If you’ve played video games at all in the last two decades, you’re likely familiar with the concept of achievements. These game-specific challenges add tons of replayability to your favorite games, encouraging 100% completion, zero-death playthroughs, and much more. Unfortunately, achievements weren’t made popular until the Xbox 360 era, leaving many retro consoles in the dust. Enter RetroAchievements, a community-run site that brings achievements to our favorite old-school systems. Though RetroAchievements covers a wide array of consoles, it has long been exclusive to emulators, until now. Thanks to the NES RA Adapter, you can now unlock achievements on official hardware, opening up the world of RetroAchievements to a whole new audience.
The NES RA Adapter is an open-source solution created by Fabio, a passionate player from Brazil who yearned for the ability to use official hardware. After seeing an image of an NES cartridge with a Wi-Fi card attached, Fabio started to wonder if he could use this approach to bring achievements to physical hardware. His reasoning is far too relatable: it’s not that Fabio disliked emulators, but he wanted extra motivation to use all of his old hardware. So started a year-long quest to bring his idea to fruition. After working with other members of the community to overcome countless obstacles, the result is a thoroughly impressive piece of tech with incredible potential for the future.
An Easy Way to Add Achievements
In its current form, the NES RA Adapter is a somewhat clunky looking proof-of-concept, but the results speak for themselves. Compared to other mods I’ve covered in the past, the adapter is incredibly easy to install, even in its unpolished state. One of Fabio’s core objectives was creating a non-invasive solution that didn’t force the player to permanently modify their hardware or games, and that’s clearly been accomplished. You can check out my NES RA Adapter YouTube video for the full installation process and my extended thoughts, but the basics are just as impressive.
The NES RA Adapter works by combining the power of a Raspberry Pi Pico and an ESP32 to ping the RetroAchievements website in real-time, updating your achievement progress on a fun little LCD display. Installing the adapter involves disassembling your NES console, but there’s no soldering, cutting, or heavy modification required. After isolating the motherboard from the cart reader, all you need to do is attach the adapter in its place, hook up a small daughterboard, and you’re ready to go. Following some light Wi-Fi and account setup, you’re free to start unlocking achievements, with hundreds of NES games currently supported.
The Pros, Cons, and Future of the NES RA Adapter
The NES RA Adapter is an extremely cool gadget with a lot of promise, and Fabio has laid the groundwork for achievement support in a big way. The RetroAchievements platform has been around for over a decade, but this adapter finally brings that experience to real hardware, removing the need for emulation. With new goals, leaderboards, and a social element from the RA community, it reinvigorates the retro experience, all without leaving the CRT behind. Also, as an open-source project, any aspiring modder is free to tinker with the tech as much as they like, leaving lots of room for expansion and improvement.
In its current state, the NES RA Adapter isn’t perfect, but most of the issues can be easily fixed. The adapter is clunky and you can’t unlock hardcore achievements, but work is already underway on these hiccups. Still, it’s a project that’s bursting with potential and I couldn’t be more excited for the future. Beyond the NES RA Adapter, Fabio is eager to implement the technology in systems like the Super Nintendo and Game Boy, along with potential support for FPGA/MiSTer. For now, we just have to wait, but with any luck, we’ll have a Game Genie-style adapter with full support sometime soon.
