I have no idea about Dangerous Adventure 2 or Elephant Quest, but many browser games are made with flash because either when the development started the developers didn't regard html5 as mature enough, or the companies have many ActionScript developers and don't want to retrain them. Taking into account how eager are the major browsers to drop support for Flash, I would advise to use html5 instead, regardless of whatever big companies do. Also, not that many years ago, html5 was yet immature for many types of games, but that has changed recently. For what is worth, at my previous employer we switched from flash to html5 more than 3 years ago.
In your post you only mention html5 or flash, but since you ask for frameworks on your title, you can take a look at Phaser or Pixi.js.
If you are comfortable with flash and you like it - you should use it. Additionally as far as I know The Adobe Flash supports exporting as a HTML + JS so technically you could develop in flash but export as HTML + JS,
Both of these games report 'This game requires Adobe Flash to play' when i look on the webpage for them :).
Flash is on its way out. With any luck we'll be rid of its scourge within the next 400 years.
I also recommend Phaser if you want to work with Javascript. You could also look at GameQuery, it is based on jQuery and is easy too. Phaser has a lot of tutorials and resources.
Flash runs fine on ios devices when deployed with air as an app and also works on android devices, they have just released support for apple tv too. Thousands of successful games are built this way.
A game I saw recently that looked similar to the first title you posted is made with flash/air.
I personally still think flash/air is a great way to make games:
One code base and it runs on web (desktop only), desktop, ios and android.
It is easy to learn and free if you don't need adobe's ide.
You can test on android and ios devices from a pc!
There is a great profiling tool called scout that help get the most out performance wise.
Sure it doesn't have every feature under the sun built in but a great set all the same and has most things covered.
Also pretty sure flash ships with Microsoft... never seen a pc it doesn't run on yet?
Still js is arguably easier to learn/pickup and also no compile times is great!
I would recommend just going with what you are most comfortable with.
I have made games with unity,javascript and flash/air and each has pros and cons, but the point being they were all able to make what I needed them to.
You're really right bwhiting, for me it's big news. And it's confusing why Steve said they didn't allow Flash and now they "allow" it anyway through AIR. What was the deal about that?
Is that why each iOS app includes its AIR runtime?
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/articles/packaging-air-apps-ios.html
Is that representative of packaging an AIR app, or is there a more straight-forward way?
I got no Flash on Windows 7, though Microsoft doesn't support it as an ActiveX anymore but they say they work closely with Adobe to support it natively via Windows Update.
So they didn't drop it much after all,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14949869
Start using Unity 3D engine. It's free. It can take you a long way. You can easily make a phone game and publish it on Google Play. That would be a great experience for a beginner.
