RetroAchievements GB Operator Collab Lets You Earn Achievements in Classic Game Boy Games
RetroAchievements has announced a collaboration with Playback, allowing you to earn achievements for your old-school Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games.
If you’re not familiar with Playback, it’s software that uses the libretro API to integrate multiple emulator cores and let you play retro games. It’s also software that comes with the GB Operator, a device that lets you emulate your existing cartridges on a PC, and that’s where this collab comes in.
Essentially, if you pick up a GB Operator, you’ll now find a new Achievements setting within Playback’s Settings menu, which will enable you to turn on achievements for your Game Boy carts. You will need the physical device and a real cart, though; achievements won’t work with simple ROM files, as far as I can tell.
Though RetroAchievements community manager Nebiki doesn’t list which games are supported in this crossover, but I’d imagine the collaboration will stretch to all Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance games currently supported by the site, as long as you’ve got the real cartridges.
The new achievements window in Playback comes complete with a dedicated overlay that will show you various categories, including whether achievements are earned, yet to be earned, or even missable. You’ll even get notifications when you unlock an achievement, which is neat.
Obviously, the original Nintendo handheld cartridges don’t have built-in achievements, so it’s neat that Epilogue and RetroAchievements have built in a system to help those games feel that much more modern. Again, though, it’s worth bearing in mind that these achievements won’t work without the real cartridges.
That’s likely because although Playback uses the mGBA emulator for Game Boy Advance games, it’s extracting the ROM file from the real cart to avoid legal issues.
Many Game Boy and Game Boy Advance titles are available to play on Switch and Switch 2 via Nintendo Switch Online, of course, but these re-releases don’t come with achievements, so if you want to feel that sense of accomplishment that comes with the little achievement “ping”, you’re better off with GB Operator and Playback, I reckon.
You can pick up a GB Operator right now via the official Epilogue website, and you can download Playback from the same place as well.
