Before the popularisation of smartphones and tablets, kids and teens of the 2000s had to resort to other ways of entertaining themselves. When at school, a public library or when the big TV was occupied, we had to go to browser-based flash games, and there was about a billion of them. In those billions of flash games was also a ton of Football based flash games, the best among them being Stan James Freekick Challenge. But now that flash isn’t supported on any modern devices, and it’s very hard to play, future generations will never know the joys of the Stan James freekick challenge.
Who made the Stan James Original Freekick Challenge?
At the time in 2004, I thought Stan James was a famous footballer of the olden days, like having David Beckham’s freekick challenge. But as I grew up, I discovered that it was, in fact, a betting company that is still going strong to this day. You can actually check out some Stan James offers here. So these guys made the game to attract more business for their Euro 2004 offers but actually ended up making one of the most fun free games online.
What is the Stan James Free Kick challenge?
The game, at its core, is very simple. You are taking a freekick and need to select the angle, power and curve to try and get it past an increasingly growing defence. You’re not able to just free select the gauges though, they move automatically, and you have to time them just right to get the ball in the back of the net. The game ramps up in difficulty, and the young me wasn’t able to get past ten goals.
Where can I play the Stan James Free Kick challenge?
There are still tons of websites that host the game, but the greater difficulty will be enabling flash on your browser. I remember when I was younger discovering this game on miniclip.com, but that site has changed quite a lot, and I don’t think they have any flash games on it anymore. You can find the game here and get flashing working by following this tutorial. It’s a bit of effort, but well worth it for that tasty slice of nostalgia.
And so there we have a little eulogy for a little slice of internet history from 2004. Browser-based flash games were a very short but important part of gaming history wedged between Broadband internet becoming cheap and more prevalent and mobile/tablet becoming cheap and more prevalent.