Achievements

[+Captain Kiwi]

I was born in the early 80's, so I grew up in the 90's. I did a lot of gaming on the PC and loved the in game "achievements" you could receive (for example, playing missions of Wing Commander over and over and over until I could get the highest score I could possibly get.) When I got my XBox 360 (which lasted a surprising 4 years before it died completely.. unlike my 40 year old 2600 that still works perfectly), I enjoyed trying to unlock the different achievements. A few years ago, I learned this was not a new thing and that back in the the good old days of the Atari 2600 "achievement patches" were sent to players achieving certain scores. Who remembers these or ever got one?

 

Developers should stop giving these online achievements and bring back the patch and letter system!!

[metarog]

These were for Activision games back in the day. I remember sending away for the Decathlon one but I never got it. I remember having my brother take a pic of the screen on one of those instant Polaroid cameras. You were hot stuff if managed to get one.

[+save2600]

Yep, those patches were extremely rare back then. Never knew anyone BITD that had any. Or participated for that matter. Not the same thing (like buying your own trophy), but many of them can be had on eBay today of course.

[Eltigro]

I had one for River Raid, but lost it in a house fire. I still remember getting my camera to take the photo of the tv. Then having to take the film to be developed. Then sending the best photo (I had taken several in case they didn't show the screen legibly) via snail mail amd waiting for the reply.

 

On the good side, you had an actual tangible item for a reward. But on the bad side, you had to wait weeks for the reward to arrive in the mail.

[Eltigro]

They have some on display at the National Videogame Museum in Frisco. Here's a picture I took when I visited. (And a picture of me taking a picture of them...)