Nintendo Wii games just got RetroAchievements support

RetroAchievements has officially added achievement tracking for the Nintendo Wii. The March 19 update brings modern unlockables to the 2006 motion-control console, and the integration is already live in popular frontends like LaunchBox.

If you want to earn badges in Super Mario Galaxy or Wii Sports, you need to run the games through a compatible emulator. Dolphin is the standard choice for Wii emulation. Once you link your RetroAchievements account to the emulator, it monitors the game's memory in real time to detect when you complete specific community-defined goals.

I have been using both LaunchBox and RetroAchievements for years. Having a notification pop up in the corner of my screen because I did a kickflip in a 20-year-old game is a specific kind of brain poison, and I am fully addicted to it.

Hardcore mode disables save states

Former Rare programmer Scott Davies created RetroAchievements in 2012. The platform started small but now has over 1.25 million registered users. It supports dozens of systems ranging from the Atari 2600 to the PlayStation Portable. The Wii is the latest addition. It follows the GameCube rollout in July 2024.

The system offers two ways to play. Softcore mode lets you use emulator tools like save states, rewind, and fast-forward. Hardcore mode disables all of those features. If you want the points on your public profile to carry the hardcore flag, you have to play the game exactly as it existed on original hardware.

Adding achievements to Wii games requires developers to dig through the game's RAM to find exactly which memory addresses change when an event happens. Finding the memory address for a high score is usually straightforward. Finding the exact flag that triggers when you perform a specific motion-control gesture is a massive technical headache.

Community developers write these achievement sets themselves. They often go beyond basic progression milestones. A typical set might ask you to beat a boss without taking damage, find an obscure Easter egg, or complete a level under a strict time limit. This breathes new life into games you might have already beaten a dozen times.

From DOSBox to Big Box

The LaunchBox team announced immediate support for the new Wii achievements. Jason Carr originally built LaunchBox as a simple frontend to organize DOSBox games. It eventually grew into a massive database and launcher for almost every PC and emulated platform in existence.

LaunchBox connects directly to the RetroAchievements API. You log in through the LaunchBox options menu, and the frontend automatically passes those credentials to Dolphin when you launch a Wii game. It also pulls your current achievement progress and displays it right next to the game's box art in your library.

The free version of LaunchBox handles all of this perfectly fine. The premium Big Box version takes that same data and formats it for a television interface. I run Big Box on a mini PC in my living room, and the achievement integration makes emulated games feel like native console releases.

I still have my sensor bar

The Wii sold over 101 million units before Nintendo ended production in 2013. Its library is massive, and a huge portion of it relies heavily on the Wii Remote's infrared pointer and accelerometers.

Dolphin allows you to map those motion controls to a standard gamepad. You can bind the waggle motion to a right stick or a shoulder button. It works, but it rarely feels natural. For the best experience, you really need an original Wii Remote and a USB sensor bar like the Mayflash DolphinBar.

The initial batch of supported games includes the usual heavy hitters like Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Mario Kart Wii. Community developers are actively working on achievement sets for hundreds of other titles. You can check the RetroAchievements website to see which games currently have active bounties or completed lists.