April 28th, 2004, do you remember where you were? I was a sophomore in High School, if you're just old enough to be a member of the site, you may have still been pooping your pants. But if you were Michael Collins, Mark Hartholt, Eddie Herrmann, Laurel Settee, Mike Leon, or Rick Kuethe, you were giving birth to the THE Classic and Modern Video Game Database, better known as RFGeneration. Yes, that's right, today marks the 10th anniversary of this wonderful little site.
A lot has happened in the last ten years here at RFGeneration, we've gone from a meager little database with a couple thousand entries to one with over 86,000 software entries alone (which means we're averaging about 25 new entries every day) and more than 150,000 images. Yes, you read that right, one-hundred and fifty-thousand images. If you printed all those images out at 4"x6", they'd stretch out over 85 miles. Unless my math is wrong, which it probably is, nobody double-check it. If that doesn't impress you, then think about this, between all the collectors on this site, we own over a million games and hardware pieces (though I think Slackur throws off the average since he owns about half of that).
As most of you know, we have a little tradition here at RFGeneration, one where instead of you giving us gifts, we give them to you! Yes, that's right, its time for the PAIN YOURSELF WITH SUBMISSIONS contest, where you give us many, many submissions and you can win cool prizes. So I guess you do give us stuff after all, but those submissions are what sustain us. Without any new submissions, the gerbil running on the wheel that powers the site gets bored and starts to think too much about what his role in the universe is, and any time that happens, the site crashes and nobody wants that to happen again.
So, here's how it works. From the time this article posts (April 28th) until June 8th, you make as many submissions as humanly possible, maybe more if you want to hire a couple of immigrant workers to crop your scans for you. Our poor database staff reviews an absurd number of submissions 24 hours a day, and at the end of it all, one of you gets a sweet prize package. And we really do give you a good prize, not just a pencil eraser and a sticker like those fundraisers you did in Elementary school. You get your choice of $60 worth of gaming goodness, basically, you go on a shopping spree on GameGavel, eBay, or Amazon and we'll pick up the tab, as long as it doesn't exceed $60 and its gaming related. Maybe it that new PS4 game you want, or maybe 6 classic NES games, or 120 copies of Pac-Man on the Atari VCS, we won't judge you. And of course, so you can be coolest kid on the block, you also get an official RFGeneration Ringer T-shirt. And new for this year, you can win one of the rarest and most sought after NES games ever made. I can't tell you what the title is just yet, for if I told you, it will surely cause too many people to go crazy making submissions. But I will give you a hint that its shiny and gold colored and its not The Legend of Zelda.
That's the gist of it anyway, the details are a bit more complex.
Here's how the point breakdown will work:
Title Addition: 5 Points
Variation Addition: 6 Points
Page Edit*: 2 Points
Review*: 50 Points
Overview*: 20 Points
Image Upload: 10 Points
Submission Review**: 1 Point
Blog Post*: 30 Points
Blog Comment: 1 Point
Forum Post: 1 Point
Forum Karma: See Explanation*Regarding the asterisk: For page edits, if it is noticed that you are consistently only adding one field per edit multiple times for a single title just to up your points, you will be disqualified. Any review or overview completed will count as a page edit as well the points for an overview or review. To get the points for an overview or review you MUST contact me via Personal Message so that I can keep a tally. In addition, the review or overview must be on the actual game / hardware page. A review or overview of poor quality could result in less points than stated being granted. The same statement holds true for blog posts.
Regarding Forum Karma: Because we want the forum to be a lively place of fun and interesting posts, we're enabling Karma during this contest. Karma rewards members that make good posts and smites those who do not. Your Karma will play a wildcard role in posts. Positive Karma at the end of the contest will increase your point total by a factor, while negative karma will decrease it.
As with any contest, there is fine print. Any submission that you make must adhere to the
RF Generation Policies and Guidelines. We wrote these policies and guidelines for a reason, and well, we'd like everyone to adhere to them. Failure to adhere to the guidelines could result in a disqualification.
Any point reduction or disqualification can be contested. In the event that you wish to contest, you must explain why the reduction or disqualification is unfair. If you win the contest, we'll restore your greatness, but if you lose, you shall be pelted with figurative rocks and garbage.
Everyone, except for the directors of this site, is in this contest. Because staff members get that extra point for each submission review, and those staff members will have thousands of submissions to review in addition to their own submissions, their total score will be halved to make things a bit more fair and lively.
Now before you go and warm that scanner up, I have one more thing to mention, and it also involves a prize, so you better read it, and I'll know if you don't. As most of you probably noticed, a couple months ago, our site performance was pretty bad, in fact it was slower than a turtle in a molasses factory. It took a lot of work from our awesome staff to get things not just working again but working better than ever before. You see, what happened is that our members over these past 10 years have been so awesome that we simply had more information than our host could handle. We were breaking hard drives left and right. They'd give us a new one and you guys had it filled up within a couple days. So we had to cut that host loose and find a new one, one that could handle our awesomeness. One that could keep up with our growth now and in the future. But of course, with all this power comes the downside, and that is that it costs money to keep the lights on. Luckily, it's not terribly more expensive than our old host, but we still need to call on our members to get those billed paid. Most of you know that we generally have an annual donation drive around Thanksgiving/Christmas, but I didn't feel right asking for any money while the site was running as poorly as it was during that time. So now that's running properly, I'm asking for money to keep the site alive.
We're not a greedy bunch here, we'll gladly accept any donation amount you wish to give, if you've never donated before and aren't sure, just donate $1, it really does help. Or if you're feeling more generous, a $5 donation is great too. And $20 is phenomenal, any more than that, and you're just being a show-off (which by the way, we love show-offs).
So what do you get for donating? Well, first and foremost, you become a part of the elite group that helps to keep this site alive financially, without donors, we would simply not exist. Secondly, you get access to the top secret section of the forum created just for donors. You'll also notice that we don't have any ads anywhere on the site, if you have AdBlocker, disable it for a moment and you'll notice nothing changes, that's because we really don't have ads, even little ones. And trust me, we get offers from companies that sell ads on a regular basis since we're probably the last site to not have any ads. Your donations are what keeps me deleting those emails and this site ad-free.
And lastly, if you donate from now until June 8th, you'll have the chance to win a prize. For the person who donates the largest total amount in that time period, you will get another copy of the same game the PAIN YOURSELF WITH SUBMISSIONS contest winner will receive. That's right, we're not only giving away one copy of one of the rarest NES games ever made, but two. You can either win one by making a ton of submissions, or just give a bunch of money, or go for both and give one away for Christmas next year.
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Guys I've solved the mystery of the extra Silent Service carts! I'm hoping these will be 'super duper extra mega rare' gold Krylon variants!
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There is a caveat here - we do reserve the right to rebalance the point amounts due to shenanigans from previous years. Yes, that's right - I'm calling you out Crabby with your screenshots! 
Too bad I'm not part of the competition this year, since I'm a Director now. And I just found time to start doing scans while my wife's working on homework... I'd work on the site more, but with my back pain as of late, it hurts to sit at the computer. Perhaps it's time to get the tablet I've wanted so I can be a bit more productive. In any case, good luck to our newer members that have been submitting like crazy lately, and our veterans who've likely been holding onto submissions until the start of the contest.
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I wish I had the hardware to help out more, but I will make an effort to get all this stuff documented and if I come across some stuff that is missing some UPC info or anything I CAN help with, I will do my part to make this event as impactful as possible. Happy Birthday, RFGen!
Side note: Did any of you see the excavation of the Atari landfill today where they dumped those E.T. carts? Too bad they were all water damaged since it was an open burial, but still some pretty cool news.
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Plus...I can only think of a few Gold NES Carts that have been released, and two of them are LoZ titles...Were there others except Micro Machines, the 1990 World Championships, and the recently released Ducktales Re-mastered Carts?
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@Boshamp: Other Camerica carts were gold... but I think the prize here is even more rare and special.
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Big Nose? I can only think of unlicensed titles.
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Screenshots are totally legit
Too bad I'm swamped with work this time around. I finally have a functioning scanner and could have filled in a lot of holes 
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I know I won't be a serious competitor but good luck to everyone.
And NES_ Rules, if it's any consolation to you, in April of 2004 I was already a college freshman. Gorsh, I feel old.
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@Crabmaster2000:
Just bring the scanner to work.
Found a box of shirts at work I can hand out as prizes as well. Yay!
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Shadow, what screenshot shenanigans are you referring to?
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@aeroc: Crabmaster submitted screenshots in JPEG format and forced me to rename 500+ screenshot files in the last contest. 
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Happy Birthday RFG!
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@Shadow Kisuragi: I have a few things I can throw into the prize pool, too, in case you care.
RF Gen at 10: Let the pain begin!
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time to warm up the scanner, and camera for the hardware  I want 50 Combat carts if I win
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Sorry douglie - I sent 50 to someone a couple years ago (not kidding). He used them for an art project for class.
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Happy birthday RF Generation. Thank you all staff members and directors for creating this great website and database and, of course, thanks to all the community members for making this a great place to discuss gaming and collecting!
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@monkees19: I was in my second year of college in 2004. My how the time has gone by.
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Happy Birthday my friend the site.
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Happy Birthday. I just sent in my donation, Now hopefully we can get the option added to show complete amount of games owned including duplicates. Instead of the website ignoring duplicates like they mean nothing Lol. Nut seriously, I am happy to be apart of this site and I am happy it is still up and running ad free. I was a late bloomer to the site when i discovered it in 2011 but I have used it almost daily since 
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KARMA'S BACK, BABY!
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Congratulations, RFG! And good luck to all who'll enter the contest (I'm too busy with my thesis  )
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10 years! Congrats RFGen, and to another 10 years of prosperity (and another, and another...).
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So I've started submitting screens and noticed a discrepancy. In the "Image Submission Guidelines" guide it lists the max short-side resolution for screenshots as 576 pixels. Going by this I have started submitting. However, after I started uploading I noticed on the "Add Game Images" pages it lists 550 pixels as the max on short-side resolution. Which is it?
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@bombatomba: It was 550 pixels, but then we realized that a lot of emulators output 576 so rather than making everyone submitting screenshots cut them down a few pixels, we upped the actual limit to 576. So if you're doing screenshots, 576 is fine, but if you're doing scans, they should be 550 so they match the others.
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A big thanks to our first round of donors, Razor Knuckles, Tadpole13, and Raidou. Now that you guys have broken the ice, its everyone else's turn to throw some more money in the hole to keep the lights on.
As for the gold mystery carts, I'll give a hint that the title for them has been mentioned in the comments here.
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@NES_Rules: That makes things more interesting. I just hope it isn't World Championship Carts...selling them to fund the site would go a long way.
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Unfortunately, i'm not having much free time these days to pain myself with submissions , but i promise i will keep supporting the site the best as i could.
I notice we get the best score by doing reviews, which is great, because it's one of the most time consuming type of submissions, and for being so, i would like to ask if there's any possibility to have at least a searching field for reviews? I don't know about the others, but i would enjoy reading the members thoughts about the games.
By the way, happy 10th b-day RF!
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@Boshamp: The hope is that we'll raise more money through donations than the games (whatever they are) are worth. If the game is worth $10,000 we'd do better if 1000 people donated $15 than one person giving $10,000. I'm not saying whether or not the game in question is worth $10,000, that's just a random number, maybe.
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I donated $5 earlier, didn't see where to put my name until I clicked send ^_^
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