Wild Kratts: Lost Flash Games (2012)
Oct 29, 2024 4:53:26 GMT
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Post by mrkay69 on Oct 29, 2024 4:53:26 GMT
I've made two threads about these pieces of lost media in the Discord and one article on the wiki, so I think I can mention both in great detail.
The PBS Kids original animated show, "Wild Kratts" had a large assortment of flash games on its inspired website on pbskidsgo.org (later known as pbskids.org). These flash games allowed users to create their own characters, earn Creature Power Suits, explore habitats, find, and rescue animals. Due to being in flash, they were soon removed from the website as part of PBS Kids' purge of the flash-based content that made up 80% of its site in wake of Adobe announcing their retirement of Flash at the end of 2020. However, a large amount of them were saved to the Flashpoint Archive, and remain playable to this day after nearly half a decade. But unfortunately, it's most. Not all.
"Flower Flyer" is one of the flash games based on Wild Kratts that remains lost media. In the game, the player had to use fractions to apply the right amount of nectar to Martin Kratt in his Hummingbird Power Suit, and navigate him past obstacles to get him home to the Tortuga HQ. This would allow the player to earn a Hummingbird Creature Power Suit for their character, as well as a Hummingbird Power Suit Photo that they can print. This game was not saved into Flashpoint because its required assets and files were not found, as well as an incorrect URL of the game being saved into the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, bringing users to the loader rather than the physical game.
The other flash games are missing are the mini-math games of "Creature Roundup." Creature Roundup was a collection of games on the Wild Kratts website, developed by the Canadian development company known as Pixelpusher to bring a new online presence to Wild Kratts by educating children about math. The game would focus around the show's villain, Zach Varmitech, capturing 5 baby animals from their habitats and hiding them in the forest. The player would have to navigate through the forest to find and free the baby animals.
There would be 5 mini-math games, where the player would have to use their math skills to uncover the baby animal. Then they'd be linked to the game based on that respective animal in order to free them by completing the third level.
To list them in order there is -
Creature Roundup was saved to Flashpoint, but not the mini-math puzzles, so if you press the up arrow to jump to them, they will not load, unfortunately, meaning you could only explore the terrain, rendering the game incomplete.
So that's 6 flash games (if you count the lost portions of Creature Roundup as their own individual game) that serve as lost media. The Wayback Machine doesn't help (because of the abovementioned broken URLs), and my attempts to contact developers have fallen through (two of them have no clue what happened to the files for those games, and the one person who worked at Pixelpusher that was credited for their Wild Kratts implementations has given no response to my inquiries). I make this thread in the hopes that it'll gain some traction and that there can be a lead elsewhere in finding those lost games --- either in some repo, or maybe in the cache of the web-browser on one's very old computer --- so that the entiredy of Wild Kratts's flash-based content is back in the public domain.
And just for reference, or to refresh people's memories, here is a gameplay of Flower Flyer, A.K.A. Hummingbird Hover, and here is a gameplay of Creature Roundup that shows the 5 mini-math puzzles. Both of these were recorded and published prior to the Flashpocalypse and can give a visual as to what they were like. Hopefully playing them again will become a reality what with how much lost media has been recovered throughout the 2020's decade.
The PBS Kids original animated show, "Wild Kratts" had a large assortment of flash games on its inspired website on pbskidsgo.org (later known as pbskids.org). These flash games allowed users to create their own characters, earn Creature Power Suits, explore habitats, find, and rescue animals. Due to being in flash, they were soon removed from the website as part of PBS Kids' purge of the flash-based content that made up 80% of its site in wake of Adobe announcing their retirement of Flash at the end of 2020. However, a large amount of them were saved to the Flashpoint Archive, and remain playable to this day after nearly half a decade. But unfortunately, it's most. Not all.
"Flower Flyer" is one of the flash games based on Wild Kratts that remains lost media. In the game, the player had to use fractions to apply the right amount of nectar to Martin Kratt in his Hummingbird Power Suit, and navigate him past obstacles to get him home to the Tortuga HQ. This would allow the player to earn a Hummingbird Creature Power Suit for their character, as well as a Hummingbird Power Suit Photo that they can print. This game was not saved into Flashpoint because its required assets and files were not found, as well as an incorrect URL of the game being saved into the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, bringing users to the loader rather than the physical game.
The other flash games are missing are the mini-math games of "Creature Roundup." Creature Roundup was a collection of games on the Wild Kratts website, developed by the Canadian development company known as Pixelpusher to bring a new online presence to Wild Kratts by educating children about math. The game would focus around the show's villain, Zach Varmitech, capturing 5 baby animals from their habitats and hiding them in the forest. The player would have to navigate through the forest to find and free the baby animals.
There would be 5 mini-math games, where the player would have to use their math skills to uncover the baby animal. Then they'd be linked to the game based on that respective animal in order to free them by completing the third level.
To list them in order there is -
- Hummingbird Roundup: The player observes a pattern of flowers and has to complete that pattern in order to find the baby hummingbird, and get the link to play Flower Flyer to free her from Zach‘s cage. Flower Flyer, as pointed out, was not saved into Flashpoint.
- Crocodile Roundup: To find a baby Nile crocodile, the player has to use numerical differences between most and least to select the right ponds where the crocodile is hidden and then get the link to play Croc Hatch to free him from Zach’s cage.
- Frogfish Roundup: The player has to use memory to remember the code to unlock a fence that is hiding a baby frogfish and get the link to Frogfish Feast to free him from Zach’s cage.
- Aardvark Roundup: The player will need to click on a hole with a specific number on it to reveal the baby aardvark in a cage, which will result in the player needing to play Aardvark Town (not to be confused with the episode of the same name) to free him.
- Spider Roundup: The player will need to count the total number of bugs caught in each web three times in order to find the trapped baby spider, so they can play Web-tactic and free the spider of Zach’s clutches.
Creature Roundup was saved to Flashpoint, but not the mini-math puzzles, so if you press the up arrow to jump to them, they will not load, unfortunately, meaning you could only explore the terrain, rendering the game incomplete.
So that's 6 flash games (if you count the lost portions of Creature Roundup as their own individual game) that serve as lost media. The Wayback Machine doesn't help (because of the abovementioned broken URLs), and my attempts to contact developers have fallen through (two of them have no clue what happened to the files for those games, and the one person who worked at Pixelpusher that was credited for their Wild Kratts implementations has given no response to my inquiries). I make this thread in the hopes that it'll gain some traction and that there can be a lead elsewhere in finding those lost games --- either in some repo, or maybe in the cache of the web-browser on one's very old computer --- so that the entiredy of Wild Kratts's flash-based content is back in the public domain.
And just for reference, or to refresh people's memories, here is a gameplay of Flower Flyer, A.K.A. Hummingbird Hover, and here is a gameplay of Creature Roundup that shows the 5 mini-math puzzles. Both of these were recorded and published prior to the Flashpocalypse and can give a visual as to what they were like. Hopefully playing them again will become a reality what with how much lost media has been recovered throughout the 2020's decade.
