RF Generation's third year in operation was one of milestones, growth and unfortunately loss. This was the year we lost Michael Collins, one of the founding members of this community. He helped set the cornerstones of this fantastic community that is heading into it's 5th year this April. Mike believed that no one should ever be forgotten. This series, presented as it originally appeared on our former Wikipedia page, is meant to remember each and every person who has helped pave the way for this website we are all so immensely proud of and every milestone earned through their hard work. Thanks to the hard work of the Wiki team, here are the people, milestones and memories of RF Generation from 2006:

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Site History

• January 3, 2006 - RF Generation had to switch servers for the second time. This time it was due to the host breaking their service. Stating that YaBB.pl, the script that the message boards ran on, was not allowed to run on their servers. It had never been mentioned previous to this occasion, however, and was not stated anywhere in the contractual agreement. Unfortunately, the message boards were down while a new host was being found. The remainder of the website remained online and accessible.

• January 6 and 7, 2006 - RF Generation was back online and fully functional sometime between 11:30 p.m. on the 6th and 12:30 a.m. on the 7th.

• February 1, 2006 - The RF Gen community experienced its first great loss when the first members learned that Michael Collins' life was tragically cut short. This left a void in many peoples' lives as his passing created the loss of a son, brother, and a friend. The RF Gen community did its best to comfort those who knew him best by sending out prayers and apologies. The relative message board thread was viewed and commented in by members of his family, members of the website, as well as members from other websites where Mike was known. In an effort to honor Mike and keep him in their memories, "R.I.P. Michael 'Nepenthean' Collins. You will not be forgotten." was added to many users' signatures. Some members later replaced it with a commmorative banner/signature created by Dennis Gruchala.

• February 24, 2006 - Mark Hartholt left the RF Gen Staff for the second time.

• March 31, 2006 - RF Gen's 500th member registered.

• April 28, 2006 - RF Generation celebrated its second birthday. This time on the actual day of its creation rather than the day it was made widely available to the general public. This years contest, called "The Terrible Two Contest", was for the most unlikely scene in a videogame. The example used was Mario running through Hyrule.

• Also a RF Gen IE Toolbar was released to the public. The toolbar enables users to access the message boards, perform both image and data searches of the database with all the same criteria available on the search page, submit both info and images. It also allowed for direct access to all personal collection tools and all of the "features" of the site, top 100 games, bottom 25 games, etc.

• May 2, 2006 - A day later than planned the first official month long contest was set into action by Izret101. After an initial vote on what games to play there had to be a  Two-round system|runoff vote  due to a tie. After the second round of voting  Tetris  for the NES was decided. More specifically it was the licensed version of Tetris Game Type A.

• June 27, 2006 - Andrew Carr aka AndyC joins the RF Gen staff as an Editor.

• June 28, 2006 - Ken Wozetek aka Mezmoron joins the staff as an Editor.

• August 4, 2006 - Chris Vanderhoef aka Shaggy joins the staff.

• August 30, 2006 - The RFGeneration community grows to over 800 members all using the many services and tools the website has to offer.

• October 15, 2006 - RFGeneration.com switchs from a file-based database to one using  mySQL  to help ease server load from its increased web traffic. It also marks a change from using a  YaBB  based forum to one based on  Simple Machines Forum|SMF.

• October 20, 2006 - Brian Dick aka Bum-Man joins the RF Gen staff.

• November 13, 2006 - RFGeneration's community passes 900 members.

• November 16, 2006 - Staff pages are added to the website to show those responsible for building and maintaining RFGeneration.com as well as adding a personal touch to show those who work hard in helping it grow and in turn thank them for it.

Database History

• March 6, 2006 - The Amstrad CPC 464 was added to the database.

• March 9, 2006 - In the late hours of the night the MSX was added to the database.

• March 10, 2006 - In the early hours of the morning the Epoch Game Pocket Computer was added to the database as well as a list of its released titles.

• March 20, 2006 - The 21,000th video game was added to the database.

• April 12, 2006 - The database passed 12,000 screenshots.

• June 14, 2006 - The RF Generation game database passes 22,000 games with the addition of Mega Man Battle Network 6 Cybeast Gregar for the Game Boy Advance.

• September 8, 2006 - Hardware Scripts Version 0.5 is released. Among its many features, most notably are regional variation support for PAL variations, image support to showcase the packaging, manuals, and the hardware itself and the logging of contributions, which gives credit to the member who submits information and/or images for a particular item.

• September 20, 2006 - Hardware Scripts Version 0.8 is released. With the latest updated release came the ability for the members to begin adding regional variations, images, dates, title additions and other important information to the hardware database. It also became a testbed for a new game submission script to be added later which allowed members to submit game releases not currently listed in the game database.

• October 15, 2006 - All of the databases (Collections, Games, Hardware) were implemented into the new mySQL server. Also the Hardware Script is finalized allowing members to add hardware entries into their personal collection lists.

• December 5, 2006 - The game database grows to over 25,000 games and 28,500 images.

• December 30, 2006 - Ken Wozetek aka Mezmoron and his wife add over 400 scans to the Nintendo DS's U.S. database which goes a long way to make RF Gen one of the internet's largest resources of information on Nintendo's latest handheld system.

Stay tuned as next week, for the 4th part of this series, we take a look at the final entries leading up to the unveiling of the blog which, replacing the Wikipedia article, became our scribe for the site's history!

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