Five months later after mastering the first game, juggling between several other games casually playing including this one, I spent a good few days sitting down and actually playing this through more than playing it for a half hour on my lunch break at work. First thing I would like to say, whoever programmed the AI in that damn Monkey Soccer needs to be put in time out because that was HARD. Loved the New Game Plus Easter Egg of Spike coming back, was mildly disappointed when it wasnt the same voice actor, that would've been really cool, especially if Jake randomly showed up.

Anyway, not sure what the 3rd mastery will be, pretty close to finishing Parasite Eve, might sit down and really go for my Zelda ALttP playthrough, might even be Ape Escape 3 at this rate.

If anyone is interested in following me, my profile name is Ryuzimaki.

Pretty good set I think. Grateful it went easy on the 1-up collecting. Those are always my least favorite in any Mario set for some reason. Lol There was one 1-up achievement that was a little wonky on the Tower in world 5. I just went back to it once I had an inventory full with those P-wings after beating the game.

Hardest part was maybe beating some of the worlds in their entirety with small Mario. Thought World 8 would've been the hardest in that regard, but it turned out to be World 7 that I struggled with the most as small Mario. Lol

Some of the individual challenges that gave me a hard time was beating an Airship with the Frog Suit and beating an Airship with the Hammerbros Suit. On both instances I'd collect the suit, attempt the Airship, lose the power up, reset. Until I eventually got frustrated, grinded out the suits only to beat the Airship on the first attempt after taking the time to collect those suits. Lol

Another hard one was beating 5-3 in 15 jumps or less. It ended up being harder than the alternate version of the achievement where you had to complete the 3rd Airship in World 8 in 20 jumps or less.

I knew I had to attempt this set once it dropped. The Wii port was always my favorite way to play as a kid, and that still holds true today. Just being able to swap Pikmin types on the fly with a click of a button makes this version THE definitive version to me.

The only real downside is that this version of Pikmin suffers from the worst iteration of the infamous "crushing glitch." I lost 10+ Pikmin multiple times from...successfully bum rushing and defeating Bulborbs...

Anyway, if you can look past a few...unfortunate deaths here and there, this is a great way to experience Pikmin. As for the set, it's real nice, and covers some content that the GC version misses. (and doesn't require a good ending + best ending) You will need to be able to beat the game in 12 days or less though, which will definitely take some practice for newer players.

The Challenge mode is also much easier for me, since, as stated, YOU CAN SWAP PIKMIN TYPES INSTANTLY. I can not understate how much of a QOL buff that is. Still took a few tries for some of the maps, which sucks because each attempt is roughly 13 minutes, but The Distant Spring was nerfed from requiring 450 to just 400 which I'm very happy about.

I give the set an 8/10. As Foolacetic's first major game, I think he did a fantastic job with this set. Pikmin's not an especially long game, so there isn't THAT much a dev could do to add achievements, but what exists here is everything a Pikmin fan could reasonably ask for outside of challenges fit for subsets.

26/50 Wii points

I am a huge fan of the series but have primarily played the first 3. I felt like this was a very well done set that got me to really experience the game and see all it had to offer.

The amount of mini-games is excessive but honestly most of them just took 30 minutes of practicing to get whatever score was needed for that particular cheevo.

The only exception is the rhythm mini-game (Kecak) that everyone in the forums complains about. It really is pretty brutal mainly because it seems like the timing window is incredibly strict and possibly has some emulator-induced lag that really makes getting the high score challenging. There are a ton of helpful comments in the forums about that one. The piece I'll add is make sure to turn off things like widescreen patches and set resolution back to native and turn off dithering etc. Duckstation has a "Safe Mode" toggle button that makes it pretty easy to temporarily play like this while easily being able to get back to your optimized settings once you're done with the mini-game.

Now on to the collect-a-thon to earn that Gex badge!

So there is 2 versions of art of fighting Jap has the normal mode I guess and the usa the hard mode version with a 2 continue limit.

Now I had the usa ver so I started to practice the best I could do was make it to the 2nd to last guy where I was pushed into the corner and skull fucked for 6 rounds once you are there you can't get out he has longer range wall kicks don't work and dp won't reach even if you still have any sprit left.

at that point I switched to the jap and it was a cake walk in comparison

There's only one thing to say about this rhythm game with only 5 songs.

I need King Julian to stfu

Set Stats

Total achievements: 46

Missable achievements: 0!!!

Challenge achievements: 12

Progression achievements: 16

100% save file achievements: 18

Time to reach mastery: 7h 50m

The Game

This is Dreamwork's attempt to jump on the Mario Kart success wagon, and while I don't have the data from when this game was released in 2011, I highly doubt it reached the same status.

It has what you can expect from a multi-IP kart racer - playable characters from various franchises, tracks based on those same franchises, and recognisable(?) items re-purposed into weaponry. Shrek, Madagascar, Monsters vs. Aliens, How To Train Your Dragon, this game has it all!
... Except an enjoyable gameplay experience

There is absolutely no way the people behind this game came up with the movie Turbo (y'know, the racing snail movie?) because a regular snail could outrun these karts. I thought I was going to have to spend WEEKS getting through this because simply holding the A button to go forward seemingly barely works, even on 150cc.

It may sound like I'm overexaggerating, but it really is that frustrating. To top it off, the game has 9 tracks + 3 of them played in reverse, totaling 12 tracks, though I find it hard to justify calling it a reversed track separate.

To beat the game, you must complete all 4 cups on every difficulty, as well as the games challenges modes, which we'll get to.

Cups

How are there 4 cups per difficulty with only 12 tracks? Because each cup only has 3 tracks silly! Meaning you have to slowly drag your way through the same bits of scenery 16 times against CPU players who straight up cheat more and more as you increase the difficulty level. Seriously, these guys are reaching speeds I could only dream of on straights. Race around each track for 3 laps to win. There's not much more to it. It's just plain boring.

Challenge modes

Not gonna lie, I was kind of curious to see what other modes this game had to offer, but it turns out it's just more of the same. Yeah, the challenge modes are just the same races again, but this time with a limited item pool! Such as only turbo items, only homing rockets and shields, etc. Very cool and very fun stuff! help me

The Set

The set is fairly bland as it is with most kart racers, forcing you to experience all the game's super fun modes to their fullest..!

Progression - 16 cheevos

Is what it says on the tin. Win every cup on every cc for 16 achievements. get grindin'.

100% save file - 18 cheevos

While you get a DreamWorks Icon for each cup you win, every track also has 2 hidden ones for you to find and collect. Collecting both icons in a track awards you with an achievement, making up 12 of the set's achievements.

I used this beautiful guide from 14 years ago to track them down. They can be quite out of the way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln5taO36PSY

The remaining 6 achievements are for beating every track in every challenge mode. These seem to unlock in some sort of order as you collect more DreamWorks Icons, but the game doesn't tell you how many icons to unlock any specific race. Or cup. Or cc.

Challenge achievements - 12 cheevos

Guinea did also add time trial cheevos for each of the 12 tracks, but they can easily be beaten with a good 20 seconds to spare for the most part. Not to say that's bad. I think it's good to have speedrun cheevos with generous leeway every now and again. While it may not be such a huge achievement to me, cheevos like these could be the gateway for someone to pick up a new hobby.

The Verdict

A lot of people seem very nostalgic to play this game, and I don't get it. I'm honestly stuck between deeming this or M&M's Kart Racing as the worst kart racer I personally have played.

Can't deny that it's piss easy Wii Launch Event points tho.

Links 'n stuff

Thanks to RA user Guinea, i guess. I wouldn't have gotten to experience this mediocre kart racer if it wasn't for you!

Explore the set yourself!: https://retroachievements.org/game/34609

Read my previous mastery here: https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroAchievements/comments/1smen81/mastery_68_lego_star_wars_the_complete_saga_wii/

It was actually easier than i expected, but now going into the subset i must say that i absolutely despise the special stages.

But Sonic 1 is great and i can see why it was chosen as the first Retroachievements game.

this was a fun set, i tried this one last year and got tired with 11 achievements remaining (rage quitted because of the floor is lava achievement), decided to do the rest after i did sm64 last week :b

Sonic Battle was really easy as all of the difficult Achievements are grouped in a subset.

Finding Nemo was much more difficult than expected. The "take no damage" and "collect all star rings" achievements made me RAGEQUIT.

I had to play Firered twice, including the postgame, because some of my achievements were saved as softcore due to a bug. It was fun, not too difficult, but very grindy.​

It's not much but it's honest work.

I Actually really liked the slower pace of these games. Kid Dracula was a lot of fun. Legends and Belmont's revenge were preatty easy until the last stage. I won't master those games, but the beaten is very worth the time.

The PS2 set was an absolute breeze. Anyone who considers themselves good at Tony Hawk needs to take on the GameCube set for THPS4. Absolute insanity.

This is my favorite Gran Turismo game, and it feels great to finally 100% complete it for the first time and then some.

As for the game itself, hoo boy, it is time consuming to do everything it has to offer. I'm talking JPRG lengths of time consuming, which isn't something many racing games do. Most of the achievements here are just from doing everything in the game alone. Between the many attempts it took to gold all of the licenses and the sheer length of the campaign, especially in the late game, it's a huge grind that might not be for everyone. But the racing itself is a lot of fun, especially thanks to the physics, which I think GT3 has the best of out of the older GT games.

As for the set, as I said before, most of these are just from 100% completing the game normally, with the added caveat that some events have to be done in one sitting or you can only use a certain type of car to keep the racing fair against the AI. These restrictions are reasonable and nothing crazy. There are also several time trial achievements and some where you have to beat a race with a specific car, which I saved doing for last. For me, some of these were relatively easy, while others were quite tough, about as hard as golding a Super license test in the base game.

But overall, this is one of the games I wanted to master on RA the most, so I'm glad to have accomplished it. And I doubt I'll master a game with this many achievements or more any time soon. And of course, I'll get to GT4 one day, but I need to take a really long break before I tackle that game.

Easy and cute with frustrating controls, especially the skateboard sections, I did this one as part of the Collect-a-thon event going on right now (https://retroachievements.org/event/217-collect-a-thon-marathon). Four hours for 280 points and for playing a fun-enough game? I'll take that any day, heh.

The Legacy of Goku games, Fire Emblem 8, Mega Man X and X2, Metroid and Metroid II, Ninja Gaiden, and all of the Gen 1-3 Pokemon games.

Anyone have any suggestions for future games? I think I need a break from the more difficult sets for a while though. X2 did a number on me.