That's always been the case. Some XBoX360 games went as far as having "reached the main menu" achievements in order to create a baseline user count that didn't include demo terminals running the attract mode on loop.
I agree that cheevos-as-telemetry sounds bad at face value, but consider it the other way around:
Getting pain-free already anonymized telemetry stats via achievements through platform holders has long been a bulwark against intrusive bullshit telemetry by way of making the effort-to-reward ratio of the later just not worth it. This is not unlike the classic "The way to stop piracy is to provide a better UX" argument.
It also has the very important added benefit of making what is being collected extremely transparent to users.
> To say Achievement Unlocked 2 can be a bit disorienting is an understatement. Upon loading the game up for the first time, I was instantly flooded with achievements, including one that was bestowed, apparently, because my system clock was divisible by three. (I knew that would pay off one day!)
They were very well received. It appears they are being repackaged for the world without Flash: https://www.gog.com/en/game/the_elephant_collection
Also, these are added after the fact by people who didn't work on the game, and are done by identifying and monitoring changes at specific memory addresses in the rom, so they're a bit limited in just how complicated they can get with these achievements. These 'how far did you get' are one of the things they can check more easily, as they can see level numbers change in memory and the like (it's a bit more complicated than that, check the docs[1] if you're curious). They still manage quite a bit with those limitations, though.
https://docs.retroachievements.org/How-to-Become-an-Achievem...
Also, some of these "pointless" achievements can be used as a negative proof. For example, the lack of a "weapon used" achievement with the presence of a "last boss defeated" achievement proves you beat the game without using that weapon. This allows players to contrive challenges not foreseen by the explicit implementation of an achievement.
Now, one issue is that on basically every platform, achievements are tracked per ownership of the game, so you can't scope down the achievements like that unless you only ever play the game with that challenge in mind. But in RA specifically, whose accounts are not tied to ownership, you could potentially make an account just to track a specific challenge, and have a public record of _your_ achievement.
For instance, an achievement that has about the same unlock rate as the "complete stage 1" achievement is probably something you stumble upon randomly in the very beginning of the game, if you don't have it, you probably missed something. If an achievement has a significantly lower unlock rate than "complete the game", it is probably end game content and may require dedication.
Achievement can have more than one purpose. They can be used as progression markers (the "tutorial complete" kind). As hints about some secondary content. As a reward for curiosity or particularly difficult tasks. As an indication that you have finished something and there is no more of it. To taunt the player. As objectives that don't fit in the story. To acknowledge that a particular action is significant. Etc...
For example "Use the Batarang for the first time" tells you that you will use it again. It hints that from now on, the Batarang will be an important part of gameplay, more important than the other items you didn't get an achievement for. On the achievement list, it is a progression marker. If you see it on an achievement list, it tells that the players is, say, at least 10% into the game, and puts other achievements in perspective.
In the case of RetroAchievements, perhaps someone was enthusiastically adding achievements to that game without thinking about how fun they'd be?
For instance, to get the “catch shiny Pokémon” achievements in Pokémon Crystal (https://retroachievements.org/game/11841), you have 1/8192 odds on encounter… for each Pokémon, and there are 213 of them.
It's hard to even formulate exactly why the whole !Achievements! thing in gaming rubs me the wrong way. I guess it's a mix of several factors, centred around arguably picky purism (e.g. 'a games designed balance includes the inbuilt reward system'), and also around a worldview preference for (some) humility in life, which is somewhat an antithesis of constantly-blaring "Wow! You Just Did This! Congratulations!" messaging/reassurance - a thing I don't put great value upon, in my worldview. Not in that outward manner, at least.
I hope I've at least partially explained my dissenting viewpoint. As I said, this existing does me no harm as such, and I have no beef with it at all, except in personal preference, and insofar as casual discussion has filled these spare moments.
I honestly don't like this project at all and its existence is another reason I will only sparingly share my love for old games with people because I know many people do it for reasons other than enjoyment...it is quickly becoming a "niche" and a "scene" which I hate.
I won't rail against its existence, I'm similar to you. As long as these people stay in their lane it doesn't affect me. People pumping their game stocks is an issue as it makes old games even more inaccessible but that's somewhat downstream from projects like this.
* "Find all 25 widgets" I like finding widgets and I've only found 12 of them. I'll keep looking!
* "Beat the game without using System X" Whoa, I thought System X was required! I'll figure out how to rely on the other systems to work around missing this one
* "Get ending #3" I hear that ending is neat so I'll play again making different choices
Achievements don't help mediocre games improve, they only compliment already good games. They also act as remembrances of games long past, something I can look up in a few minutes without having to install the game or hunt for a save file. Getting all of those achievements ten years ago must have really meant that I liked it.
To be honest, I’m actually not sure I understand the “I get gaming but I don’t get achievements.” Achievements are just another scoring system.
> This looks like a fun project to give some more /incentives to playing older games/.
I don't have an issue with achievements when they're built on top of a game that doesn't need them to be fun, but when they're added to try to "incentive" a game then maybe you should be playing an intrinsically fun game instead? Sometimes its okay to complete a game and not need to be "incentivized" to play it again.
Then when you launch a game, if it recognizes the game (seems to be based on checksums and not the name itself, renaming didn't seem to help for the games I had it didn't recognize) and achievements are set up for the game, you'll see a banner appear that says the game name, icon, and '0 out of X achievements' and you're golden.
Really breathed new life into retro games for me. Now it's not just me playing many games for like 5-15 minutes an moving on, I try harder to complete the games now. Already gotten much farther in some NES games than I ever bothered to before, likely because of these achievements.
One minor downside though, is you have to be online while doing the achievement for it to be recorded, there's no syncing after the fact. So if you're bringing your SteamDeck somewhere, either make sure you're online or play a game that doesn't have these achievements implemented yet (still quite a few games that don't still, including all Gamecube and Wii games) if you care about getting them.
So… not sure why you’re surprised.
Basically, people have to reverse engineer retro games and figure out where to find the condition that triggers the achievement.
https://docs.retroachievements.org/Getting-Started-as-an-Ach...
Writing achievements is a good way to get started with ROM hacking. It's very similar to how you would do simple Game Genie codes too.
I love that the retro community is staying fresh and vibrant.
Often it's just copied over!
https://docs.retroachievements.org/Setup-Guide/#retroarch
The front page says it's supported by retroarch, but you go to their docs section, there's nothing there.
Looking forward to a straightforward way to put acheivements into my retroarch, and not piecemeal by emulator.
"Disable autofire" -- 200 points
"Move save files (not save states) between cores" -- 300 points
"Get the right cemu keys.txt" -- 1000 points
It eventually got me thinking that I should try to standardize some sort of layers over Retroarch cores, which could interpret (RAM or GPU) memory values, value updates, and function calls as values and events to consume in some other application. My thought was that if someone used those hooks to create a "wrapper" for something like Contra for the NES then you could, say, handle rendering and audio from Unreal or Unity. So.. super HD remakes, reinterpretations, or art projects. Maybe play the original Final Fantasy and have twitch chat affect damage and other values.
But then I got distracted, as usual :| But it is weird to see something like it in the wild now. I hadn't considered achievements.
It works by monitoring the internals of the pinball computer emulation, either looking directly at the RAM for cases where the memory locations are known, or at the display output for alphanumeric or dot matrix patterns that announce a particular event such as a jackpot or multiball or wizard mode.
My colleague did all the work for integration into BizHawk, and I'm proud to see it at the top of the list (it's sorted alphabetically, but still).
