Offline RetroAchievements comes to melonDS for Android fork

DraStic has long dominated the spot for the best Nintendo DS emulator on Android, but its removal from the Google Play Store last year allowed other emulators to rise and fill the gap. One such emulator was melonDS, an unofficial Android port of the open-source PC emulator, which picked up the baton well by integrating features such as RetroAchievements support. However, this required a constant internet connection for syncing achievements, which is a bit of a pain for users who like to play on the go. A melonDS fork is trying to solve this pain point with offline RetroAchievements support.

Developer SapphireRhodonite is known in the emulator community for their melonDS for Android fork, which adds external display support, improving compatibility with dual-screen Android phones and handhelds. The latest v0.6.0 release of this melonDS for Android fork adds offline RetroAchievements support in Softcore mode.

To use Softcore mode offline, gamers will need to open the game at least once with an internet connection, so that melonDS can fetch and cache the achievement set and its conditions. Once this initialization is done, gamers can play the game offline, and their achievements will still be tracked on their device. Periodically, gamers can sync their achievements, either on demand or at boot.

Note that if you launch a game without an internet connection, melonDS will not track or sync Hardcore mode. You will need to remain connected to the internet for Hardcore mode in RetroAchievements, though this emulator release now behaves much better under real-world conditions, including temporary drops. In case you didn’t know, Hardcore mode typically disables save states, rewinds, and cheats, making for a more challenging experience than Softcore mode.

To try out offline RetroAchievements, you will need to sideload this fork of melonDS for Android from GitHub. This fork is different from the Google Play Store release. However, you’d be happy to know that the developer of the Play Store release, Rafael V. Caetano, is also a contributor to this fork’s current release. So there’s a good chance offline RetroAchievements support will come to the melonDS release on the Play Store too in the future.