When stick figures fought

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Nostalgia for Xiao Xiao, StickDeath, and the Flash Era

  • Many recall Xiao Xiao, StickDeath, Madness Combat, and sites like Stickpage, SFDT, Newgrounds, and Albino Blacksheep as formative early-internet experiences.
  • People remember LAN parties, school computer labs, and shared hard drives full of .swf and .avi files, often alongside other early viral videos.
  • Several note specific spin‑offs or contemporaries: Ninjai, Killer Bean, Animator vs. Animation, and “choose your own death” stick figure Flash shorts.

Communities, Tools, and Learning to Code

  • SFDT, DeviantArt “flashers,” Pivot Animator, Flipnote on Nintendo DS, and small forums are remembered as tight-knit, creative communities that felt very different from today’s large platforms.
  • Many say Flash and ActionScript were their gateway to programming, game dev, and even careers in tech; some later moved to TypeScript, Haxe/OpenFL, Unity, or modern engines.
  • Pivot Animator, Toribash, and newer games like YOMI Hustle, Stick It to the Stickman, and One Finger Death Punch are mentioned as spiritual successors to stick-fight animation and gameplay.

Flash UX, Demise, and What Was Lost

  • Strong praise for Flash as a uniquely good visual authoring tool with an easy creative ramp for non‑technical people.
  • Counterpoints emphasize Flash’s poor performance, memory leaks, security issues, and especially its terrible web-browsing experience and ad abuse.
  • Debate over whether Flash “had to die”: some argue the plugin was a security disaster; others say the creative environment could have been preserved separately from web video.
  • Some blame mobile (especially smartphones) and others blame corporate shifts and subscription pricing for the loss of that ecosystem.

Preservation, Successors, and Access Today

  • People highlight Ruffle and large archival efforts as ways to experience original vector-based and interactive Flash content.
  • There’s a sense that today’s internet favors a few giant platforms, making it harder to stumble into weird, niche, creative communities—though group chats, indie tools (e.g., Godot), and Source Filmmaker are seen as partial heirs.

Nike, IP, and Fairness

  • Discussion over the Nike ad dispute focuses on power imbalance: morally many feel the original creator should have been compensated, but others argue the law around simple stick figures and prior art made that unlikely.