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seraproto · 6 months ago

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Achievements In RETRO Games?

Note: The following article will also be a video on my YouTube later. If you see references to that it's because this is a script. Video version is out now!

Howdy Earthlings, if you’ve watch my videos or read my posts you’ve probably seen me mention how important I think it is to have a wifi enabled retro handheld or to use a frontend like Retrobat or Daijisho. That’s because of a feature and site called Retro Achievements. Retro Achievements is just that, achievements like you’d expect from modern gaming but on retro games. It’s a cool website that has users contributing achievements for various retro games. To me this adds so much replay ability and is such an important feature to me that I will check if a game has achievements before I decide whether I’m playing it on original hardware or emulation. Yeah, for me this feature puts Emulation ABOVE original hardware. Sorry but the novelty of playing on original hardware isn’t as cool as the novelty of retro achievements. So I’m going to give you a mini guide on how this all works so you can start earning too.

What Is Retro Achievements?

The short version is RA is a way to earn achievements for retro games that are emulated. It’s a website that is user submitted and tracks all the achievements you have unlocked, what games you’ve earned for, what you’ve contributed, has a leaderboard, and tracks a ton of stats about your gaming habits. It’s kind of like social media too as you can look up people’s accounts and see what they’re playing and follow them. This is really cool because you can see what kind of games I play when I’m not streaming and even leave a comment on my page. You can also see how many people are tackling the achievements for a given game.

Why use Retro Achievements?

If you weren’t one of the people foaming at the mouth when I said “Achievements for Retro Games” then I don’t know what to tell you. Sometimes our dopamine deprived brains need little treats as we play the game to encourage us to finish it. It also makes playing games we’ve played before more interesting as some of these achievements ask us to play in creative ways to earn rarer achievements. I also like that it tracks my gaming stats so I can go “Oh, I have all these points but I haven’t finished a game in 6 months.”

How Does It Work?

It’s very easy to get started. You go to https://www.retroachievements.org then sign up an account. You use this account information to log into an emulator in the emulator’s settings. Not every emulator is going to have support for this so what I suggest is getting a front end or emulation station to handle the log in. Front ends are also very convenient, like on android Daijisho handles picking emulators for me as well as putting my games in a launch list like you’d see on a console. I recommend checking out this video from Retro Game Corps on how to set up Retrobat. It can be a little annoying to set up but once you do you’re not going to want to go back, it’s super convenient.

Then once you sign into RA through a front end or emulator you pick a game and start playing. It’ll tell you if the game has achievements or not and how many you have unlocked with a pop up. Some front ends also let you check whether they have achievements using a little trophy icon. Note that you need to be connected to wifi for this to work. Hence why I make a big deal about getting a retro handheld with wifi. Once you’re logged it and connected to the net it’s automatic, you don’t even need to check the site or whatever. Although you should check back in after 100 points so you can add a profile picture.

What games have achievements?

No achievements for you, Jimbo.

As I mentioned, not all games are going to have achievements. Since the achievements are made by users and there are 1000 GBA games not all of them are going to be blessed by our achievement lords and saviors. So games that have achievements are going to be ones are popular for the most part. But the best way to find out is to just try. I’ve been surprised by what has achievements. Like you wouldn’t expect Pokemon Mini’s games to have achievements but they do. Even more surprising the translations also have achievements.

Let's A F***ING GO!

Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga, yep, 100% has achievements. Digimon Anode version on wonderswan with a translation patch, also yes. 3 game pack! The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius Hyphen Attack of the Twonkies, no achievements. The Polar Express? Yes surprisingly. As you can see, it’s a bit of a coin flip. More recent ones are also less likely to have achievements because people are less likely to be emulating them. For example Halo 2 has no achievements. Sometimes your front end might not be able to find achievements for a game like Pokemon Conquest is showing as no achievements because it thinks I’m playing a romhack of it and that’s happening regardless of the version I play. If anyone knows how to fix this on Daijisho, I’ve hit a brick wall. For the most part though you won’t have this issue.

The popular ones have achievements, and translations from franchises too. It’s mostly games you’d actually play. But don’t despair Jimmy Neutron fan singular, if you want achievements for a game you can add them yourself or you can request it be added. If someone feels like it they might add achievements for you. Remember that this is a volunteer system so if your game reeks understand that people might not want to do it. I think you need to be a frequent user to request though as I don’t have any requests I can make. This is probably to prevent spam or trolling.

Additional Features

If getting all the achievements on Hardcore Mode isn't hard enough you can always try to go for perfect boss fights.

Retro Achievements doesn’t just track achievements as I said. There are tons of additional features if you use the website. One such additional feature is Hardcore mode, and this can be used without using the site. It’ll be a toggle in your front end’s RA section. Anyway, you know how some weirdos complain that using save states isn’t a legitimate way to play retro games. Well if you turn on hardcore mode you won’t be able to load save states and if you do you’ll disable hardcore mode. Hardcore mode gives you extra achievement points for playing games the LeGiTiMaTe way. It incentivizes and rewards you for playing the games as they were InTeNdEd. You’ll be able to finally look your Shigeru Miyamoto body pillow in the eyes without feeling shame. Go ahead and do it, he missed you.

Hardcore achievements are also tracked on the site. So you can see how many have earned an achievement and how many were earned hardcore. As you might guess, hardcore play isn’t as popular and some achievements might be hard to earn without a save state. That means as you get further down the list you’ll see less playing on hardcore. For example, speedrun style achievements have significantly less hardcore players because it’s easier to set a state before the timer starts. The rest of these features are going to be site based, don’t worry the site is very light and loads quick so you can easily check it on mobile.

Achievement of the Week is a weekly achievement contest where an achievement that takes only a couple hours to unlock is picked. Then players compete to earn it by the end of the week. Once you earn it you’re added to the leaderboard. This expands into the achievement of the month, and has a monthly, weekly, and yearly leaderboard. This feature has a lot of rules like lifelines and stuff, I’d suggest checking it out for yourself if interested.

If you want a place to keep track of a retro backlog then find a game then click “Want To Play”. If you see this and you’re someone high up in RA, please consider changing this to “Backlog” I think it’s a more commonly used term and it’s less wordy. Maybe “Wishlist” or “Play Later”. It’s weird that on the suggestions list it’s called “Backlog” but isn’t on the front side. Want to Play feels verbose. Anyway, click the want to play button or if you’re searching in a list you can click the plus then you can hover on your profile picture at the top right and click “Want To Play”. This will take you to a list of games on your backlog. You can sort by system and search. I don’t use this because I just play whatever I’m in the mood for. But if I stream Achievement Hunting this would be a useful feature.

If you don’t know what to play you can hover on your PFP and click “Game Suggestions” and the site will recommend a list of games for you. Some randomly selected, and some based on your interests.

If you want to challenge yourself with something new you can check out the plethora of custom leaderboards. You can comment on game pages, these are useful for seeing tips on how to beat certain achievements. You can view popular games beign played, what new achievement sets are being worked on, what games and who recently beat them, and that’s just what I’ve seen. There is tons of features and information on the games and player habits. If you’re not using retro achievements already you should definitely be using it.

How To Use Retro Achievements

You stuck around to the end, I must have sold you on it or you skipped to the end. Either way, set up is incredibly easy. I’ll be showing you how to set up retro achievements on your emulator but quick note. I will only show you how to do it on Retro Bat for windows and Daijisho for Android. If you’re using a Retroid Pocket device I recommend using Daijisho over the RP Launcher. I also don’t recommend logging into individual emulators unless you only play games on one system. Instead you should use a frontend, you only need to log in once and it’ll handle logging in for every system launched from it. Also launchers like Retrobat and Daijisho are very customizable and pretty. It’s way better than looking at an emulator’s launch list. Again, I’ve linked in the description a Retro Bat guide from Retro Game Corps. It can be a little annoying to set up but it’s worth the pay off. If you don’t feel like using one of these then you’ll need to find another guide. Lastly, if you end up liking retro achievements you should join their Patreon for only a dollar. This is an awesome service and it makes great games even greater.

Step one, make a retro achievements account. Go to retroachievements.org then click sign up at the top right. I’ve already done this, but you’ve signed up for a site before, you know what to do.

Next is if you’re using retro bat to open up the menu, click game settings, then click retro achievements, click the enable toggle then put in your info. You can go through the toggles below for stuff like leaderboard mode or hardcore mode. If you’re cool with playing without save states and want more achievement points then enable hardcore. That’s it, now you launch games and you’ll earn achievements as you play.

If you’re on Daijisho you go to settings, scroll down, then click “Retro Achievements”. Tap account credentials and put in your username then web api key. You can do this by clicking the web api key button and it’ll open up your browser. Login, then go to your settings. Scroll down, click the copy button. Then go back to Daijisho and paste it into the web api key box. Then click save. Click the toggle to enable RA then you’re done. Sort of, you may need to go into Retro Arch to enable hardcore mode. Launch a game, click your retro arch quick menu button. Go to achievements, then click hardcore mode and turn it on. Easy peasy, you’re all done. Go play something.

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