It’s a familiar cry. Bring the old islands back to Poptropica! Ever since a huge chunk of islands went off the map due to technical incompatibility, Poptropicans everywhere have been calling for their return, including here on the PHB. But it’s been years, and gone they continue to be.
So let’s talk about that. The Poptropica Creators have no doubt heard the cries and have even promised to find ways to bring back the classics. But as time goes by, with few of the originals to show for it, players are getting restless. From the PHB, here’s our call to the Pop Creators, on behalf of nostalgic fans everywhere: here’s what it takes to keep the spirit of Poptropica alive and well.
🏝 Know and celebrate the old islands
Poptropica used to have over 40 original islands, each a world filled with stories to explore. With the Flash-to-Haxe transition, we’re now down to about 10, and several are incomplete episodic adventures.
And the islands that Poptropica has put out in the past several years have shifted in style of gameplay — there’s a lot more handholding and a lot less exploring. So first things first, Poptropica needs to remember what made the old islands so special to so many of our childhoods.
Old Poptropica islands used the medium of interactive gaming to tell compelling stories to the kids who played them. But the newer islands seem to have one without the other: Reality TV: Wild Safari was all games, no story; while Fairytale Island gave us fun tales but without much participation in them from the player. A really successful island, like Mystery Train, manages to do both: puzzles and narrative together.
The Poptropica of the past several years have shown us that the Creators are straying further away from this vision of what made Poptropica so loved before. Players have compared this worrying trend to Mocktropica Island, the parody turned reality. More recently, a Creator’s clueless comment on Instagram revealed a lack of knowledge about Betty Jetty, a beloved character from an old island, which ultimately speaks to a lack of awareness for iconic parts of their own game.
So please, Poptropica Creators, revisit those old islands and experience their magic. Know the lore of the Poptropica worlds we grew up with, and let that intoxicating blend of gaming and storytelling guide you into making the next great island adventure.
FYI: There are ways to play the old islands, and you can always visit the PHB’s Island Guides to learn more about them! 🏝
⌛️ Slow down on the secondary features
While Poptropica hasn’t been pushing out their A-game in islands lately, we have been getting a lot of funky new features (and losing quite a few others, but we digress). Part of that is keeping up with today’s gaming tech needs with the Flash-to-Haxe transition, but all this focus on new, not-island stuff has made Poptropicans wonder what it’s all for.
Sure, it’s fun to see Home Island get a seasonal makeover or try on a new costume from the store. But why are the Creators so obsessed with redesigning Home Island? What’s with all the pop-up screens telling you what to do, or the remaking of features like the menu that were fine the way they were? Even assuming that these updates are well received, they should not be the main focus—they’re secondary aspects.
All the efforts spent in making these updates is time taken away from preserving the spirit of Poptropica through the old islands. Every inconsequential makeover or new pet item feels, to the nostalgic player, like valuable time that could have gone towards getting closer to bringing the old islands back. Which brings us to the last point…
⏩ Port the old islands to Haxe
Sounds obvious and probably easier said than done, but that’s really what a lot of players are looking for right now. Poptropica owns all that content, and the fanbase is eager to play them, so what’s the holdup?
When asked in late 2020 about whether 2021 holds new islands or the return of old ones, the Poptropica CEO answered:
We’re working on a mix of both, plus some remasters of the old islands. We’re also looking at ways to allow players to access the old islands once Flash isn’t widely supported anymore.
Abhi Arya, Poptropica CEO
Remasters are all well and good (well, unless they turn out watered-down like the remastered Mythology Island), but this reinventing could be one reason things are taking a while. But while we wait for those, what about giving us the old islands in their original form? That still takes work, but presumably less work than rewriting old islands.
From that same Q&A:
We know how much the Poptropica you grew up with means to you and want to make sure you can always play that version.
Natalie Shahmiri, Poptropica general manager
Poptropica has heard and promised, but we’ve been waiting a while. It’s been 7 months since that promise in our Q&A with them, nearly 2 years since the old islands vanished from the map, and coming up on 5 years if we’re counting from Poptropica’s first attempts at rebuilding itself for an era without Flash via the now-defunct Poptropica Worlds. An update would be nice. More old islands would be even better. 💙
What say you, Poptropicans? Whether you’re a new or old player, share your thoughts in the comments so the Creators can hear more voices on how fans feel about the state of the game today!
Explore, collect, compete!
— the Poptropica Help Blog —
🏝 Poptropica Help Blog 🗺 
First. And also they won’t bring them back.
We’ll see… they did promise, but they also don’t have a great track record when it comes to promises.
I doubt it would be technologically possible unless they used something like Flashpoint, and if they remade them from the ground up there would likely be many changes we would dislike. And with their current resources, it would be impossible to remake them quickly. (I’m pretty sure only one employee focuses on this game with the rest working for all of Sandbox).
Porting at least the newer old islands (those made in AS3, also sometimes called SUIs) to Haxe is not impossible — we’ve already gotten a few like Time Tangled and Timmy Failure. As for older (AS2) islands, that’s probably harder, but they own the content and know how to make some form of an island (see Fairytale) — so putting those together is just a matter of time and resources. With all the work it takes to create Poptropica, I don’t think it’s fair to say that it’s all the work of one person — they’ve even said they’re a small team.
I am new to poptropica but I did get to play the old islands very breifly. Please bring the old islands back! They were really good and a lot of fun to play and now it is super difficult to even access them!
Yes! Thanks for adding to this discussion as a newer player. 🙂
Bringing old Islands back….It feels like a castle on air
Here’s hoping anyway. 🤞
I feel like the current Poptropica is a shell of its former self. And I’m also worried about the Poptropica team’s idea of ‘remastering ‘. If making the islands easier and taking out several puzzles and key locations that made the Old Islands more challenging and interesting (as they did with the Haxe version of Mythology Island) is okay to them, that is very concerning. And I feel very fortunate to have experienced and beaten all of the Old Islands as a veteran player. I feel that newer players are missing out on so much of what made Poptropica so special and iconic in the first place. And finally, I feel that beating all the Old Islands at least once should be a prerequisite to be able to work on the game , as it would help the current team understand what makes the Old Islands so special for people, as well as helping them understand the lore and characters better.
That last part about making playing the old islands a prerequisite to being a Pop Creator is an interesting thought. That might be asking a lot from a potential job candidate, but once they’re hired, they definitely should spend some time getting familiar with the world/brand they’re working with—including the stories of the old islands!
Creators, Please bring back the islands and allow us to explore them and actually play around on them. Please don’t hand hold the players on the island and let us figure out the goals and tasks on the island by ourselves.
Yup! I’d add that there’s a fine balance between saying too much and too little. Some parts of old Poptropica may have confused young players who didn’t know what to do, or that they were supposed to be doing anything at all, but part of the fun is figuring things out.
Thank you! I feel like Poptropica is now focusing on younger generations who are now joining and forgetting that some of the older players are maybe in their teens or twenties (but not all), and they’re trying to make the game more playable for the younger, newer kids, because they believe all the new players are, like, five,but that means they’re making it easier for the people that know what Poptropica really is.
And yes, it is taking a while! They promise they’re working on bringing old islands back, but their only recent updates are side-quests and changing things that we were fine with. That’s another problem! They’re ignoring my emails about the buggy glitches (not the helpful kind), but they change what I really like. I’ve been petitioning them, but I feel like I’m not being listened to. 😐
It’s okay that Poptropica focuses on a younger audience, as that’s always been their goal, but it’s an issue if even those younger kids (6–10 years old) find the newer stuff is pretty easy. Not every island has to be hard, but the older islands definitely had more depth in storytelling and challenge in gameplay that gave Poptropica appeal even as kids grew older. (And the generation of teens and young adults who grew up with Poptropica definitely holds untapped potential for Pop’s future development!)
Yep! Totally agree.
THE POOR TRAIN!!!!!!
RIP for all the havoc wreaked by Poptropica’s super villains ⚡️
It does very much bother me the route Poptropica is following, as it has been resembling a cashgrab children’s game instead of a unique medium of storytelling. The reason the game has held onto me for so long is because of how mature it was for its audience and the immersive gameplay– I know it was a Flash game, but it was a dang good one! It’s very obvious there’s no love for the original game and its stories and continuity. Dr. Hare has become more of a symbol than a character, and is plastered everywhere for an easy way to make low effort content. It’s very disappointing as original Poptropica lead me to find my dreams and into many interests I never thought I’d have, and that seems to be the case with many older, longtime players. The more they make the game a hollow shell of its former self the less successful they’ll be. Membership doesn’t even have perks anymore, really. It’s alienating the people who really care about the game in exchange for some pocket change. Very sad to see this turn and have watched the decline for the past several years.
Thanks for sharing those thoughts, Popular Wolf. It’s definitely true that Poptropica has shaped a generation of creatives, and it’s been a joy to witness over many years in the fandom. Sure Poptropica needs cash to survive, but it would make more sense to gain that through offering genuine value.
YESSSSS I WANT REALITY TV ISLAND BACK
I’ve been playing Poptropica since it came out, even though I was only 4 years old at the time. I’m now 18 and it has been added to my mental list of Forgotten Games of the Past, but I’m hoping and praying it doesn’t stay there. It was a monumental part of my childhood and I played it with all my friends, and to this day we all miss it. The game used to challenge us mentally, there were no easy peasy tell you how to do it features in the game. I mean, sure, if it took us more than 6 months then we’d sometimes use some cheats, but the fun was figuring it out for yourself, no matter how long it took, and it was friendly rivalry among us friends as well to see who could do it the fastest. The game also wasn’t watered down like Mythology has been (I agreed heartily when you said that) and it was never pay to play like so many games are now. I would sometimes buy a membership if I had the spare cash, but the important thing was that 90% of the game and the best parts of it were free to everyone. The diversity of all the islands, the sheer number of them and the depth they held, we all grew up on it and would like to see it returned. The game now has been dumbed down, most of it is gone, (remember the old store, and the spot to put in codes to get crazy awesome prizes, or the Hypno dude on Old Poptropica?) and it’s full of bugs now, there’s not a single island functioning for me and customer support won’t respond or help. I played every island a hundred times over back in the old days and never tired of it. I fear the game we knew is dead, but I refuse to give up hope. It’s funny though, I was actually reminiscing about a week ago with some old friends and commented how it was very much straying towards Mocktropica, and if only we and the creators had known the foreshadowing held in that island. It’s nice to see I’m not the only one who has been thinking and worrying about this. I played on the old server via a link I found on Reddit right up until the day Flash went down, but that was the end of it for me since I have a Mac and don’t have the money for Windows, even just on a separate partition. I’d love to see all the old islands come home to us, even if we never see all the old costumes and store return. I still maintain my old account on that prayer, and usually go about as young Captain Crawfish for old times’ sake, and because he’s still as awesome as he ever was, even if most of the world has forgotten him. Honestly it’s just salt in an open wound to see bits in the thrown at us to appease us, like the cheese from Astro Knights and the pig from Old Poptropica available in the store, or the characters walking by at the base of Home Island, or the stuff the Baroness brings. It’s not the same, so I wish they’d stop pretending it is, and it angers me that they still use Dr. Hare for advertising and such, his island home may still be one of the few left, but they killed so much of the old game that it feels like a slap in the face to see all of the old treasures being used for cheap and lazy cash grabs. My mood on all this shifts from exhaustion, anger, and sadness, but always with a heavy note of nostalgia. Glad ya’ll feel the same, we lost a good thing here.
Wow, thanks for sharing in such detail! Yes, many veteran players have experienced similar sentiments in the past several years. The challenge is a big part of the fun.
A recent revelation from a former Pop Creator also hinted at how Mocktropica might not have just been foreshadowing, but an expression of what was already unfolding at Pop HQ during its creation. You can read about Poptropica’s Mocktropica story here.
It may be sad to see bits and pieces of old Pop cheapened to yet more items with which to decorate your character or clubhouse, but at the same time, it also offers some hope that Poptropica hasn’t forgotten those parts. Knowing that they own all the art and story of their old creations (which have tremendous nostalgic value for old players, but currently only aesthetic value for newer ones) hints that there still may be a chance for them to return in their full glory someday.
I suppose that is a more hopeful way of looking at it, and I have purchased each of those old items for old times’ sake. As for the Mocktropica bit, I hope that’s true because it would show that someone up there realized what was going on, and likely couldn’t change it on their own but chose to speak through an island. It was right around the time things went seriously downhill, they weren’t as bad before then.
Omg I am so glad someone else can relate! I started playing this game in 2007, because I was at Boys & Girls Club in the computer room and this older kid showed me his account. He was playing the Super Power Island. I was five or six years old at the time, so of course I thought that was dope and had to try it. I was immediately hooked. Played it obsessively for many years with my friends. We would get super pumped every time a new island came out. It gave us something wholesome to look forward to.
I remember playing Great Pumpkin around Halloween, playing Big Nate before going to my grandma’s house for Thanksgiving, Wimpy Wonderland around Christmas… when I got so sick that I could barely move for like a week, got pneumonia or something; I laid in bed and played Cryptids, AstroKnights, Counterfeit, Ghost Story, Reality TV, Zomberry, etc. and it gave me so much joy, challenge and excitement despite feeling like I was on the verge of death.
Honestly, out of any game in the world (I always played lots of video games), this was my favorite and the absolute most nostalgic. It got me through my parent’s divorce and all kinds of trauma… it was my only comfort at times, and it drove so many of my passions.
Last time I played I was maybe 16? By that point I felt way too old and embarrassed to still play a “kids” game, so I stopped… but if I’d known that was the last time I could log in.. I would not have taken it for granted.
I feel silly getting emotional about Poptropica at 21 years old, but this game was so precious to me. It feels like a stab in the heart that they’ve made empty promises and taken away our childhoods. Then turned it into a shell of its former self.
I know they’re a small team, but it’s been 3-4 years now. It’s been more than enough time to at least release a few more. I wonder if there is any way we can encourage them to let us play again. Maybe if we cry hard enough lol!
This actually is going to make me cry.
I played Shark Tooth for the first time since I was a kid yesterday using flashpoint (thank you phb for the guide!)
And I just don’t think I would be the same if they really took these islands away permanently. I really hope they’re going to keep them and not mess around with them like they did Mythology.
I mean, Shark Tooth is the most simple island ever, you know? They don’t need to dilute anything, water it down. These islands mean the world to me and so many people. I hope they do the right thing and keep them, even if it takes time.
I also think they should bring the bubblegum back. Miss it.
To so many of us who were there at the beginning, these islands mean too much to just forget.
try old island directory
BRING THE ISLANDS BACK
I feel ya, April
I recently found Poptropica again and was so excited to experience all the original islands again, but I was shocked when i saw there are less than 10 islands available to free players now! I know that life changes and the world moves on, but I feel like the great diversity of islands and the ability to explore new worlds and adventures was the best feature of the game, that now seems to be forgotten.
I recently played the new Fairytale island and it took me about 5 minutes. There was barely any interactive gameplay, no puzzles and I felt bored during the storyline. Not to mention, once I completed the riddles and came back to the island, the final victory was taken from me by Poptropica demanding a membership to finish. I understand that games need a source of income, but this felt a bit intrusive as now I won’t be able to finish the storyline.
Another feature I was really sad to see missing was the ability to copy NPC’s wardrobes! This was my favourite feature as a kid, and I would go to different islands finding fun clothes and hairstyles to uniquely customise my character. I’ve since learnt that the decision to remove it was to prevent players from copying other player’s purchased outfits, however I seem to remember not being able to use this feature on other players, only on NPCs. This seems like a simple solution to the problem, and I know just how many players would love to see the return of this feature!
As a final comment, please bring back the old adventures, and remember what we loved most about Poptropica – adventure, puzzles and diversity!
Bit late to the conversation but I’ll add my two cents nevertheless. After a nearly 4 year break from Poptropica, I logged in for the first time last night. I had been playing Poptropica for a number of years but suddenly stopped out of the blue, cannot remember why. I’m honestly shocked and deeply impressed with myself that I remembered the random username and password that my still developing brain thought up. I’ve had so much fun playing all the Poptropica islands, most notably of which was Super Power Island, where I amassed upwards of 50 medallions for it because I found it so entertaining. Another few gems that I remember enjoying immensely were the Wild West, Spy, Shrink Ray, and Survival islands. Poptropica was a key part of my childhood and it is sad to see it deteriorate as it has. To all the veteran Poptropicans wishing to return to Poptropica’s glory days, stay strong! If we persevere, we may see a future in which Poptropica returns to or surpasses its previous grandeur. However, for now, hold those memories dear to your heart and do your best to persist through this unfortunate time.
I’m a veteran of poptropicas old island when it was still freshly new and much fun. I had thought of old childhood games I’ve used to play online a lot ranging from “Y8.com”, “ToonTown”, and even “Club penguin”. Let me tell you, it was nothing compared to my love for poptropica even when the islands got tougher to beat. Remembering my user and password to my first ever poptropican account was not even much of a thought being continually drawn to this game every day as a child. It was a “HAS TO REMEMBER” thing. I will say that through changes in life made me forget to continue to play this wonderful game, I wouldn’t ever want it to be gone like many other games that disappeared- Please “Just not THIS one.” I’ve returned to this game recommending it to my smallest sibling to play and bragged how much fun I had with it at a much younger age then them, only to find not even a quarter of the islands there and some (this may be rude) butchered. I’m very disappointed in much that was changed to this beloved game that I wished to pass down/recommend to my own children one day, to connect with them through fun puzzles and stories. I hope promises that were made come to pass and that many veterans and new poptropicans comments here come to light that all the majority and I say “Just bring my childhood back”.
I really really hope they bring back Monster Carnival. That was my absolute FAVORITE!!!!
that island gave me nightmares lol but i agree
I started right after they removed the islands bring them back in sui format
I feel they should bring many old islands back and the realms. The realms allowed creativity while regualer islands never will.
Also membership is like rasicm in a way. If you don’t have it your are not good enough. I HATE RASICM!!!!
I’ve been playing these games since grade school, and somehow I always come back to Poptropica. These islands were my childhood and some of my favorite games I’ve ever played. Speaking of silands we hope come back, Skullduggery was the best non-mmo pirate game I’ve ever played, and the hope that it sometimes comes back is half the reason I still come back to check on Poptropica. I hope they really do bring back all of the old islands, even if access to a bundle of all the islands is locked behind a paywall. Having said that, Poptropica at its root was a free, online game, so I really think that at least some of them should always be accessible for free at the original website for the new-generation of players. There aren’t many other games that are free and entirely on a website vs. accessible only through other game hubs. I don’t know; I always loved this site, and I hope it comes back around for me, the old gamers, and for everyone else who’s only recently discovering it. So much love to this website. BRING SKULLDUGGERY BACK ❤
I started played just before the Flashpoint went. I was very young so I didn’t understand how to play. I started playing again when I heard how to play this awesome game. But I when came back… It was gone. Everyone talks about Super Villian Island or Realty TV Island but I can’t play it. 😦
You can still play with Flashpoint — check out our Old Islands Guide for more details!
One way to bring the old islands back is to port them onto the Nintendo Switch 1 or 2.
The idea of bringing Poptropica to Switch has been floated around, even by Poptropica themselves, but it doesn’t seem to be a priority at the moment.