Welcome to the triumphant return of Friday Flash Games! I took the month of August off as a summer break, and somehow didn't realize it was September until the first Friday had passed, but I'm going to make it all up to you between this week and the next. Six weeks off, three games each week, that's 18 "missed" games. No problem. I've got more games than that stored up! To avoid overload, I'll spread them out over September. That's six extra games this week, for a total of nine games, and the same for the next two weeks as well. Are you ready?

Every Friday, I present three or more browser-based games, all of which depend on the Adobe Flash Player and your web browser. All the games should work on Mac, Windows, Linux, and any other operating system that supports Flash. I'll tell you whether each game has music or sound, so you can adjust your speakers accordingly.

Let's get started!

Racing games are a dime a dozen, or even cheaper, but High Speed Chase offers a little twist. Instead of a closed course race against competitors to a finish line, you need to track down and destroy target cars on a busy highway. You gain points for speed and near misses, but you lose points for damage caused to the cars of innocent drivers.

The severe penalties for damaging innocents makes it impossible to simply hold down the accelerator key and steer. You'll find yourself slamming on the brakes to avoid collisions and steering wildly — or crashing!

Use the arrow keys to accelerate, brake, and steer, or you can use the space bar as a brake instead of the down-arrow. At least once, my score was so low that even though I destroyed all three target cars, I was told the targets had escaped. Usually the game calculated things correctly. There are sound effects once you click "START GAME."

For a slightly slower pace, try Thor Towers, a game that requires split second timing, but only periodically. A crane is dropping blocks, and you use the space bar to control the timing. Each block swings from side to side, and the closer you can get to the center of the stack, the more easily you'll be able to continue the stack. How high can you go?

The blocks swing a little more wildly at first, then settle down. Sometimes you'll need to take advantage of the wider swing and the momentum that generates to hit a stack that has drifted a bit too far to the side, while sometime you'll need to drop it right in the middle, and that momentum can send the block a little too far to the side.

Missing three times will end the game. There is music that starts before the game menu is even presented. You can turn all sound off from the game menu, but you'll need to click on the speaker icon exactly, unlike the other menu options for which you click on the text.