A lot of Retro Achievement sets consist almost entirely of completing a mission or level under a certain time limit or on a harder difficulty level. I’m more wondering about achievement sets that fall beyond the scope of challenges the game intentionally offers. Achievements sets that almost seem like the self imposed challenges you would give yourself as a kid to spice things up a bit.

Grand Theft Auto 3 for the PS2 for example has several achievements that involve completing missions without using specific weapons. The mission Silence the Sneak normally involves you throwing a grenade into someone’s second story apartment but The Best Bartender achievement had me wondering how I could do this without grenades. I spent a while looking for where I could find molotovs in the wild because they weren’t available at Ammunation yet and trying to pile up vehicles in a way that would allow me to get one inside the window.

It was pretty fun.

There’s several achievements in the set that had me doing some extra levels of strategizing I wouldn’t normally do.

I feel like these kind of acheievements are most common in RPGs.

Another example that came to mind was the Master of Seduction achievement in The Urbz: Sims in the City for the GBA which has you romance for different women before leaving the tutorial area.