Wish this Set May 2022
Is there a game you'd like to see receive an achievement set? Let us know by sending a private message to {% rauserpic RANews %}. We encourage you to explain what makes the game so special to you, and you may be featured in a future issue of RANews!
| Game | Console | Genre |
|---|---|---|
 Captain Tsubasa Vol. II: Super Striker |
NES | Sports (Soccer) |
- Write-up by: {% rauserpic danyelalejandro1980 %}
This is one of those hidden gems which many grew up with. Based partially in the anime, this game is a mixture of a soccer game, strategy, and RPG. You can play with many familiar characters and perform much of their techniques, including special ones such as Easter eggs of events that happened in the anime and manga.
Why this game? We have already the Rise of Champions version, but this game was the most popular in its time, with better gameplay than the Tecmo Cup and first version. It also has a lot of translations to English, Portuguese, and Spanish, and even a lot of hack games. This game deserves a spot and will be very refreshing for both fans of the anime and fans of games with a mixture of genres.
| Game | Console | Genre |
|---|---|---|
 Unreal Tournament |
Dreamcast | First-Person Shooter |
- Write-up by: {% rauserpic Fridge %}
M-M-M-M-M-M-MONSTER KILL
Please oh Dev Gods bring this great game to light on RA. I absolutely love the Unreal Franchise and this might be the closest we'll get to achievements on any Unreal game for a while. Especially because Dreamcast will let us use a mouse and keyboard. I'd love to unlock all of the characters and maps again and see how well I do on the leaderboards compared to all my RA buds. If you haven't experienced the glory of Unreal, you probably have played at least 3 games that have been influenced by this legendary series (or you know, that game engine).
Shame this style of shooter has gone out the window, but there are bits of it still in modern FPS's. Lets get some frags while blasting KoЯn like it's '99!!
| Game | Console | Genre |
|---|---|---|
 Air Combat |
PlayStation | Flight Combat Simulation |
- Write-up by: {% rauserpic WanderingHeiho %}
The sky’s the limit in this dog fighting game of planes! The first console entry in Namco’s Ace Combat series has you play as a member of the mercenary group Scarface Squadron to help liberate an island nation whose government lost control after a coup d'état. While I’ve heard of the series’ other installments (mainly Ace Combat 2 since there was some mention of that in this game’s manual), this was the only one I ever played and kept coming back to thanks to its music.
The game is split into multiple missions, each with their own main objective, like defeating all enemies of a specific vehicle type or destroying enemy facilities. Play through 17 missions with a variety of planes, each with their own advantages and disadvantages adding to replay value, especially thanks to the three levels of difficulty to try! There’s also a secret mini-game that replaces the loading screen with a congratulatory message for getting a high enough score.
The Ace Combat series has yet to have any of its entries get an achievement set on RA, so why not begin where the console games started?
| Game | Console | Genre |
|---|---|---|
 Brave Prove |
PlayStation | Action RPG |
- Write-up by: {% rauserpic malasdair %}
It's not every day you find a new Playstation RPG. Brave Prove is a straightforward action RPG with a beat 'em up vibe, like a combination of Capcom's D&D arcade games and Zelda, if it had been made by Quintet.
It reviewed poorly in the late 90s due to basically feeling like a late-era SNES game - something that I think is one of its strengths. Clean pixel work and pleasant synth sounds abound, though gameplay and narrative never rise much above a Hero's Quest to Adventure in Some Dungeons. If that's what you want, though, it absolutely delivers. Zelda clones usually aren't this fun to play.
The developer, Data West - no relation - would shift gears to developing GPS navigation software after the failure of this game and the really atrocious Cutey Honey FX, but as of 2020 has begun releasing ports and sequels of some of their older work. For now though, the fan translation remains the only way to play Brave Prove in English. It seems that the hacking required for the translation was tricky, so this may mean it has some memory issues that need to be overcome, but hopefully the simple qualities of the game will allow for a nice, thorough, classic achievement set.
| Game | Console | Genre |
|---|---|---|
 Battletoads |
Arcade | Beat 'em Up, Action |
- Writeup by: {% rauserpic GalacticSpear %}
Do you usually have fun with the first beat 'em up style levels of the Battletoads games, but doesn't stand the other levels that change the game style completely? Then Arcade's Battletoads is a great choice for you! It is 95% focused in combat and it controls similarly as in Battletoads in Battlemaniacs. The characters (Rash, Zits and Pimple) are very fast and their arms/legs grow and become weapons like spike boots, drills, hammers, and such. Also, something that also makes this game stand out compared to the other Battletoads is that it is quite violent, it has a lot of blood, you can finish off mice by cutting off their heads, General Slaughter gets visibly more hurt the more you fight him, etc. But if that bothers you, there's a way to disable the blood in the machine's options (but you can still cut the mice's heads off). To top it all off, the game has co-op for up to 3 players, the OST was composed by David Wise,and since it is an arcade game, you have infinite continues which makes this one of the most accessible games in the franchise in terms of difficulty.
Note: Nothing even related to Turbo Tunnel is included in this game.
| Game | Console | Genre |
|---|---|---|
 Pax Corpus |
PlayStation | Action |
- Writeup by: {% rauserpic winglessshikami %}
Ah Pax Corpus, the first (to my knowledge) sci-fi Tomb Raider clone. While the game is very janky at times and has annoying issues like only being able to get up from a roll one way, it also has some interesting ones. Its most unique one and its namesake is the Pax Corpus itself - which both heals you AND can kill you if you stay in an irradiated zone for too long. The graphics look dated by today's standards and the bosses have weird methods of defeating them that are hard to figure out without a guide, however, the soundtrack is pretty decent (and creepy at times).
Developed by Cryo Interactive, published by Cryo AND EA (explains a lot) and originally intended to be based on the animated series Aeon Flux (before the license fell through), this game might not be considered an underrated gem, however, it holds a special place in my heart as the first ever Tomb Raider-esque game I played (and for spooking me when I left the PC version's disk in my PC overnight).
| Game | Console | Genre |
|---|---|---|
 Night Trap |
Sega CD | Interactive Movie |
- Writeup by: {% rauserpic GibusWearingMann %}
A history lesson: In December 1993, the US Senate held a hearing about violence and sexual content in video games, the first of two, which eventually lead to the creation of the ESRB ratings board. In it, two particularly egregious games were put on trial. Mortal Kombat was the first, for its extremely graphic violence, highlighted especially by its "Fatality" system. Night Trap was the other, for a game over scene in which a teenage girl has her blood drained by half-vampire ninjas using an industrial version of a claw-grabber toy.
Okay, let's back up. Don't expect anything remotely as violent as Mortal Kombat from this camera-hopping FMV game; instead, expect fast-paced action, as you race to activate traps to get rid of the bloodthirsty Augers threatening to off a party full of teenage girls in a sting operation orchestrated by S.C.A.T. targeting a family of eccentric vampires in a thrilling story that you can't find the time to watch because you're too busy activating traps to get rid of the damn Augers and, look. This isn't a great game, especially if you don't already know what will unfold over the course of 24 real-life minutes, or aren't prepared to take heavy notes, but it is a hilarious B-movie. Go watch it on YouTube and give this a set request, it's an iconic cult classic, easily the most famous FMV game, plenty of opportunity for interesting and weird achievements, and it even has a theme song!
"You'll be caught in the night, Night Trap!"
| Game | Console | Genre |
|---|---|---|
 Shin Megami Tensei: Persona |
PlayStation Portable | RPG |
- Writeup by: {% rauserpic 14ausher %}
I'm a huge fan of the Persona series, and I'm probably one of the few people who has beaten both the PS1 and PSP versions of Persona 1. Let me tell you: outside of the soundtrack, the PSP version is superior in every way to the PS1 version, and even the soundtrack is debatable (note that I like the PSP soundtrack, but I love the PS1 soundtrack).
The main benefit on a gameplay level is that the PS1 version is absurdly slow, while the PSP version is not; the overall main benefit, though, is that the translation and localization of the PS1 version was awful, with it altering characters to make them "seem more Caucasian" except for Mark of course, who was made black. On top of this, it's just kind of a crappy translation in general; you still get the broad strokes, but many lines are obviously written poorly, such as the infamous "Mark danced crazy". Characters have their names changed, many of the personas have changed or obviously wrong names, and move names are all over the place, sometimes being more straightforward (guess what move "BossDamage" does), but usually it just ends up being much more confusing, especially for people familiar with the later games' naming conventions. There's a bit of voice acting, and it ranges from "kind of okay" to "embarrassingly terrible". It also cut one of the game's two campaigns; normally, you get the SEBEC quest, and the Snow Queen quest, but not in the English PS1 version.
The PSP version fixes all of that, having an accurate translation, a much more reasonable localization that doesn't rename things for no good reason, and consistency with the rest of the franchise, not to mention having both campaigns. It has numerous other benefits as well, from actually telling you Persona affinity to actually telling you attack ranges to really just giving the player a lot more information in general. It being faster is also a big deal; what took hours in the PS1 version might take half an hour.
Overall, it's just a much better experience, and it having a set would be a much more ideal way for someone to see Persona 1 than having to play the PS1 set. The Snow Queen quest would have plenty of opportunity for unique achievements, with the max ambrosia run potentially being a very difficult challenge.
| Game | Console | Genre |
|---|---|---|
| Road & Track Presents: The Need for Speed |
PlayStation | Racing |
- Write-up by: {% rauserpic RaphMec %}
Need for Speed. A gaming series spanning over 28 years, over 31 consoles and over 25 main entry games (6 of which have sets on our wonderful RA) - The Granddaddy of it all: 1994’s Road & Track Presents: The Need for Speed - or simply: The Need for Speed.
At the time of release, the game was particularly praised for its realism, most apparent in the visuals and gameplay (something some of the later, most recent entries may not be known for, opting for a more arcade style and leaving instead that particular title to some other racing sim series, ahem GT ahem) - It matched specific vehicle behaviour and sound accurate gear shift for each vehicle (EA paired up with “Road and Track” Magazine for consulting).
Several elements are presented in this game that would become staples in the series like traffic vehicles that the player must avoid and, most notably, police chases. The chases are one of the main mechanics in this game, which lead, if caught, to tickets or even arrests after enough stops.
NFS fans, or indeed many racing fans in general, would be much the better for discovering (or re-discovering) a true racing classic that started a whole franchise - and so I humbly wish that this game be granted a set O' Video Game Gods (and O' RA Devs)
| Game | Console | Genre |
|---|---|---|
| Trace Memory |
Nintendo DS | Adventure |
- Write-up by: {% rauserpic WarioFan63 %}
Trace Memory, or Another Code outside of America, is an adventure game for the DS. You take on the role of Ashley Robbins, whose parents were tragically killed in a lab accident when she was 3 years old. Just before her 14th birthday, she gets a package from her Dad saying that he's alive and well and to come meet him on a remote island. She was also given a unique device called the DTS that looks like that hip new dual-screen handheld video game system that just came out last year in November 2004. The resemblance is uncanny really! While exploring the island, Ashley runs into an amnesiac ghost who can't remember how he died or even his own name, only coming up with the letter D. What really happened 11 years ago? How did her dad escape death? What exactly happened in D's past? These are the mysteries you try to solve in Trace Memory.
The game plays like you'd expect from a point and click game with puzzles to solve and solutions to find. Ashley's DTS is unique in that in can take pictures of the environment, which is helpful if a solution to a puzzle is in another room and you could use some help memorizing it. The camera function also has a scene or two play out differently if you've been diligent in snapping pictures. There's also cartridges you can find that flesh out the game's story some and aren't always in an obvious place, so you'd want to pick them before they become missable. Searching around for clues can also give D flashbacks to his life should you find the right memory triggers, and whether or not his story gets resolved by the end of the game is up to how well you examine your surroundings.
Admittedly, the game is short, but it does have some opportunities to reward players who check everything. And hey, if you go for a second playthrough, the hidden cartridges tell a different story and the game will be capped off with a different end screen.
Bear in mind that the game was meant to be played on a DS, so the developers at Cing went all out on using the system's unique features to solve the puzzles, between the touch screen, the microphone, and in one instance, the fact that the DS is built the way it is. Getting the "right" experience might not be possible with how most people use RA, but I think it'd do well for a short and sweet early DS title.