Cohost repost: RetroAchievements GameCube event

(Reposted from Cohost: September 9, 2024)

If you haven't heard of RetroAchievements, they're a site that uses emulator functionality to add achievements to games for a bunch of different consoles. I'd heard of them for a while, but always kind of had the vibe that they were for sickos: every achievement set always had That One Achievement for beating that really annoying boss damageless with a chicken on your head, and most of the site cares about which sets you've "mastered" by completing all the achievements, including that one.

But they have added (I guess relatively recently) tracking for games you've "beaten", so there's more support for playing through games relatively normally and picking up whatever extra achievements look like fun. That's more my jam. Plus, they just added GameCube support, and have been doing an event where you get a badge if you beat/master some games in the first couple months. There are three badge tiers for that, and I've gotten to the first of them so far with a mix of games I enjoyed back in the day and ones I missed but was always curious about.

Sort of inspired by the mastery writeups @Lizstar has been doing, here's the games I got there with, if you're curious:

• WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Party Games!: I liked Rhythm Heaven, and I've played some knockoffs like Spookware, but I hadn't actually played anything in the original series until this. Neat, even though it was mostly just a port of the GBA version and the extra stuff it added was all multiplayer (and thus not in the achievements)
• Super Monkey Ball 2: Played this as a kid, but never beat it, so this was a good excuse to actually pull it off. Some of the later levels got really tricky, so just getting to the end felt like an accomplishment.
• Winnie the Pooh's Rumbly Tumbly Adventure: (Mastered, lol) Yes, this is a game for small children that you'd probably put on your "easy event points" list. But I played it because the achievements were created by cool Twitch streamer @authorblues
• Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader: It's Star Wars ship shenanigans, blasting Tie fighters and doing a bunch of other little objectives. The sequel Rebel Assault (which doesn't have achievements yet) was a lot meatier, so this was a pretty quick replay.
• Star Fox: Assault: It's Star Wars-inspired ship shenanigans, blasting Aparoids and doing a bunch of other little objectives... but you're also a space furry. Of the Star Fox GameCube games I'd played Adventures but not this; they both have their rough edges, but they're different enough games to be completely different rough edges.
• Chibi-Robo!: I'd heard that a bunch of people loved this one, and it was really cute. It's the only one I might go back and master, at least unless one of the weird sidequests you have to do involves something really awkward or grindy.
• Samus Goes to the Fridge to Get a Glass of Milk 3D: (Mastered) I haven't gotten around to a full Metroid Prime replay yet, but I did do this little romhack that mods the first area of the game. Full event credit for romhacks requires mastery, so I had to do the damageless and speedrun achievements and put some effort into it.
• Kururin Squash!: Kururin is another series I'd always known about as a challenging series but never gotten to try, so it was neat to finally give one a shot. (and also you play as a bird) While it's pretty short, it did get tough by the end, and I had to resort to the in-game shop's video guides and consumable items for the last couple levels.