Arcade Spotlight: Sweet Apple Cider by kevinsano

For this week's Spotlight, which just so happens to fall on St. Patrick's Day, there's no game in our library that meets the moment better than kevinsano's Sweet Apple Cider. Released on February 3rd, 2013, this ponified version of the arcade classic Tapper quickly made a real game out of what was originally a simple title screen animation posted to kevinsano's channel just one week prior!
It wasn't long after the release of Sweet Apple Cider that kevinsano made five additional mockup title screens based off of different Season 2 episodes... though unfortunately none of them became actual games, and were just used as t-shirt designs. I don't know about you, but man I sure wish we could've gotten to play Marzipan Mascarpone Meringue Madness! Honestly, if any of y'all out there have any ideas for what the other games would've been like had they been made, I'd love to hear them!

Arcade Spotlight: Canterlot Defender by futzi01

This week, we're spotlighting Canterlot Defender by the insanely prolific futzi01! Perhaps not the most popular game of theirs with the word "Canterlot" in the title, but this is a fun little game nonetheless. Another title based on the events of A Canterlot Wedding, the player, as Twilight Sparkle, must try to survive as long as possible while defending Canterlot from an endless swarm of invading Changelings. It's about as simple as it sounds, really. Go give it a shot! get it?? because you're shooting down changelings?? anyone??? please laugh

Arcade Spotlight: Mine Escape by CertaintyPrinciple

Welcome to the very first Arcade Spotlight, a series of weekly posts dedicated to giving a random arcade game a little time in the sun! I've noticed over the years that, with the sheer amount of titles we have, there are more than a few with... less-than-stellar view counts. Let's see if we can't fix that!
Mine Escape, the penultimate pony project of developer CertaintyPrinciple, was originally posted to DeviantArt on July 5th, 2012, making its way to our arcade that same day. A point-and-click puzzle game based on the events of A Canterlot Wedding - Part 2, it features Twilight Sparkle solving a series of puzzles in order to free herself and the real Princess Cadance from the depths of the Canterlot gem mines so they can put a stop to the impending Changeling invasion.
This is quite possibly my favorite game out of all of the ones we have, so I'm super stoked that it came up first. Give it a go and let us know what your final time is! I remember it taking me a... uh, little while to get through, my first time. Won't be hard for y'all to do better than me! i'm dumb and bad at puzzles lmao

Ergosphere

Ergosphere, developed by SingularMJ, is an neat 3D third-person hack n' slash/platformer, in which you are following the unicorn Horizon, a self-proclaimed researcher as she explores the ruins of an ancient civilization in search of powerful ancient artifacts.

Or at least that's what she planned to do. As she moves deeper into the ruins, she meets her eventual companion Ashes, a phoenix who serves as something of a guardian of the place. Ashes explains the history of her society -- including the existence of Trials, important events meant to test the mettle of any who rose to the challenge, and what led their civilization to ruin... having fallen at the hooves of the Trial's most celebrated and capable champion.
Tempted by greed and the promise of power by a force referred to as the Shadows, under the champion's rule the land, and most of those in it, were overrun by the evil creatures created by this force. Ashes manages to seal herself, the most powerful of the artefacts, and the spreading corruption away... until the seal unexpectedly breaks just in time for Horizon to come along. As a new Trial begins, Horizon will have to hack, slash, explore and dash her way through the ruins, collect the artifacts and (hopefully once she's done getting a good look at them!) stop the spread of the corruption once and for all.

One of the more interesting aspects of this game, next to the magically-infused combo-heavy combat system, is that large parts of the ruins are procedurally generated! A good example of it in action is actually right at the beginning of the game, which has a somewhat long platforming sequence that is completely different every time. Certainly keeps things interesting after losing all your lives!

If this sounds like it'd be up your alley, check out the game's itch.io page linked above!

Dream Studio's "Fallout Equestria: The Rise of Heroes" Animation


The seemingly endless Fallout: Equestria content train is still running strong! Dream Studios, a group from the Chinese-speaking side of the fandom, recently dropped this awesome looking trailer for an ongoing series of FO:E videos. If post-apocalyptic ponies are your thing, check it out above!
Also worth mentioning: this upload of the trailer comes courtesy of the channel Cosmia’s Stash, which is dedicated to republishing content from the Chinese fandom on YouTube. Y’all should definitely give some of the stuff there a look too!

The Adventure into Resurrecting Adventure Ponies

A journey into fiddling with old flash files
Greetings! The resident code Kirin and web master of the site here to report on a little adventure, anecdotal as it might be.
Some of you might have noticed our recent attempts to give the site a little kick, as hard to see as it might be, and s far that has mainly included going through the good old Arcade. Games added, and revised, as well as the main addition of getting Ruffle properly integrated into the site with scripts, so none of you need to install any browser plugins! As well as Ruffle works, the games should work right out of the box for you!
With the overview out of the way, one of the major issues are the ways some of the games were put together a decade ago, when flash was still alive and no one thought of the day the Adobe would drop it. Adventure Ponies, for one, the official cute little pair of games, officially made and hosted by Hasbro and The Hub, back in 2012 and 2013. It's a classic... and it doesn't work. We wanted to fix that.

The Equestria Gaming Arcade: Flashpoint Edition

Download the EQG Arcade Flashpoint Playlist!
Updated 1/1/2024: A few extra games I missed previously have been added!
Hi! I dunno about you, but I think it's about time for another one of those patented, old-timey Unfashionably Late Equestria Gaming Dot Net Posts. Man, remember those? Feels like it was just... uh, the last post. And the one before that. And the one before that. Can't forget the one before that either...
...Anyway, so when Adobe Flash kicked the bucket a few years ago, the Arcade went with it. While we've tried keeping it going with Ruffle, a Flash Player emulator, a very sizeable chunk of pony games are currently incompatible with it and will continue to be for the time being.
Luckily, though, there's an excellent alternative!
BlueMaxima's Flashpoint, to paraphrase the website, is a preservation project dedicated to not just Flash games, but also content from older formats like Shockwave and a whole host of more modern ones. Thanks to the tireless efforts of the project's contributors, they boast a whopping 150,000 games preserved, all ready to be rediscovered in the comfort of one very user friendly program! I'd recommend checking out the website linked above if you're new to Flashpoint, as they can explain things a lot better than I can!
So, what does this all have to do with the Arcade? Two things: first and foremost, that 150,000 preserved games just so happens to include all but 9 of the games from our collection (check below the break for a list)! Secondly, one of the key features of Flashpoint is the ability for users to curate and distribute "playlists" of games, which allows us to provide an Equestria Gaming Arcade playlist!
Importing the playlist is super simple! From the games tab, just hit "import playlist" at the bottom of the tab and select the EQGArcade file once you have it downloaded. Then you'll be right back to playing pony games like it's still 2012! Happy horsegaming!


As of February 2024, the only games currently missing from Flashpoint are nolcip21's Pinkie Fun and Luna Fun, both of which are playable in the Arcade. If and when these finally make their way to Flashpoint, the playlist will be complete.