Hey Poptropicans, this is a guest post by Silver Shadow/Red Tomato. Enjoy!
Hello everyone ^_^ You can call me Silver Shadow!
I used to go by Red Tomato all the way back in 2017-2019. I was an active PHB reader and commenter, and also authored a few guest posts, like two Pop 5 lists. I had a few blogs of my own, although only one of them (“Red Tomato’s Poptropica Blog”) is still up, and I would rather not publish the direct link because of how cringeworthy my posts were 💀… I also was a former author on the Poptropica Fun Blog, which has been inactive since 2020. I hope the owner is doing ok, wherever she is!
Anyway, this post will basically be about me discovering all that went down in the past six years. First of all: why did I disappear from the Poptropica community? Basically I had just lost interest and felt I had gotten too old for it (I was a preteen at the time… I’m now college age! time goes by fast) so I just up and left.
About a month ago, my friend was randomly like,”hey do you remember that game you played when you were like 11?” I was like, “Oh yeah Poptropica… good times!”
Then I remembered the PHB, and I wondered if it was still up. I was surprised that it was! This is when I learned about the fate of Poptropica that’s happened in the past few years. While I was busy being a nerd about anime, musical theater, and gacha games, my childhood game was slowly dying.
I looked through some PHB posts that got me up to date on what happened with Pop, like almost all the islands being gone, the company closing, the move to Coolmath Games, etc. My initial reaction to all of this was: “wow Mocktropica (peak island btw) really didn’t age well 💀” One positive thing I learned was that at least a few more new islands got released!…. before the company died and the game became stuck in an unfinished limbo state on Coolmath Games dot com (btw: have you seen Coolmath Games’ Instagram page?? Peak content. I’m not joking).
Anyway, I wanted to revisit the game, so I downloaded the archived version on Flashpoint. I made a new character (Squeezy Shadow — I clicked for like 5 minutes until I got a name ending in Shadow, because I’m currently hyperfixating on a certain edgy hedgehog from a certain game franchise…) and was excited to relive some childhood memories!
Unfortunately, my reliving of childhood memories didn’t go as planned… I first attempted to play through two of my personal favorites, Virus Hunter (which has aged really well 🦠) and Mocktropica. I got halfway through both islands but was unable to progress further due to glitches (on Mocktropica, the crate of soda wouldn’t show up on the island editor, and on Virus Hunter, the first encounter with the white blood cells froze the game!).
The next day I decided to try again with another favorite of mine, Monster Carnival. I also got a glitch that made me unable to progress — this time the game froze when I rescued the couple from the Ferris wheel.
Finally, I decided to go to an AS2 island, Back Lot. MY CHARACTER WAS BALD AND MISSING HALF OF HER CLOTHES!!!!!!!!
After that horrifying incident, I just decided to play on the Coolmath version instead, which as I mentioned earlier is a husk of its former self.
My character this time was named Silver Wing, which as a fan of Honkai Impact 3rd, I appreciate very much (one of Bronya’s battlesuits is called Silver Wing 😉).
(If you didn’t notice already, the name I chose to go by for this post is a combination of Silver Wing and Squeezy Shadow. 😉)
I played through and beat PoptropiCon (another personal favorite) and was happy to have FINALLY beat a Poptropica island with no game-breaking glitches! Yippee!!
In conclusion, Poptropica’s current state makes me really sad… seeing what was once a thriving childhood wonderland reduced to a shell of its former self, with most islands only available through the very glitchy Flashpoint, not to mention the fact that the spinoff (Poptropica Worlds) is now lost media since nobody archived it.
It makes me sad to know that modern kids aren’t growing up with Poptropica and all of the other virtual worlds that made people’s childhoods. At least there’s Roblox? 😅 (Which by the way, why did Poptropica make a rainbow unicorn Roblox game… what????)
Anyway, revisiting this niche lil corner of the internet was fun! I’m not sticking around or anything, just wanted to drop by and say hi! I may come by again sometime for nostalgia. Before I go, I have one confession I must share with you all: Black Widow was my lesbian awakening.
-Silver Shadow
(aka Red Tomato 🍅/Squeezy Shadow 🦔/Silver Wing 🪽)
Hope you enjoyed this guest post by Silver Shadow. If you did, you might also enjoy other guest posts of hers, including her My Place in Poptropica story.
The Poptropica Help Blog welcomes interesting Poptropica insights from anyone in the Poptropica community with thoughts to share. Interested in writing for the PHB? We’d love to hear from you!
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