I like these, as they help show how far people get through games, or show that I've gotten so far in games (like in Fire N' Ice for NES, it shows I completed the first two worlds, and for Kickle Cubicle it shows I've gotten to World 4). I'm never going to do the vast majoity of the crazy proper achievements (that require you to do extremely hard or unusual challenges), so if they didn't have those, for most of these games it would just be a stat that said 'played X hours' without any indication of what I actually did in the game.
Also, these are added after the fact by people who didn't work on the game, and are done by identifying and monitoring changes at specific memory addresses in the rom, so they're a bit limited in just how complicated they can get with these achievements. These 'how far did you get' are one of the things they can check more easily, as they can see level numbers change in memory and the like (it's a bit more complicated than that, check the docs[1] if you're curious). They still manage quite a bit with those limitations, though.
Also, these are added after the fact by people who didn't work on the game, and are done by identifying and monitoring changes at specific memory addresses in the rom, so they're a bit limited in just how complicated they can get with these achievements. These 'how far did you get' are one of the things they can check more easily, as they can see level numbers change in memory and the like (it's a bit more complicated than that, check the docs[1] if you're curious). They still manage quite a bit with those limitations, though.
https://docs.retroachievements.org/How-to-Become-an-Achievem...