figure out what the funny phone noises meant with AOL. Someone helped me go online using dialup and I ended up on the website somehow (probably struggling really badly to type as a kid) and it took forever for the flash game to load. At first I had little understanding of what I was looking at, felt very hard to understand websites. I also remember the Samurai Jack one really vividly, even took a note down of the game cheatcode on the TV and hid the note in a drawer after we moved and didn't have a PC anymore, because my parents said I'd have to wait "until I was a 18" to ever have an internet connection again. I was so little, I certainly lost it or someone tossed it, but we got a computer so I did end up enjoying the game a lot! I also really liked the HiHi Puffy Ami Yumi flash games, like the vacation one.

    What a shame CN took their classic game sites down, when hosting flash games isn't even all that resource-intensive. An archive by them would've been nice. I recall every couple of years, older games slowly got removed which made me sad, until eventually flash died completely.

    My goodness, I've come so far now in life. I know what tools to use to decompile flash games and look at the assets and logic, it's crazy to look back on how much games inspired me to learn about programming because I wanted to make my own.

    To anyone who worked on these, thank you SO MUCH for having built them; you've definitely had a positive influence on countless people who were mentally stimulated and learned about how to use computers more in an effort to play them.

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.

Did you by chance work on Cartoon Orbit?

  • Alas no. I worked on their Power Play downloadable system to embed games in a local player and also did stuff like add Mojo Jojo and new levels to games like Power Puff Girls Fast and the Flurrious. Fun times :)

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

  • I worked on their Power Play downloadable system to embed games in a local player and also did stuff like add Mojo Jojo and new levels to games like Power Puff Girls Fast and the Flurrious. They had a mini golf game with a 3d golf club I embedded that I spent more time playing than working on :)

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