 Can you believe it? 6 years old. A lot has changed in six years. In just six years we've grown to a massive database with over 52,000 games and 84,000 images. Between our 1664 collectors, we own nearly half a million games. We couldn't have gotten here without you, our loyal members. Through the years, you guys have made hundreds of thousands of submissions and edits to make our database, THE classic and modern video game database!
To celebrate our 6th birthday and all your hard work, I'd like to announce PAIN YOURSELF WITH SUBMISSIONS CONTEST 2010! This isn't an easy contest, that wouldn't be any fun. To win, you'll literally have to pain yourself with submissions. Last year's winner had over 3000 submissions in May alone. But don't let that discourage you from attempting the contest. Everyone has a chance to win!
Of course, this contest has some rules. Basically, you win the contest by submitting and being active in the community. Just about everything you do on the site will garner you points, the member with the most points at the end of the contest wins!
This is how the points will be gained:
Title Addition: 4 Points
Variation Addition: 4 Points
Page Edit*: 2 Points
Review*: 30 Points
Overview*: 10 Points
Image Upload: 15 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 ID 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.
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 guidelines / policies. 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.
**KICKER! Everyone, except for the directors of this site, is in this contest. There is a catch though for staff members… their final score will be halved. So, that should lead to a lively competition. I think halving their scores is fair, and I hope you do as well. Oh yeah, there is that 1 point for a submission review, that unfortunately only applies to staff members because they are the poor souls who must review your submissions.
What do you win? Well, we’re a poor bunch here at RF Generation, especially since we're on a dedicated box, but we've got a lovely prize for the top winner:
Gaming swag not to exceed $60 and an RF Generation Ringer T***
And new for this year, a special prize! The top 5% of points gainers (minus the top winner***) will be entered into a special drawing to win a piece of my personal collection! The drawing will be a completely random reverse drawing to determine the winner of at least one prize package.
***The top winner of the contest can choose to decline their prize listed above in exchange for not one, but two entries into the drawing.
If you want to win, you better get to it, the contest ends at MIDNIGHT, JUNE 8th, 2010. (Tuesday 12:00AM)
What's that? You say its April 20th? OK, it is a little late for the RFG Thanks for March, I guess the zombie brain eating earlier this month left me a little forgetful. But late is still better than never, right?
March was another great month for RFG and its members. There were 2,352 total submissions;1,037 page edits; 358 image submissions; and 525 title additions. Many of you helped us to gather all these wonderful bits of information. But five of you stood out of the crowd and made over 100 submissions alone. Those members were Paully3433, Izret101, Link41, ApolloBoy, and Madir. Rounding out the top ten submitters were ga5ket, Duke.Togo, NES_Rules, Shadow Kisuragi, and Pop Culture Portal.
But as always, many of those submissions wouldn't go anywhere without our team of reviewers. In March, with well over 100 approvals, the top reviewers were Izret101 and ApolloBoy.
Now let's see if we can April even better! We're getting very close to 55,000 scans and 30,000 screenshots in the database. Maybe we can do it in April, if you've got a scanner and/or a way to capture screenshots; get to it and make some submissions. You will be helping out RFGeneration, its members and the countless others that use us as a resource for their collecting needs. Plus, its always neat to have your name and/or a picture of one of your games forever immortalized on the Internet!
Finally, I'd like to announce the promotions of Izret101 and Paully3433! Because of their continued contributions, they have been promoted to DB Editor and DB Reviewer, respectively.
Hey! It was April 1 yesterday! A high holy day at RF Generation! April Fools! To those of you that missed Zombie Generation, sorry! Thanks to all those that helped out, specifically, Mike, Eddie, and Den! They are the best! We love April Fools, and without them it'd just be me working on April Fools, and we'd get something like Pretty Generation... pretty as a posy...
Keep it tuned to Channel 3!
MIKE FOX! YOU THOUGHT IT WOULD BE EASY DIDN'T YOU?
Forcing me to hand the site over to you wasn't cool. Driving to Maryland shortly after and bludgeoning me so that I couldn't reclaim it was even worse.
What... what you didn't know is that I didn't just die. Rather, I joined the legion of the undead. Those random forum posts were me from beyond the grave. I thought for a while that maybe my demise was for the best, but no, I see that I was wrong.
I craved more than brains. I've craved more for over four months. I've brooded, thinking about what devious action I could do to take back what is mine. Then, it came as a pariah.
THIS SITE IS MINE! I RECHRISTEN IT IN THE NAME OF THE UNDEAD! ZOMBIE GENERATION IS BORN! JOIN THE LEGION OF THE UNDEAD! JOIN THE DATABASE OF THE UNDEAD! WE WILL RULE THE DAY AND NIGHT! TOGETHER, WE WILL FEAST UPON THE SOULS OF THE LIVING! IT STARTS WITH YOU, MIKE FOX! DOWN WITH YOU!
From beyond the grave, keep it on the database of the dead.
Sorry about the downtime. The SQL server unexpectedly shut down. Without that up, well, the site doesn't work. Anywho, we're back up. Hooray!
Keep it tuned to channel three!
Today marks a true milestone in the history of RFGeneration, for today at 1:39:30 AM, the 50,000th game was added to our database. In under 6 years we've accumulated information on 50,000 games for dozens of systems from all over the world, this is an astounding task when you really think about it. This milestone further cements RFGeneration's place as THE Classic and Modern Video Game Database.
The 50,000th game was Toy Soldiers on Xbox Live Arcade that was submitted by Izret101.
There have literally been hundreds of member from all over the world that have helped us get this achievement, and each one of those people and their submission(s) have been important. Some members have left a huge mark on RFGeneration by contributing over 1000 title and variation additions since we began tracking them in October 2006; and those members are ApolloBoy, Funk_Buddy, Tynstar, Madir and Belgarath.
In celebration of this momentous occasion, I'd like to announce another way to get your daily fill of RFGeneration! This new aspect of RFGeneration is a personal pet project of mine that the donors and I have been using for a little while now. This will hopefully be a tool to help get our name out there in cyber-space as well as keeping our members that decide to use it, some of the latest information pertaining to the site and occasionally the video game industry as a whole. So here it is, http://twitter.com/RFGeneration. That's right RFGeneration is now on Twitter! As you can see from previous tweets, the Twitter page will be used to promote excellent blogs as well as reminding readers of upcoming DB milestones and site news. Now that the page has been announced for everyone, I will be using it more often than I am now, so don't be discouraged by the lack of tweets there already. They should be becoming more frequent.
I'd also like to take a moment to thank Den68 for making the graphics for the Twitter page!
February was not our best month, but even without a huge number of submissions, its still progress and progress is always a good thing. While we did not see our lowest submission numbers last month, it was below the mean number of monthly submissions. So I would like to thank those of you that made some submissions in a slow month to keep us going. Even being below the average, we still managed to crank out over 2,000 submission; 2,094 to be exact. 536 of those were images, 298 were game title additions, and 974 were page edits.
The top ten submitters were Paully3433, Izret101, ga5ket, Madir, Doug Plummer, ApolloBoy, Shadow Kisuragi, Malingo, Spoon and Seno. Out of those ten, nine had over 100 submissions each. Thanks guys, you are the truly dedicated members that keep us going!
The top three staff members approving all those submission with over 100 approvals each were Izret101, ApolloBoy, and NES_Rules.
So, February wasn't a spectacular month for submissions, that means only one thing. We need to make March even better, so get out your games, find them in the database and see what information you can add. If you've got a scanner, that's even better because you can add images if they're missing and your game will be forever immortalized on the pages of RFGeneration.
The Diversity of Gamer Breeds | 
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The level of enjoyment of any multi-player gaming experience is heavily dependant upon your fellow gamers. Whether it be teaming with a bud in a co-op couch game of Contra or joining an online bout with hundreds of unnamed souls in Worlds of Warcraft, it still boils down to the same - are the people you are interacting with cool? This was never so evident to me after the massacre I stomached during my recent online gaming experience (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2). Gamers come in all shapes and sizes as well as dispositions. This mirrors the varied communal landscapes that we respectively reside within. The diversity of the players truly make the gaming experience, but let's face it - they are those that we would be A-OK to never see or hear from again. The following pokes a little fun at the each of these types by describing the pros/cons of playing with them.
| | The BFF-Wannabee
a.k.a. Overly Friendly Dude | The Gaming Posse / Clan
a.k.a. Brothers Fo' Eva' |  |  | | Pros | o Pretty affable and easy to get along with
o They are always encouraging even if you suck | Pros | o Their good teamwork can really rock the score
o Sometimes their bantering can be humorous | | Cons | o Tend to get on your nerves rather quickly
o Talks way too much during a gaming session | Cons | o Can have a self-driven, elitist mentality
o Slow to make a decision - no alpha wolf present | | The Overly Charged
a.k.a. The Cry Baby | The Night of the Living Dead
a.k.a. Catatonics 'R Us |  |  | | Pros | o They'll definitely keep the team objective focused
o No question as to what they are thinking/feeling | Pros | o Good team players and receives direction well
o Doesn't clutter the airwaves with useless musings | | Cons | o Easy to throw off their game with a little goading
o Constant whining is akin to that of a 9 year old | Cons | o Hard to tell if they are even alive and breathing
o They are about as much fun as a 24-hour Dentist | | The Serious Joe
a.k.a. Too Smart For My Own Good | The Big Easy
a.k.a. Laisser-faire United |  |  | | Pros | o These achievement whores will carry your team
o Will take 'point' on difficult tasks/objectives | Pros | o Goes with the flow - never makes waves
o Open for any variation of the game, at any time | | Cons | o I Am An Island (they don't really care about you)
o Most are basically egocentrically a-holes | Cons | o Sloooow player... this isn't chess holmes!
o Easily loses focus while admiring game scenery | | The Flirt
a.k.a. Anonymity Rocks!! | The Drunk & Stoned
a.k.a. Pass The Cheetos Dude! |  |  | | Pros | o Always nice hearing a sexy sounding female voice
o Gets imagination thinking it might be Jessica Alba | Pros | o This guy is a riot to play with when not puking
o Easy to send in as the sacrificial guinea pig | | Cons | o Unnecessarily distracts your hard-up teammates
o Jessica Alba is NEVER on the other end of the mic | Cons | o Leaves the game every 5 minutes for munchies
o Asks many questions; forgets own name allot | | The Unfocused Multi-Tasker
a.k.a. ADD Sufferers | The Hater
a.k.a. Mad At The World Guy |  |  | | Pros | o Juggles multiple team assignments well
o Pretty OK when changing games | Pros | o Fun to rile them up - easy target for verbal abuse
o Hmmm... I honestly can't think of anything else | | Cons | o Usually never knows what the heck is going on
o Spends time dicking around instead of playing | Cons | o Always making excuses and blaming others
o Basically they are a pain in the ass | | The Legend
a.k.a. The Old Fart | The Child Prodigy
a.k.a. The Most Hated of All Gamer Types |  |  | | Pros | None, unless you are are looking for...
o ...a history lesson on games like PONG
o ...a true Alpha Wolf to make decisions (j/k pups) | Pros | None, unless they are your kid and can have them...
o ...fetch your favorite beverage during a session
o ...set you up for life by winning game tourneys | | Cons | o Leaves game every 5 minutes for the bathroom
o They ARE the 24-Hour dentist
o Basically sum of Cons above, just a bit different | Cons | o They don't even have to try to beat you
o You will never be as good as they are at age 10
o Trash talk, show-boating, etc. Need I go on??? | |
What Other Gaming Types Did I Miss??
Which One(s) Would You Consider Yourself?
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Obviously this writing plays upon some common stereotypes and associated personality quirks. We all have our unique peccadilloes and probably can honestly pick a few of the Pros / Cons from the various types depicted above. Special thanks to the anonymous pictured in the above public domain pictures featured in this article for allowing us to have a little fun.
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It looks like 2010 is going to be another awesome year for RF Generation. In the first month of the new decade there was a whopping 5,366 total submission. There were 2,012 image additions, 859 game additions, and 1,915 page edits.
The top ten submitters all had over 100 submissions and were Paully3433, ga5ket, logical123, Madir, Izret101, Spoon, Malingo, ApolloBoy, OatBob, and Medevilblader. These ten members made 87% of the total submissions last month. Truly these are a dedicated bunch of members that make RFGen the special place that it is.
The top staff approvers last month were Izret101, Madir, NES_Rules and ga5ket, each with over 200 approvals last month. These guys let the January submissions in out of the cold that is the queue line and let them into the warmth of the RFGen DB. Without them, those submissions could have very well frozen there, and we don't want frozen submissions.
So remember as you go about your days on the site and remember to thank these eleven individuals for all the hard work that do to keep RFGen THE Classic and Modern Video Game Database!
You may have noticed the different images up top. It's a day to reflect for many of us, as for a lot of us we lost a friend, leader, and webmaster. Four years ago today, our friend was tragically taken from this earth.
You may have never known Michael Collins. Mike was the first webmaster of this site, and his spirit and dogma is what shapes the current site as you see it today. While other people have kept this site going strong since Mike's passing, it was Mike that set its vision and goals. We are a site for the community, and always will be. We do this for you as this is what Mike would have wanted, and it is what is right.
Memories of times past will never subside. We lost a friend, a friend that many of you never knew you had. Without Mike this site would probably not existed, and we are forever indebted to Mike for that. This site is truly his baby, and we are forever indebted to Mike for what he helped to create.
Mike, we all miss you. You may be gone from this earth, but your spirit continues to live on. We will never, ever forget you.
Humorous Gaming Lessons:
The Results of Lending |
Like any other gamer or collector, I take great pride in the preservation of the spoils of war that reside in my Room of Doom. I do not loan out my games to just anyone. I made the unfortunate mistake of including my brother in my extremely limited 'circle of trust'. Halo: Combat Evolved was our game of choice when it came to head-to head battle. After years of beating on him like a farm animal, I reluctantly lent him my copy to allow him time to refine his skills. Three years later while celebrating my niece's birthday at his home this past month, he presented to me the following: 
Brutal, just plain brutal - that is all I have to say about the above picture, though it is still CIB in a somewhat masochistic way. Of course my brother apologized for the condition, albeit chuckling heavily during the entire time of his 'remorseful' delivery. I present to you now the villains (both of whom reek of guilt), who happened to be sitting just to the right of us during this exchange: 
I have to admit that my brother used his time wisely when he basically annexed this game from my collection. We eventually fired this up that evening and I received the beating of a lifetime. The can of 'whop-ass' he released on me dwarfed the abuse that I had once imparted upon him.
Lesson 1 --> Don't lend your games out to people who share a household with the villains (or like) pictured above.
Lesson 2 --> Beating on your little brother is always fun. Why risk losing that opportunity and loan him a game?
| What Have You Got??
Pictures really enhance your story - please include if you can. | | | |
You know what? We have a chat. Normally it's fun, and it's absurd. Recently, however, things have gone by the wayside. I've not quite whored out our chat as much as I used to. Did you know that the last time I did one of these posts was in April of 2009? Back then, Jay Leno was still the Tonight Show host! And today, he's on the verge of becoming it again! How weird that these things come out to be. Anyways, I'm not the only one that's noticed that the chat has fallen to the wayside:
[23:45] Roehm21: dammit hang on
[23:48] Roehm21: Ok I think I got it now
[23:52] Roehm21: Where the hell did everyone go?
[23:58] TraderJake: the land of makebelieve
[23:58] Malygris: It's pretty awesome in here, lemme tell ya
[23:59] TraderJake: it sure is
[23:59] Roehm21: lol
That's right.... Where the hell did everyone go? Won't you join us in the chat? We have imaginary candy.... JOIN US, WON'T YOU???
Click Here for our Chat Page
December has generally been one of the slowest months of the year for submissions, but that certainly was not the case for December 2009. There was an astounding 3,723 submissions in December, 1,254 of those were image submissions, there were 802 image and hardware additions, and 1,346 page edits.
The top ten submitters of the month were also those that had 100 or more submissions, and were: Paully3433, ga5ket, Link41, ApolloBoy, logical123, Madir, bickman2k, Spoon, NES_Rules, and Malingo. Those ten members submitted an amazing 84% of the total submissions, a huge 'thank you' goes out to all of them. But I'd also like to thank those of you that submitted the other 16%, because every submission, no matter how small, helps make our database better.
The top five staff reviewers of all those submissions were: NES_Rules, ApolloBoy, Madir, ga5ket, and bum_man. Without these guys approving your submissions, they would just sit in queue forever, so we should all be very thankful for them.
Now that 2009 is over, its time to thank everyone that has helped RF Generation throughout the year. The top ten submitters of 2009 were: ga5ket, y2richie, ApolloBoy, Funk_Buddy, Madir, NES_Rules, Izret101, Pop Culture Portal, audiman83, and Paully3433. Of those ten, eight had over a thousand submissions, a truly impressive feat. These ten members submitted a total of 68% of all submissions made in 2009. These people are clearly dedicated to keeping RF Generation as THE Classic and Modern Video Game Database.
The top five staff reviewers for 2009 were NES_Rules, ga5ket, ApolloBoy, Tan, and Madir. together they approved almost 15,000 submissions throughout the year. My hat goes off to all you for that feat as well.
For 2009, we had 211 different member submit at least one thing over the course of the year. Together, those members submitted a total 34,883 submissions, of those 17,056 were image submissions, 9,812 were page edits and 5,025 were game/hardware title additions.
With those combined with previous years, puts our database at around 48,000 game titles, 3,500 hardware titles, 52,000 scans, and 28,000 screenshots.
Truly, 2009 was an outstanding year for submissions, but 2010 can be an even better year, and I have a feeling that it will be. But it won't without the help of everyone, so contribute anything you can this year, scans your games and then your friends' games, fill in missing information, whatever you can to help the database grow.
2009 was another great year for RF Generation, we saw many new members discover our little slice of the internet, thousands of additions to our database and hundreds of new blog posts containing everything from members' collection updates to dozens of game reviews to systems reviews to historical background and information. But enough of last year, out with the old and in with the new. 2010 is sure to be another great year for RF Generation, and that great year is starting out with some new staff members.
Those new staff members are Logical123 and Paully3433, and they are the newest DB Contributors. Along with these two individuals joining the staff, there was was also the promotion of Izret101 from DB Contributor to DB Reviewer.
Also coming up this year will be a slight change to the PlayStation section of the database. That change will be the addition of all known variations that we don't currently have. These will include the different types of "long box" variants and rereleases. Check back often for updates on the progress being made there.
Here are some goals for the database that I would like us to meet this year, some will be easy, others are going to be more challenging:
- 50,000 total games
- 4,000 total hardware entries
- 60,000 scans
- 30,000 screenshots
These are not the only things in store for RF Generation in 2010, so be sure to keep it tuned right here to Channel 4 for all the latest and greatest.
Sorry about the downtime this morning. We had a log overflow and it has since been cleared. We're smooth sailing again now. For those of you who we greatly inconvenienced, we'll try not to do that again.
Keep it tuned to channel 3!
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