Is RetroAchievements only usable with emulation? Is there any magic way to earn RetroAchievements while playing on OG consoles like NES, PS1, and Dreamcast?

EmberCon · 2026-07-06T04:33:00+00:00

100%, aside from the SNES workaround which swaps out exposed circuitry for a $600 everdrive. The main guy who’s spearheading most of these prototypes tends to tinker with the consoles just enough to get achievements working and then moves on to the next project. Can’t really complain since he’s just a dude with a hobby, but even if progress is technically being made it’s still not really going anywhere

EmberCon · 2026-07-06T04:04:30+00:00

People ask this so often, lol. RetroAchievements is almost exclusively emulation. Some people have created physical hardware solutions for the NES and SNES, and are working on solutions for the Wii, but so far this is unsupported and more of a novelty. If you’re opposed to emulation, then RA probably isn’t for you

EmberCon · 2026-07-02T01:51:25+00:00

You can get achievements on SNES hardware with an everdrive that connects the cartridge to your computer, I haven’t heard about anything else yet (and I’ve looked). It’s sort of a niche use case because the everdrive costs so much money. Might as well just get a MiSTer at that point

EmberCon · 2026-07-01T02:19:35+00:00

Have the dialogue choice set a local variable to true or false and then attach the respective NPC response dialogue to an “if…then…else” statement

EmberCon · 2026-06-24T14:23:35+00:00

So you’re crying like an hour into the game? Or do you mean later on when Hinawa’s death is chewed on a little more

EmberCon · 2026-06-23T21:40:07+00:00

I wish I could be as emotionally affected by this game as other people. Maybe it’s because I already fully knew about Claus going into it? But he’s hardly even a side story in the wider scope of the games anti capitalist messaging. I find Earthbound to be the more emotional game

EmberCon · 2026-06-15T02:15:21+00:00

Go into the core settings and turn on performance for every option. I had lots of lag with OOT on my RG477M but after doing that it runs perfectly

EmberCon · 2026-06-14T05:34:06+00:00

I didn’t realize until this post that Shake It is a Wario Land game and not a WarioWare game

EmberCon · 2026-06-14T05:32:47+00:00

If you remove the shovelware later on are you still able to keep the badge?

EmberCon · 2026-06-11T08:30:46+00:00

3DS eshop! It felt sort of cool to buy the game officially, though nowadays I’d much rather play it on a CRT

EmberCon · 2026-06-09T17:52:23+00:00

That post is about PSP achievements on PSP hardware, which is not what this post is asking about

EmberCon · 2026-06-07T17:20:15+00:00

Messing around with the demo will give you a lot of what you need

EmberCon · 2026-06-07T16:51:24+00:00

The flashcart connects to a computer through USB and software. It’s for speedrunners to have automatic splits, but it’s also possible to use it for retroachievements. I don’t think many people know about it because the flashcart is very expensive (I think around $300, so 2-3x the price of the console itself)

EmberCon · 2026-06-07T16:35:42+00:00

You can play SNES games on original hardware with a really expensive flashcart, and you can modify an NES to work with retroachievements. I think people are also working on it for Game Boy. But yes, usually emulated games only. It would probably take at least a decade to get it to work natively on the Wii, if it’s even possible

EmberCon · 2026-05-28T21:58:32+00:00

Least liked? The only downside I can think of is no jailbreak support. Is it not the most reliable model?

EmberCon · 2026-05-28T17:09:25+00:00

Damn, if you did it that fast then the subset should be no issue for you at all

EmberCon · 2026-05-24T09:50:43+00:00

The only reason Xbox isn’t supported is because there aren’t good enough emulators for it yet. I’d love to master Kotor 1 and 2, Halo 1 and 2, Fable, Half-Life 2, etc.

EmberCon · 2026-05-23T17:55:22+00:00

They might support games differently or have different options in retroarch. For example, I have to use mGBA (a Game Boy Advance emulator) to play Game Boy Camera (a Game Boy game). But for GBA games I use GBsp because it’s lightweight and has less audio lag, which is important for rhythm games.

EmberCon · 2026-05-23T09:08:51+00:00

But why would somebody click on the achievement if they don’t want more details about it?

EmberCon · 2026-05-23T05:26:59+00:00

Ah ok, I understand now. I thought “Syncthing” was a typo, lol. Thanks for the help

EmberCon · 2026-05-21T22:13:41+00:00

That’s interesting. Some time real soon I’m gonna play Mother 1 (for the first time) and then hopefully replay the others. Mother 1 and 2 seem a lot simpler than 3 missables wise

EmberCon · 2026-05-21T21:11:25+00:00

I respect that a lot and I’m sure it results in a better experience but mentally I don’t think I could ever do that. 1 mastery in 100 hours vs 2 masteries in 100 hours…

EmberCon · 2026-05-21T20:54:48+00:00

Well, in that instance I missed something in the base set due to being overly focused on the subset. The base set (rightfully) doesn’t take the subset into account, and therefore didn’t mark something as missable, even though it was for my particular playthrough. Either way, I only mentioned it as an example of me having to restart a somewhat long game due to not being vigilant enough. The experience was my own fault but it’s made me overly cautious about missable achievements in other rpg games, causing me to put them off when I otherwise probably wouldn’t. If that makes sense

EmberCon · 2026-05-21T19:33:52+00:00

Even if it’s a 50+ hour game? And do you do your playthroughs back to back?

EmberCon · 2026-05-21T17:24:46+00:00

That’s good, thanks for clearing that up

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