Shockwave

Shockwave refers to Adobe's Shockwave Player, otherwise known as Adobe Director.

Emulators

Due to its rarity compared to Flash and the incomplete documentation regarding Director, Shockwave emulators were impossible to find, however since 2024, DirPlayer has solved this problem and you can now play Shockwave games with that emulator. It is unfinished and can't play all games yet so you may need to wait until then or contribute it at its GitHub repository.

Name	Platform(s)	Latest version	Active	License
Desktop & Web
DirPlayer		Latest Release	✓	LGPLv3

Overview

Shockwave was a common tool for making CD-ROM games and kiosks, and at its peak, 44% of users had Shockwave installed. Calling both plugins Shockwave was confusing, but increased Flash's popularity, and Flash eventually overshadowed Shockwave except for a while; its native 3D capabilities had been relevant until Flash 11 introduced Stage3D, making Shockwave redundant, and Adobe AIR also made Shockwave redundant for desktop apps, although new official games were coming out until 2012 for that platform.

Shockwave was on its way out, but continued to be maintained even to the late 2010s, however the fact that NPAPI is getting dropped and Adobe deciding to get rid of its support led to Adobe Director and Shockwave on Mac being discontinued first in 2017 followed by Shockwave on Windows in 2019, marking the end of an era for Adobe Shockwave, however unlike Flash which received a timebomb, Adobe didn't bother to give Shockwave the same thing after its discontinuation.

See also

• Flash - Adobe Flash Player, popular on the internet at the same time as Shockwave.