2023 in Retroachievements
Hello all! As we are approaching the end of the year, what better time than now to look back on the year we are leaving behind--and what a year it has been. From all the amazing new features brought to us by the Web Team, the vast quantity of new events, and of course the big haul of new achievement sets we have seen. Teams have been expanding, and our community is now bigger than ever!
As a nice send-off to 2023, I wanted to look back on all months individually of the year, complete with some fun moments and happenings that defined the month for many of us. So strap in, and let's see what 2023 has brought to us all!
This year would mark the start of a new event called Challenge League: The Top 100, an event where people are tasked to complete challenges all affiliated with some of the most influential people the site has seen over the past few years. The best part about this event is that it is one of the first to have received the "evergreen" treatment, so even though 2023 may be over now, you can participate in it whenever you see fit... but only if you complete all 100 challenges! The event team also saw four new members join the team, showing us that more was absolutely on the way!
On the website, we would see some impactful changes happen to the styling of game lists, the completion bar, as well as the missable tag for achievements. People may remember that the system pages used to show non-retail games as "~Homebrew~ Very Good Game Yes", which was done intentionally to put them near the bottom of the list to not obstruct the retail list. Now, they have a fancy tag behind the name indicating their type! The progress bar now has a beautiful icon behind it on completion/mastery in the completion progress, and missables were given a background to make them more prevalent when scrolling through the achievement list. The latter is no longer relevant, but we'll get to that... later this year!
The achievement set awards would go to:
- Set of the Month: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 by Delmaru, blendedsea, LordAndrew, and ThatAmericanSlacker.
- Subset of the Month: Shadow the Hedgehog [Subset - 326 Endings] by DarkyAndreas.
- Revision of the Month: Mario Kart DS by MGNS8M.
The following developers graduated this month:
| Developer | Graduation set |
|---|---|
| {% rauserpic starlite %} |
 Bionicle (Game Boy Advance)
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| {% rauserpic Guinea %} |
 Sled Storm (PlayStation)
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| {% rauserpic RyudoSynbios %} |
 Azure Dreams (Game Boy Color)
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| {% rauserpic Chr0x %} |
 Vendetta (Arcade)
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The big finale of the Retro Olympics 2022 happened this month! Team USA versus Team Spain | Netherlands for the Bronze medal, with Team France versus Team Portugal | Poland for the Silver and Gold medal. Team USA ended up taking the Bronze Medal, with the exciting duel for the championship giving the Silver Medal to Team Portugal | Poland, while Team France walked away with a landslide victory! Be sure to keep an eye out for January 2024 as well, as Retro Olympics 2023 are just around the corner! The big two categories for the RA Awards 2022 were also settled this year, with the well-deserved victory for most prolific developer going to TheMysticalOne who also ended up with the set of the year, Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King.
Bizhawk testing would be open to the public this month, which is an emulator front-end that can be used as an alternative to RetroArch. The advantage of this front-end is that it could bring us systems we previously could not support yet on RetroArch or other emulators, one of which we will be seeing very soon!
The achievement set awards would go to:
- Set of the Month: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas by DanielARP and voiceofautumn.
- Subset of the Month: Banjo-Kazooie [Subset - Glitch Showcase] by SlashTangent.
- Revision of the Month: Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped by Bryan1150.
The following developers graduated this month:
| Developer | Graduation set |
|---|---|
| {% rauserpic thegotoguyy %} |
 Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters (PlayStation Portable)
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| {% rauserpic acheaplemon %} |
 DJ Max Fever (PlayStation Portable)
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| {% rauserpic andreemendess %} |
 UFO Kamen Yakisoban: Kettler no Kuroi Inbou (SNES)
|
| {% rauserpic ZamArch %} |
 Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Spirit Caller (Nintendo DS)
|
This month would mark the debut of an event us retro gamers are all too familiar with: the Console Wars. After all, you were most likely on either Nintendo's or Sega's side during this (mostly) friendly argument of which manufacturer has the better consoles, and even nowadays it's still very relevant with the discussions between Sony and Microsoft. So for this event, three random consoles were rolled and to show your support, you had to get a specified amount of points in either of them. Or maybe you would be more interested in becoming the underdog and supporting the console with the expected least amount of players? Brain games were played here, and we will return to this event in a few months!
But Console Wars would only be one of three new events this month. As an alternative to the yearly event Devember, we would see the House Cleaning event which does exactly what you expect it to do: solve tickets for inactive developers, or provide save states for them so that not only developers but also players can participate. The Cream of the Crop event is a combination of competition and social strategy, where it is up to you to team up with the strongest players or throw them under a bus. Split up into four houses, players within them would compete with each other to secure their spot for next week, with the losers potentially being voted out by the rest of the house. That's where the social strategy comes in, as you can either align yourself with others to make sure they won't vote for you!
The Web Team has kept themselves busy this month as well, with the theme being navigation and the ease of it. The home page would see redesigned sidebars for links to commonly visited pages, hubs would be shown under the the games tab, and game pages would now have a link to RA Guides if applicable. Of course I have to show my bias every now and then so yes, RA Guides getting more recognition is obviously something I enjoy a lot! Most other changes were on the back-end but still very much appreciated, such as the performance of the active player widget, and the enforcement of game badge sizes.
The achievement set awards would go to:
- Set of the Month: Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker by Jamiras.
- Subset of the Month: ~Hack~ Celeste.smc [Subset - "Golden Strawberries"] by AuburnRDM.
- Revision of the Month: Zelda II: The Adventure of Link by suspect15.
The following developers graduated this month:
| Developer | Graduation set |
|---|---|
| {% rauserpic ToastLover %} |
 Pac-Man: Championship Edition (PlayStation Portable)
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| {% rauserpic Bilalscape12 %} |
 Shark Tale (Game Boy Advance)
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| {% rauserpic AuburnRDM %} |
 ~Hack~ Celeste.smc (SNES)
|
 ~Hack~ Celeste.smc [Subset - "Golden Strawberries"] (SNES)
|
April Fools started with perhaps the best most creative events we've seen thus far. Of course there is the unforgettable Super Mario Bros. [Subset - RetroAchievements Stimulus Package], where players could earn 1000 achievements worth 100 points each with little effort. Massive props to televandalist because it gave everyone a good laugh! Unfortunately it did come with a small tiny side effect, which brought another issue to the front that would plague the site for months: performance issues. The Web Team had their work cut our for them, and as we will see in the coming months, they have succeeded in spades.
The other event was Draw My Pokémon, where all community members were invited to, well, draw a Pokémon! This perhaps abomination creature would then replace the Pokémon in a hack, where we will be able to play through everyone's creations for an event badge. This hack has not been released yet but please be assured, it is still work in progress and the team is working hard on it!
This month would also see the first new supported system on RetroAchievement this year: the Nintendo DSi. This system could only be played on the before-mentioned Bizhawk front-end, which supports old systems as well as potential new ones. The Nintendo DSi currently has a total of 58 achievement sets ready to be played through, which includes many titles we would never see on the regular Nintendo DS or even anywhere else! Aside from Bizhawk support, several standalone RA emulators would also see new versions, most notably RAProject64, RAppleWin, and RAQuasi88.
Aside from dousing the fire, the Web Team delivered several highly requested features this month as well. Most prevalent for many would be the drag-and-drop sorting for the mastery showcase, which before this update was a bit of an annoyance to go through--especially for players with many masteries under their belt. Every system got a beautiful new custom-made icon, and users would be notified now whenever a game they have mastered has received a revision. Leaderboards now have better separation between them, and there is now a "Hide completed games" checkbox in the completion list for easier navigation to sets you haven't mastered yet. Another simple-yet-effective addition is the "Random set" button, which will just randomly pick a game for you in case you don't know what to play. Developers also got a bunch of updates, such as editing code notes on the site, as well as easier access to hashing. It was a very packed month for updates to say the least!
The achievement set awards would go to:
- Nintendo DSi Launch Set: Legend of Zelda, the: Four Swords Anniversary Edition by TheMysticalOne.
- Set of the Month: Devil May Cry by Bryan1150, Falcus, and Gollawiz.
- Subset of the Month: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga [Subset - Perfect Dodges] by blendedsea.
- Revision of the Month: F-Zero by suspect15.
The following developers graduated this month:
| Developer | Graduation set |
|---|---|
| {% rauserpic AfroRyan %} |
 Sonic Pinball Party (Game Boy Advance)
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| {% rauserpic dericobanjo %} |
 ~Hack~ Gamma64 (Nintendo 64)
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| {% rauserpic Casually %} |
 Tetris Worlds (Game Boy Advance)
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| {% rauserpic SubliminalSiren %} |
 Buster Bros. | Pang (Arcade)
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| {% rauserpic AdeptTempest %} |
 Danny Phantom: The Ultimate Enemy (Game Boy Advance)
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| {% rauserpic WCopeland %} |
 Defender (Arcade)
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| {% rauserpic Hexadigital %} |
 Hidden Objects: Mystery Media (Nintendo DS)
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| {% rauserpic MahBoi %} |
 Langrisser II (Mega Drive)
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