Hello RA community.

This post is to say farewell and a big thank you guys for all the things we've accomplished since I joined this project 5 years ago.

This is not really a complete farewell, since I plan to (finally) play some of these old games with achievements. But due to RL demands I'm no longer able to keep my duties as an admin of this community, nor remain socially active around here.

It's time for me to focus on other kind of achievements like teaching my oldest son how to be an adult and my youngest kid to ride a bike. Recently I also changed jobs (good news: it's a job I've been looking for), so I also need to put a little more dedication into it.

I came here just to help with RetroArch compatibility in order to be able to play with achievements on my RetroPie and my Android phone, but I was cursed invited to be an admin and since then we accomplished a lot of things...

I'd like to say that I am very grateful (and proud) for the opportunity to have contributed and witnessed how much we have evolved and grown here.

We managed to make a little sub-niche inside a niche of the retrogamers niche become a much bigger community.

When I joined here we were creating and earning achievements on standalone Windows-only emulators, supporting only 7 consoles (Mega Drive, PC-Engine, NES, SNES and the 3 flavors of GameBoy). Now, thanks to the work of leiradel, Jamiras and other contributors, we now support 35 consoles (and counting) and we can earn achievements on dozens of platforms/devices (no longer limited to Windows). Besides the impact it had in this project/community, I need to say that working with them was an enriching experience for me.

We created the documentation website and later the jr-dev process. Thanks to that (and the improvements in our tools brought by Jamiras) we currently release an amount of sets per day that we used to release per week years ago (God bless the Code Reviewers too 🙏🏻).

We converted a toxic place into a welcoming community where people are able (and encouraged) to contribute with whatever skillset they have.

Thanks to the enthusiasm and tremendous effort of StingX2 we created the RANews magazine. And it was wonderful to see all those contributions coming from several community members.



These were 5 intense years and full of community achievements! We proved that many different people, from different places, with a common goal can create amazing things!

You guys are awesome!!

Now it's time for the next generation of staffers to move RA forward.

Keep rocking!!! 💪

I'm grateful to many people of this community, and these are the ones that came to my mind now (alphabetical order):

Alena - the sweetest person I ever met on the Internet. And the best RAM digger I know.

Brian - thanks to his detailed forum topics from the past we got enough material to start the documentation website.

Cabrunco - thanks for letting me know RetroAchievements exist.

Dexterspet - thanks for taking care of RA when there wasn't anyone doing it. And also for helping me with English slangs.

Hotscrock - without his efforts, checking the claims, things would be really really messy around here. Like it was in the past, with a constant bickering between creators.

Jamiras - his professionalism applied to this hobby is something I've always admired. Even if you don't know, you're my mentor. Thanks for keep moving RALibretro/rcheevos forward!

jplima - that collab to create the Punisher set was fun! :)

kcin2001 - the very first code reviewer. When the jr-dev process was an embryonic idea kcin was the first person I invited to review newbies' code, and he agreed.

kdecks - without his dedication this project would be big mess, with low quality content.

Keltron3030 - his contributions as the lead Code Reviewer made us have this large numbers of creators we have today.

KickMeElmo - the "help-me Hero" of this community. Also helped me a lot with some confusing English sentences.

leiradel - the legendary guy who implemented RetroAchievements in RetroArch and created RALibretro.

luchaos - my webdev guru and the hero of https://retroachievements.org (without him, and the backups routine he implemented, all the achievements of our server would be lost after a malicious attack in 2018).

MagusPC - one of his text files with some achievement logic templates was what made things click in my head and I finally understood how to create achievements. It also inspired many examples in the documentation.

muskn - thanks for the time spent with RetroArch testing in the old (and buggy) days

Salsa - my twin sister and the DevQueen

Scott - the guy created all this thing! I don't have enough words to show my respect and gratitude.

StingX2 - his dedication to this project is pretty impressive. Also his Retro Achievements Power fake-covers was the inspiration to start the RANews, and his enthusiasm to gather content was what made it possible.

stt - the guy who came up with the idea of parsing achievement's code using Regular Expressions. His proof-of-concept was the starting point for my implementation and now devs can visualize the achievement's logic on the website (cheevo and ticket's pages). I'm sure a little simple thing like this helps Code Reviewers a to check jr-devs' code and other devs to fix tickets.

televandalist - thanks for all the achievements you created, specially that one you gave me as my birthday gift: Böbl | Bobl (NES) Homebrew .

wilhitewarrior - the guy who gave to the Metal Gear series the respect it deserves. Also the best dad joker/pun collector of this community.

There's surely many more names to be here. My apologies. I love you all!
❤️

Well shit, I didn't see that one coming. Thanks for all the good times Meleu, when you're in my country, my offer still stands, drinks and food on me :) See you around

Its sad but still great that you were here, Teach those kids the ways of life!!

Completely understandable. Thanks for everything you've done for the community and I wish you good luck in the new job.

It's sad to see you go. You will be missed. Hopefully we'll see you around in your gaming. Take care!

Thank you for everything~ <3

I will miss you, wish you happy time with your family, and I hope to see you in top 300 soon :)

Achievements take on many forms, I wish you well on the long road mastering RL <3

Good luck, Meleu! Thank you for all the work you've done!

Best of luck, meleu. Don't be a stranger!

I haven't known you for long and we haven't talked much but I'd like to also throw my hat in the ring and congratulate you for all you have done. You seem to have been a very important person for many and you will be missed. Farewell and see you soon! :D

f

Best of luck, enjoy the games!

PS. A missed chance to plug

Zooming Secretary (NES) Homebrew

Wish you the best, Mel! <3 We'll miss you

For some parting wisdom... If you ever need to deal with a sad astronaut... Just give them some space.