Category: Retro Achievements

  • Ban of Romhacker YoniArousement, 34th-Ranked Softcore Player on Retro Achievements

    Mirrored at the sole discretion of clymax for sake of transparency on Retro Achievements, which was one of the aims of Moderator BahamutVoid in leaving his farewell letter not long after Administrator televandalist’s own resignation letter dropped. If you have any concerns with this mirror, please reach out to clymax directly.

    Global Points Ranking Leaderboard

    Disclaimer: Any opinions expressed in this post are those of YoniArousement and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of any other individual within or outside of the FFV Central community.

    Subheadings were added during the editorial process.

    YoniArousement is a fan of Doraemon and Arcade games. He has created his own games in Game Maker, M.U.G.E.N and RPG Maker 2003. He produced several Streets of Rage romhacks throughout the years of 2012-2022. He still uses YouTube like he’s living in 2007.

    YoniArousement’s flagship romhack is Bishoujo Super Street Fighter II: Glamor Queen. It’s a combo and fighter replacement ROM Hack of the Sega Genesis version of Super Street Fighter II. It features tweaked move sets, edited sounds, juggles and adds dashes. The project came about when he was tweeting Game Genie codes for the game.

    You can follow YoniArousement on YouTube, Twitter, Game Jolt, RHDN, or his personal blog.

    Related Posts:

    October 22, 2025

    1. Player Account Banned Presumably for Sharing an RA Forum Post on Social Media during Clovergate

    Original Link to Player Profile: https://retroachievements.org/user/YoniArousement

    The original post that was shared was later quietly removed from the RA forums. That post is also covered here.

    Over two hundred completion badges nuked into oblivion with the push of a button. This can happen to anyone. Do you want to play on Retro Achievements?

    2. Wrongfully Banning Users When Doing Clovergate Damage Control, Presumably

    Cross-referencing the chat from the original BahamutVoid disclosure sheds more light on the situation.

    2-25-10-05 11:05 [Staff A]: @[Moderator A] please be aware of YoniArousement …

    [unspecified image attachment]

    Spreading lies to incite more problems

    2025-10-05 16:04 [Moderator A]: Banned YoniArousement

    The banned player contacted the RA admins via email to appeal the ban. No response has been received in two weeks.

    3. Previously Wrongfully Denied Junior-Dev Role for Unspecified Off-Site Behavior, Presumably

    YoniArousement previously shared a set plan for one of his hacks, on his own blog.

    After requesting to be a Junior Developer, however, he got the following response from RA’s Code Review team on May 27, 2025.

    After discussion, the team decided to reject your request to enter the Junior Developer program. The team is not comfortable with the type of content connected to your online presence. It’s contrary to the team’s values and the type of community we are trying to foster. Thanks for your interest, but we must respectfully decline.

    Is Retro Achievements Big Brother, watching your every move on the Internet?

    4. Illegally Hosting Cloned Patches of Presumably Wrongfully Banned Users

    YoniArousement never authorized Retro Achievements to host these patches. So why are they still up, especially when even the mod author has been banned?

    5. Longtime Viewer Wrongfully Discord-Banned by RA Twitch Streamer LordBBH for Mentioning Clovergate-Related RA Ban, Apparently

    See the video for more details.

    Supporting YoniArousement

    Want to show support for our player and modder who opposes how Retro Achievements treats its players?

    Check out the below trailer or Discord for Bishoujo Super Street Fighter II: Glamor Queen.

    A speedrun leaderboard is also available.

    This post has been viewed 80 time(s).

  • RetroOffended [Music Video]

    For clymax’s projects, click here. You can also follow him on YouTube, Twitter, or Retro Achievements.

    Clovergate Anthem

    Pokémon Clover on RetroAchievements

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  • Response of Former Developer Kisumebuckets of Retro Achievements

    For clymax’s projects, click here. You can also follow him on YouTube, Twitter, or Retro Achievements.

    Admidst the turmoil of the Clovergate incident of Retro Achievements, former developer Kisumebuckets sits down for an interview with FFV Central.

    Disclaimer: Any opinions expressed in the interview section of this post are those of Kisumebuckets and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of any other individual within or outside of the FFV Central community.

    Subheadings were added during the editorial process.

    As for why Kisumebuckets is speaking with FFV Central, one might ask?

    Retro Achievements is “NOT a bastion of freedom of speech,” Per Its Own User Code of Conduct

    Link: https://docs.retroachievements.org/guidelines/users/code-of-conduct.html#freedom-of-speech

    If you just want to rant or dump derogatory comments about how we run things here, you’re free to do that. But, as it’s demotivating and wastes a lot of volunteers’ time, we don’t want it on our forums or Discord Server. There are plenty of options where you can do it around the Internet.

    Keep in mind that RetroAchievements.org is NOT a bastion of freedom of speech.

    If you have criticism, you’re very welcome to say it, just be sure to be civil.

    Even RA Legend Salsa, who created nearly 5,500 achievements, gets her comments deleted and then her entire devlog locked and deleted just for attempting to express an opinion on the RA forums.

    And yours truly was shadowbanned from the RA Discord not for anything I posted in the RA Discord or on the RA forums but presumably just for writing some blog entries covering Clovergate on a gaming fansite.

    Interview with Kisumebuckets

    To see Kisumebuckets’s developed sets on RA, click here.

    October 19, 2025

    FFV Central: Greetings. What led to the “NAZI MODS” achievement unlocks on your user profile on Retro Achievements?

    A: That is kind of long. It has to do with a long running grudge the old moderation team had against me and my friends.

    1. Wrongfully Dropped from Player Event

    How I was excluded from an event (Leap Frog) for supposedly cheating in Haunted House for Atari 2600.

    I disputed [Moderator A’s] accusations with a video and gave it to a few admins and the admin account but they ignored it.

    When the host of the event said I could continue playing, [Moderator A] threatened to shut down the event entirely.

    After I gave up and the event was over, they pretended nothing happened and the admin team said I didn’t cheat.

    [Editor’s note: the moderator involved is reportedly still on the Events team today.]

    2. Wrongfully Removed from Developer Role

    Then, Dev Quest, another event happened.

    There was a questionable set (Theme Park for SNES) that I fixed up, and my friends made a lot of tickets for it.

    I was worried it would seem like cheating, so, I went to [the] admin [who was also the] event host [to ask] if it was alright for me to have event credit and explained the situation to him.

    He said yes, and only for this one instance and no more.

    After the event, things were fine until an anonymous document was dropped by the RAdmin account, detailing how I apparently cheated the set by not blocking in game cheats.

    [B]izarre claim because that’s how the game saves your progress, and also how you transition between one level to the next.

    I specifically blocked the cheat that was coded in that was printed in magazines and websites so the claim was even more bizarre.

    When I made my defense I was ignored and that lead to me being permanently dev banned.

    3. Wrongfully Banned from Global Leaderboards

    So with nothing left, I loaded up a lot of copies of one of my favorite games, quickly spelled out “NAZIMODS”, in a silent act of defiance, and left without saying anything else.

    They untracked me after that insisting that I had to have used cheat engine because the unlock times were fast (or was it because I just had everything loaded up because I had a plan? Not that they would care).

    4. A Situation Like Clovergate Could Have Been Predicted

    FFV Central: Considering the events you shared, and now learning about Clovergate and events surrounding it, do you draw parallels and think something like Clovergate was inevitable? What needs to change in the RA leadership today in your opinion?

    A: Well, with my situation, there wasn’t a lot of communication between me and the people who were making claims and decisions. I spoke and they already knew what they wanted.

    With Clover, Scott acted without communicating with his team.

    A situation like Clovergate could have been predicted. Scott had done this when another game, “Street Fucker” was given a set. This was a very long time ago.

    There was another situation where user-input Rich Presences being displayed on the front page caught his attention when he happened to spot someone using a slur with said RP. He wanted that user banned, and user-input RPs removed immediately.

    I don’t know what would change in leadership today. Maybe someone who has more community passion, people who are more willing to talk with everyone, and not so much impulse. I have more specific criticisms with the moderation in general, but not related to this incident.

    5. The Anti-Cheating Team … Is More of a Clique Than … a Group of Referees

    FFV Central: Would you care to share your specific criticisms with the moderation in general?

    A: In relation to the anti-cheating team, from what I have seen, it looks like the team is more of a clique than what would be expected: a group of referees. It’s hard to set up a team that doesn’t have some bias, but I’d be more willing to trust a group of strangers with individual experience and no stake in competition (in the global leaderboard) that convene, rather than people who are all friends in a chain of referrals and compete in the same space.

    In relation to moderation of users, I would suggest keeping opinionated talk out of mind. It muddies up opinions of someone and creates a bias, something that I have seen happen on RA many times. I’ve seen how moderators talk behind closed doors, and sometimes it can be a bit much, calling random users “children” because they disagree or agree with someone else.

    6. Cloning Hacks without Author Permission

    FFV Central: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

    A: I was more interested in what I read about how hacks are handled and distributed on RA kind of carelessly without the original creators wishes.

    This was something that I argued about way back when I was a dev and I made a set, Touhoumon Ordinary Edition [Editor’s note: link].

    [Admin A] insisted it had to be mirrored on RA, and I warned him that’s really not a good idea.

    There are a lot of Japanese rom hackers that will delete everything and leave the scene the moment they see their work mirrored without permission.

    FFV Central: Understood. Thank you for sharing your side of the story.

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  • Retro Achievements Moderators Silently Delete RA Legend Salsa’s Entire Devlog Presumably as Punishment

    Clovergate Prologue, Part 2B

    To see Salsa’s developed sets on RA, click here.

    She Called Them an Autocratic Regime. Retro Achievements Confirmed it by Deleting the Entire Devlog of an RA Legend.

    If this is how Retro Achievements treats even one of its best longtime contributors—5,407 achievements created plus Legend Award from site founder Scott himself—what you can expect as a new player or junior developer? Exactly.

    Original Link to Comments (Now Deleted): https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/19536

    Original Link to Devlog (Now Deleted): https://retroachievements.org/viewtopic.php?t=1738

    Old Backup via Archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20220306062656/https://retroachievements.org/viewtopic.php?t=1738

    Sample Screenshots of the Now-Deleted Devlog

    [Editor’s note: for the previous section of this chapter, see below.]

    [Editor’s note: the following comments were posted before her devlog was deleted. The set in question is Arc the Lad 3 (PSX), available here.]

    March 28, 2025

    1. You are acting like an autocratic regime here.

    Yeah, I logged in only to write a comment here. And I did that hearing about this thing randomly, not being asked to do it or anything like that. In the official topic I saw this set was actively updated, until 1 month ago, but it was worked on for more then 2 years. Knowing those series, how detailed they are inside, and how much work will require to make a good set, I’m not surprised it could take this long. Especially if someone is not a nolife, who can spend all their time being glued to this site. Undermining creativity, and lack of respect for the work of others will probably be always the biggest problem here. A problem, which caused some very valuable people to leave. And in the name of what? Numbers? Being higher than someone on some stupid list, that means nothing? And your rules here. You are acting like an autocratic regime here. Using rules as an offensive weapon against one of the most valued (and clearly undervalued) creators. Rules should only be a defensive weapon against abusers and individuals who are generally harmful to the community or content. I often was in awe of what Alena could do, she had exceptional ideas and extremely immersive creativity. Go ahead RA, make another big step into becoming a pile of gray goo. I will miss you less. The system of claims has a fatal flaw – it will always go against cooperation. Whole site should be all about it, cooperation within creative passion. But better have something to pump your own egos instead, right? Everyone is replaceable for you it seems.

    2. Throwing … formal BS ….

    [Moderator A:] Alena hadn’t logged in or communicated with anyone in more than two months. Sometimes people just lose interest and leave without saying a word. We can’t hold sets for them indefinitely.

    She’s still welcome to be a developer if she wishes.

    You think throwing a formal bs like this at me will fix this issue? Have you ever thought that for some people it’s harder to communicate, or that there is a serious reason why someone is not communicating for 2 months? RetroAchievements might not be the whole world for someone, and they can’t vanish suddenly because their life is falling apart for example.

    Responding to her just with “she is welcome to be a developer if she wishes”, when she is clearly heartbroken with whole situation is only dismissive, and you know well that she won’t take it lightly, but you still hold this position. Especially when she worked on this for so long and for a reason. This is not a game that can be wrought within few evenings, especially when someone wants to cover it immenesly [sic].

    3. You are acting like a corporation.

    This was related to the game and work that now is both stolen and flushed down the drain. I was there when the rules about “what you are doing here belongs to everyone” were written. The fact that what you are uploading here doesn’t belong to you doesn’t mean it’s not used for personal business.

    The matter where the discussion is, when it is about serious stuff like this especially, is secondary. A lot of times people at the power do a move like you just did, only to express how dismissive and “neutral” they are in front of actual oppression.

    You will act cold, because that is your role. And what do you get for that role? Who you are when you look at the mirror after doing things like that? You are not even paid for this job.

    Because you might know nothing… What was the real reason for all of this? Acting with mere roles here is harmful for the whole idea of this site, but I guess it’s how things are going in here right now.

    You are acting like a corporation, a really typical one, which abuses their workers in the name of statistics, credits and (I guess sometimes if not often, fake) reputation.

    Years ago this site was about fun and challenge, friendship and respect. Now it really turned into an autocratic country. I hope your numbers and statistics are really giving you satisfaction right now.

    Maybe in future, when you will disconnect from this Matrix, you will see this is all really empty, faker than medals on the uniform of many officers in history. If not stained with actual blood.

    @[Claim-Sniping Developer] Never talked with you, but I remember you from the past and those memories were warm. Bummer it needed to turn out like this. Maybe you will remember this when you wake up from this coma. If you will.

    That’s all folks.

    [Editor’s note: the Arc the Lad 3 topic was then deleted and replaced with a new thread.]

    [Editor’s note: subheadings added.]

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