Site News: RF Generation Timeline Part 1: 2004

It's hard to believe that our blog is nearly a year and a half old already! One of the great things about a blog is that you can chronicle your history as well as step back in time on a more personal level as you read reviews, opinions and reactions to gaming news from years past. It's also where we celebrate milestones, promotions and contest winners. But what you ask, did RF Generation do before the blog was built? Glad you asked!

From the site's formation in 2004 until the unveiling of the blog system in 2007, we used a combination of front page posts, forum announcements and Wikipedia. At one time, we had the entire site history in an organized short form style split between site history and database history in our Wikipedia article. Then one day they decided to cut our article off at the knees, leaving what you see there today. Shorter and more to the point, but it doesn't detail how we got here month by month, milestone by milestone.

Giving thanks to the incredible team of volunteers who kept the ink flowing as we noted each milestone and event in RFGen's history, here in part 1 of this series, are the recorded entries for the database and site news from 2004.

Site History:

RF Generation was founded on April 28, 2004, by Michael Collins, Mark Hartholt, Eddie Herrmann and Laurel Settee- some of who were former staff members of the now-defunct Video Game Bible. A very important part of the site's founding beliefs was making sure that everyone and anyone who helped was properly thanked and credited for anything they contributed.

On the morning of June 8, 2004 the website was officially announced and became accessible to the public. Some items were still being worked on at the time, but the message boards were set up for users to access. A few hours later a temporary version of the rest of the website was uploaded. This was to fill the gap while the framework for the database was being edited.

June 9, 2004 - Tyler Dorval, aka "Odonadon", joined the RF Gen Staff. He left his position on the Staff at a later and currently unknown date.

June 17, 2004 - Dennis Gruchala, aka "Den68", joined the RF Gen Staff.

June 24, 2004 - The ability to attach files to your posts was added to the message boards. The maximum allowed file size was originally 600KB. This was later dropped to 350 KB.

Members who were lucky enough to be on the website at 1:45 on the morning of July 1, 2004 would have been the first to see the unveiling of the RF Gen collection tool by Eddie Herrmann. It worked in conjunction with the already existing database of 5,000+ game titles. Members were, for the first time, able to list their games online to keep track of them. Users were also given the ability to rate games on a scale of 0 to 100.

August 8, 2004 - A new script allowing members of the website to submit missing information for game pages was added. This allowed non-staff members to more easily submit information about a game; such as release date, genre, publisher, and developer, as well as overviews, reviews, and game trivia. Since its inception, thousands of games have been updated thanks to the efforts of many members.

August 19, 2004 - Anthony Terzi, aka "Izret101", joined the RF Gen staff.

September 20, 2004 - Advanced Postings Statistics where added to member profiles. Giving you the ability to see how many topics you or other members have started, total posts, and graphs of these over a period of 14 days, 14 Weeks or one year. These results could either be dynamic, showing a graph that would go up or down depending on how often you posted, or accumulative, which shows a constantly increasing graph.

September 24, 2004 - Mark Hartholt, aka "Arrrhalomynn", left the RF Gen staff for the first time.

September 30, 2004 - Marked the start of the first server change for the website. The old server was experiencing too many problems and was having excessive amounts of downtime. Luckily, these service dropouts were for the most part early in the morning eastern standard time. Hence, they mostly affected European users. Six days later the website had been fully transferred to the new servers. There was a short downtime on October 5 due to the transfer, but aside from that everything else had gone smoothly.

October 11, 2004 - Kyle Niday, aka "freak_boy", joined the RF Gen Staff.

October 12, 2004 - Mark Hartholt returned to the RF Gen Staff.

November 28, 2004 - Scott Williams, aka "Tynstar", joined the RF Gen Staff.

December 2, 2004 - RF Gen had its 100th registered member.

December 22, 2004 - The member only known as "sharp" was added to the RF Gen Staff.

Database History:

June 12, 2004 - Atari XEGS, Commodore 64, Nintendo Game Boy, Nintendo Game Boy Color, Sega Game Gear, Magnavox Odyssey, PCjr|IBM PC Jr., Sony PlayStation, Watara Supervision, Coleco Telstar|Coleco Telstar Arcade, TI-99/4A, TRS-80 and Nintendo Game & Watch systems where all added to the RFGen database with help from Joe Santulli who shared some of those lists from his own database.

August 26, 2004 - The database surpassed the 6,000 image mark. This included scans and screenshots.

September 24, 2004 - In less than one month another 1,000+ images had been added to the database. The 7,000 image mark was also passed on this day.

October 3, 2004 - With the addition of 37 scans for the various Game Boy systems the database had reached exactly 3000 scans. A few hours earlier the video game console XaviX was added to the database with all 3 of its released titles.

October 11, 2004 - Two image milestones were passed on this day, 5,000 screenshots and 8,000 total images.

October 13, 2004 - The Nokia N-Gage was added to the database.

November 25, 2004 - The database surpassed 14,000 titles.

November 26, 2004 - The database passed the 6,000 screenshot mark.

December 4, 2004 - 10,000 images were reached after the addition of 300 NES screenshots.

December 6, 2004 - The Nintendo DS was added to the database.

December 16, 2004 - The Nintendo e-Reader and Pokémon Mini were added to the database.

December 21, 2004 - This day saw the break [sic] of the 15,000 total game page mark.

December 22, 2004 - The Tapwave Zodiac and Tiger Gizmondo were both added to the database.

December 23, 2004 - The Mega Duck/Cougar Boy were both added to the database with all of their releases thanks to RF Gen member "renelips".

So there you have it folks, a summary of our first year of operation and it's incredible growth during that time! If your interested in a more visual trip down memory lane, check our RF Generation's archived pages in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine:

http://web.archive.org/we...*/http://rfgeneration.com

Also check out the Michael Collins memorial and the Staff pages under the "About" tab as well as our early blog entries and site news posts from years past by using the search at the top of the blog and by scrolling back through the pages.

Until next time where in Part 2 we take a stroll back through 2005, RFGen's first complete year of operation, keep it tuned to Channel's 3 & 4!