RetroAchievements is just brilliant and highly addictive! (November Update)

Brief update after s month in RetroAchievements: It continues to amaze me!

- New sets come in very frequently, and the recent Moon Patrol set is brilliant. With sets like these, you learn more about the games and what is achievable (at least by very good gamers). The community is enthusiastic and grateful.

- As an open system, you can switch between emulators/RetroArch cores or systems (Mac/iPad/Windows/Raspberry Pi) and always work on your achievements. This is amazing.

- For Arcades, I went back to the Arcade Stick, these challenges demonstrate that you need them for serious Arcade gaming. My beloved PS4 joypad is just too casual.

- Even if I will probably not master any set fully, I really like looking at my achievements and think of next steps (closing in to top 50%, at least).

- But where are you, fellow gamers? Let‘s connect!!! 😃

First: Whatever I write here, you need to experience it yourself to really appreciate it.

I never had a close look into RetroAchievements, though it has been around for some time. What a mistake, now I have to play all these console games from scratch again ;-), but now without save states, but just the original games!

Though arcade games don‘t play the lead role in here, they are still worth a try. Just to clarify, this is not MAME, but Finalburn Neo in RetroArch. So if you still need a reason to test RetroArch for arcade games - here it is.

Please see https://retroachievements.org/gameList.php?c=27 - there are currently 218 arcade games registered with a set. Arcade games that are worth a try in RetroAchievements are:

Galaga, Gyruss, Phoenix, Metal Slug Series, Shinobi

Installation and checking out

Not much to mention, register a user in RetroAchievements, then head for the RetroArch Settings/Achievements, put in your user/pw data, and you are ready to go.

After having launched a game in FinalBurn Neo, head for the in-game menu, and under Main Menu/
Quick Menu/Achievements, you should see the list of available achievements.

My current Gyruss achievements ... so hard

The Achievements settings in RetroArch are quite self-explanatory. I tend to game exclusively in Hardcore settings (which disables Save States), otherwise you can tweak a bit how much notifications you get during game play. Needless to tell that it is highly rewarding if you get instant notifications during the gameplay if you reach another Achievement (sorry for no screenshot ;-).

Here are some further thoughts of this system after having used it quite intensively since 5 days. 

The genius idea of a social retrogaming platform

I just scratched the surface of this incredibly deep and elaborated system. You can start fast as explained above, and with every new game tested under Achievements you understand it better. I am there still a loner without any connections, but just building up some Achievements as a fresh starter. And the initial threshold of achieving 250 points for getting officially listed is already quite an achievement! 

The functionality is quite magic. Once you get a new Achievement, you can open the browser and will see it immediately recorded. That's also very rewarding. I also need to mention the documentation, which gives you a lot of detailed insights into it.

The addiction to hunt for Achievements

I tend to play the games differently with RetroAchievements being activated.

On the one hand, of course you want to get Achievements in your favorite games. But wait, some game sets provide for very deep and diverse Achievements ... you will be surprised. So I end up testing my skills in games in a way that I hardly did before.

On the other hand, I see Achievement sets for games I hardly played before. So I try them, and that's also a good thing! One serious warning: Super Contra is brutally hard, and so far I just managed 1 out of 29 Achievements, which of course is ridiculous. Because here comes ...

The reality check: I‘ll never get a single set of achievements completed

Let's face it, I am not that good in gaming that would enable me to complete any of these game sets. Others here do, and quite a number, but they are in another league. In the end, it does not matter that I am currently "top 93,80%" in RetroAchievements - thus a real sucker ;-))))). Despite this reality check, it's incredible fun.

And again, if you are into RetroAchievements and read this, why not connecting!