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Heya, KickMeElmo from RetroAchievements here. I created [email protected] a while back just in case anyone wants to post about their achievement journeys. I'd love to read about your progress!
Oh I’ll be doing that. What’s the craziest achievement you’ve seen or completed?
Seen? I'm actually a bit of a wimp difficulty-wise, so there's a lot that intimidates me. Pretty much any 100-pointer seems insane to me. Completed? A now-demoted achievement for completing 50 waves of the arena in Golden Sun. That took hours to complete, and it was rough.
Thank you for answering. I look forward to trying some challenges, but I’m kinda an easy difficulty gamer myself
A year ago is certainly a while back, although RA has such active forums I'm not surprised people aren't really using Lemmy for it, haha. I would have posted about my GCN summer last year, haha.
show this to me in 1998 and i would think 2025 of some utopian paradise
If only. I’m pretty blown away right now though.
Especially in the last month or so I've been noticing how uninspiring technology has been. I used to love seeing whatever the gadget of the season was at Target while my mom shopped. Now it's all... Phone cords, and um, printer ink cartridges. The same wireless speakers we bought years ago. Nothing about it is cool anymore!
yeah but now SmarterChild is built into everything even if you don't want it :3
Speaking of which, I just did a fresh install of retropie for the first time since 2023 and am sad to see there are AI features in retroarch turned on by default. Wtf. I’m playing games on a pi zero. What do I need AI for?
It's wild to me how, when I was a kid, I thought the Gameboy line was the utopian future and we'd never advance because there wasn't anything that could be cooler.
Then, here we are in 2025, able to create and tweak awesome projects like this!
You and me, we're best friends now. You get Earthbound. I love you. It's one of my favorite games forever-ever. Got it at Blockbuster used for $5. Best $5 spent ever. While I personally hate the skinnerbox effect of achievements, I love this damn game. I also love your excitement to play it again. Tell me your other favorites =)
Like I needed another excuse to replay Earthbound. Dammit man!
Seriously cool though.
I replay it once a year around Christmas because that’s when I first got a copy as a kid.
I guess I’m playing it early this year! lol
Have you played any of the romhacks?
I have not. Any suggestions?
I'd like to revisit building a PiBoy. Was gonna do it. Never did. Any build guides with shopping lists and software lists that you would recommend?
Uhhh I’m not sure, this case is a kit that comes with everything but the pi, batteries, and sd card.
As far as software, I just roll a retropie image that I customize with Gameboy splash screens, etc.
I’m more experienced building retropies into a Nintendo cartridge. I used to make a ton of them during the pandemic. I eventually made my own retropie image that was all set up for mass producing.
Oooh gonna try & get this going on my r36s!
Someone else in this comment thread claimed it needs internet access, hope you like that dongle life.
Dangit. 🫠
Sweet.
How do achievements work? Do they require certain roms, or can you use rom hacks/different headers?
Hi! I'm an admin from RetroAchievements, excited to see all the hype around here. Each achievement set will have specific files it supports, as visible in "supported game files". In the case of Earthbound, that encompasses a wide variety of translations as well as a few improvement hacks, plus the basic US version of the game. Usually games will have a much smaller number of supported files due to incompatibilities in the memory across versions complicating matters, as well as the achievement set dev being responsible for ensuring compatibility with the linked files. That said, hashing is based on the rom file itself, not the filename. In the case of SNES in particular, it's just an md5 hash of the (headerless) game file. Different romhacks may have their own sets, and there are some special inert patches available to enable challenge achievement sets, such as one for completing the game while avoiding the cameraman at every opportunity.
If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask!
Thanks for the explanation, I wasn’t completely sure how it worked because it seems magical. I tried my best with an explanation, but it’s all very new to me
They don't work very well unfortunately. They use a MD5 checksum to verify your game, which in the surface sounds great, until you realize that a lot of the newer setups (EmuDeck) for roms will offer to compress them into .7zip files (and other types) and then suddenly none of the games are recognized as the original MD5 checksum is different. So you cant compress any game, and not sure if they work with .m3u lists and doubt it will because most likely it'll want to .MD5 checksum the .m3u file.
Also, it needs to have an Internet connection the entire time, so this kills more portable device usage unless you are at home/4-5G. They claim it's to prevent people from cheating the achievement, but in the end if just becomes another block in usability.
I don’t see the point of compressing the games. They’re so small (except my 300 gig psx collection) that I can fit every game from Atari- Gameboy advance on an 32 gb sd card + OS and a couple psx games. The internet thing kind of sucks, but I also don’t want to store all that data on my device like my pi.
I think they work through by going by the rom name and then checking the database online. I don’t know if romHacks work, it really depends if the community added it. You have to make a (free) account on the website to track your achievements and link to your emulator. Some emulators work with it, some don’t. But I haven’t dug deep on my retropie/retroarch devices to know if they all work.
I have nes->psx on this device so I’ll be testing a lot tonight.
I know delta and PPSSPP in iOS have support for it, but Delta requires a patreon subscription to use achievements so I won’t be doing that.
retro achievements on retroarch ps vita is my thing rn. sadly not possible on mister pi or analogue pocket but i’ll take it!
Nice! I have the same on the miyoo mini plus. It makes playing old games a collect-a-thon again.
This. Think it’s going to bring me back into the fold from the modern game desert.
nice any games you are playing recently?
For me it made kirby adventure fun to play again to get all the achievements.
I’m currently playing Liberty city stories for psp on my phone because this can’t play that.
I’m starting earthbound.
I’ve been playing a lot of DS Roms because I’ve never played a DS before, so games like Lego Star Wars complete saga and Mario kart
That makes a lot of sense. I've always kind of enjoyed the kirby games, but they feel a little lacking in direction and challenge.
You know that part where you take the secret portal in the bar to another dimension? How do you get past that? I have up on the game because I was just getting slaughtered.
Fun game until that. it really made me laugh.
There is a pattern to which teleport guy to talk to in the right order. I can never remember it and it’s always the most frustrating part.
Ship of Theseus: if you strip out a gameboy processor for a rpi is it even still a Gameboy?
It's a lookalike case, not an actual DMG
Yeah I would never harm a beloved Gameboy. I also collect gameboys and their games. I restore them
I do the same with Game Gears :-)
Handhelds are so cool. I’d love to have a game gear one day
This is so rad, I didn't even know it was a thing!?
I didn’t either until recently. Highly suggest checking out Retroachievements.org
this post was submitted on 30 May 2025
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