There was a time when the internet wasn’t an algorithm-powered mess made up entirely of five apps, Reddit, and short-form video. Instead, it was useful and also weird and fun. And if you miss that era of the web, you can hop back in time and revisit it thanks to some Cartoon Network web games that were recently republished and made easy to play in your browser once again, despite the death of Flash a few years back.
As spotted by Retro Tech Dreams, over the weekend, the Web Design Museum uploaded 44 digitally preserved Cartoon Network web games. These Flash games were released between 2001 and 2015 and include a mix of puzzle, action, and light platforming. You’ll find games starring classic characters, like Scooby-Doo and Tom and Jerry, as well as some later era Flash games featuring Sonic and Annoying Orange. Gross.
To play these games, all you have to do is click on them. Unlike past, more exhaustive attempts to archive and save old Flash games, these preserved Cartoon Network games don’t require any extra downloads or software. Just open them, skip past the ad, and start playing whatever Cartoon Network mini-game triggers your millennial nostalgia the most. For me, it was Food Bash and Ed, Edd & Eddy’s Spin Stadium.
Don’t expect anything too impressive in this collection, as these were all games built quickly on small budgets to give kids something to do online outside of their favorite cable cartoon programming block. Still, what is here includes some games I can clearly remember playing as a young lad. Weirdly, I remember playing some of these games for far longer than just a few minutes, and looking at the comments on Retro Tech’s Twitter post, it seems I’m not alone in having spent far too many of my precious childhood clicking cartoon characters in a browser game.
Part of me feels sad about that. But then again, I’m happy that I spent my youth exploring a weirder, more innocent, and non-algo-fueled internet. Sure, it was a slower and uglier web, but it also didn’t give me brain rot. And Google’s search results were actually useful still. A different, better era of the internet that is as dead as Flash and the fun sites it powered is in 2026.
