How To Download Free Flash Miniclip Games and Carry Them on USB

There are a lot of free flash games on the internet. However, sometimes it’s nice if you’re able to access these games offline — on your desktop, or on a USB stick.

For most sites, you can just use some of the many online tools and tricks available. Aibek wrote an article on it last year — How To Download and Play Flash Games Offline. Sadly, MiniClip.com isn’t what we’d consider ‘most sites’.

If you want to download a flash game, MiniClip can be a real hard-ass. They do their best to ensure that the games keep being played on their site. That’s were the nerds come in.

Today, we’ll show you how to download free flash MiniClip games to enjoy on your computer or on a USB stick. The process seems a little bit difficult at first, but if you follow the instructions, you’ll do it in no-time.

Downloading Free Flash MiniClip Games

If you are to download a game from MiniClip.com, you must be willing to get your hands dirty. Where fancy tools do not work, we go in the old-fashioned way.

First off, we’ll be looking for the location of the flash file (a separate file in which the game is contained). To do this, we’re going to take a look at the source code. For those of you who are not that technologically skilled, it is a document filled with code. These lines define how the webpage is built, how it looks and – most importantly for us – what files are embedded.

Open the source code with Ctrl+U (Firefox on Windows), or right-click on the page and click View Source. This ought to work in any current-day browser, even though the phrasing might differ slightly.

Next, press Ctrl+F to initiate a search, and use .swf as a query (including the dot will filter out unnecessary results). Your first result should be something of the kind you see below: value=”doodle2.swf”. The exact name depends on which file you’re trying to download. Write your value (the name between the quotation marks) down, or copy it to your clipboard.

Now we know the file’s name, getting it to your desktop is easy. Just put the value behind the game’s original browser address, and you’ve got your download link. Now all you have to do is download the file.

However, if you haven’t got a download manager, downloading with the URL from a browser can be tricky. Because of their support for flash files, your browser will probably try to open the file, not save it. This can be avoided using a simple workaround.

Go to an online HTML code tester, like the one on Draac.com and enter your link in the following way: <a href=”YourLinkComesHere“>text</a>. Just press the button and you’ve got a clickable link waiting for you!

True, this is more work than we’re used to when downloading flash files — probably MiniClip wants to assure web-traffic by disallowing users to download the file. However, if you really want the file and know the drill, this won’t take more than a minute.

Putting the files on Your USB stick

Right now you can just put the files on your USB, if you want. From there, you can carry it to a friend’s, or enjoy yourself at school or work. However, not all computers can just open these free flash MiniClip games. There are two possible ways of going about this.

First of all, you could simply use your web browser. All browsers (Firefox, IE, etc.) with the flash plug-in installed, can also play these files from your desktop. However, you’ll need to point your computer in the right direction with right-click -> Open with…

Alternatively, you can install one of the many desktop flash players out there. One free solution that worked pretty well for me is the Swiff Player, but there are plenty of alternatives.

We hope you’ve learned something useful from this MakeUseOf tutorial. If you’ve got any remarks, suggestions or questions about the article, feel free to write something in the comments section below. If you are aware of easier way to download Miniclip flash games for free share it comments as well.