Retro Achievements

[andrewelmore]

I've been watching one Jeff Gerstmann go through and rank the entire NES library in the background while I work lately, and he has his Retro Achievements account connected in to his emulator. Then I saw Keith Stack over on BlueSky posting something about his Retro Achievements history. So I finally took the time to make an account, after years of going "huh, that's super interesting! oh well". And, you know, it is super interesting!

But it feels weird, to me, as someone who plays all his old games on old hardware as opposed to playing them in RetroArch or whatever. I wish I could just go through on an honor system and check boxes of stuff I've done in games I've played in the past lol. But I've been goofing around with it a bit, mostly with Mega Drive shooters, and it's really fun? Might be more fun if I had other people to follow on there, though, so I figured I might as well make a post and see if anyone else is interested in playing some old-ass video games from time to time. I've started using RetroArch as a time-killing toy between calls/meetings/projects/etc.? It's been kinda nice to just sit down and play some Twin Cobra or whatever for a few minutes. A lot of these achievements seem to be front-loaded pretty heavily too, so if you're just channel-surfing through games, you're still likely to pickup a fair few.

https://retroachievements.org/user/meteodriver

[Fruitality]

Retro achievements have always seemed super cool, and collecting and discovering them must be a great way to engage with retro games beyond just checking them out to see how they play. I would hope that the extra incentive might push players to reach a specific score or stage when they otherwise might just immediately bounce off to try something different - which is so easy to do when playing these games through emulators.

Fully agree with your honour system idea. Bit of a bummer that you can't manually apply achievements to your account if you play on real hardware. I guess they want to make sure it's legit but also.. 1. I'm sure there are ways for people to cheat these achievements easily anyway, and 2. If you're someone who cares enough to engage with retro achievements then surely you're not just gonna lie about getting them?? You really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?

I was curious as to who actually creates and sets the achievements for these games, and while I didn't really find an answer (the community, I assume), I did find this interesting doc in their FAQs about what makes for good achievement design.

Anyway, I've never been an achievement chaser, so it's not something I've really explored. If I was to play some old-ass video games from time to time as part of some kind of game club, I could see them being a lot of fun to compare with friends!


PS: I've also been watching Jeff's NES adventure in the background. Some fascinating games in there, and has been really interesting to hear his commentary on games that have been surprisingly good, and those which have surprisingly not held up!

[Skellingtor]

i never pulled the trigger on retroachievements but it seems like something i should have just because. next time i fire up duckstation i'll have something else to look forward to!

[andrewelmore]

I agree with you, Will, about your reasoning about the kinds of people who would be faking those things. My best guess is that it's related to their score leaderboards? Though, I'd even take a split between "trust me bro" points and "verified" points lol.

And that's the other thing, I'm certainly no achievement hunter, never have been. It's just a fun way to see what old games your friends have been playing, and what kind of cool stuff they've been doing, I guess!

[andrewelmore]

just got #97 in the world on devil's crush's leaderboards in my first run, that felt pretty good!!