Flash games from 2000–2003

In the first years of the 2000s most people were still on dial-up, and a Flash game had to be small enough to load before you lost patience. That limit shaped everything: simple shapes, short loops and ideas that worked in a few hundred kilobytes. Stick figures were perfect, which is how Xiao Xiao No. 4 and Xiao Xiao 9: Fight Man spread across the world by email and forum links. Games like NS-Shaft, Sword and Sandals 2 and Bartender: The Right Mix showed that a browser game could keep you playing for hours.