GamingGaiden vs Steam Wrapped

GamingGaiden is a Windows tray application for tracking play time and session history across PC and emulated games. It can automatically track games and new ROMs after an emulator is registered, and supports RetroArch cores. Games launched directly from an emulator’s graphical interface are not tracked; the manual recommends a frontend or command-line shortcuts. The app detects idle time and removes it from session records. Its statistics include lifetime summaries, session counts and lengths, daily, monthly, and yearly play time, most-played games, and games grouped by emulator. A backlog lets users mark games Playing, Finished, On Hold, or Dropped. The project also lists HWiNFO64 integration and Google image search for game icons or box art. GamingGaiden is described as portable and offline, with data stored locally and automatic backups after each session. It can be installed on multiple gaming PCs and share a database while tracking each PC separately. The free project is licensed under AGPL-3.0. Downloads are offered only through its GitHub repository; Windows SmartScreen may show an Unknown Publisher warning because the application lacks a public CA signature.

Steam Wrapped is a free Millennium plugin that adds a gaming activity dashboard inside Steam for Windows. It appears in Steam’s Store navigation and requires Steam for Windows with Millennium installed. Date filters cover this month, last month, the last three months, this year, and custom ranges. Summaries show playtime, games played, achievements, and favorite genre, plus most played game, longest session, peak play time, and a 24-hour activity histogram. The plugin tracks sessions locally, displays live playtime for the current game, and links recent games and achievements to Steam Library pages. A high-resolution PNG export is available. Sessions, achievements, artwork references, and cached metadata remain in local Steam storage. Game App IDs are requested from Valve’s public app-details endpoint for artwork and genre data, without Steam credentials. Local history can be cleared; removing the plugin may not remove Steam WebUI storage.