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Version History
The only constant with FakeCard.com is change. And constant down time. Over the five years that this site has been on the web (in one form or another), it has gone through many graphical changes; nine total, eight as Pokémon Aaah!. Why the need to update the layout every so often? Well, most artists are never pleased with their work and constantly strive to evolve. And since everyone on this site is an artist in their own way, this site constantly needs to be updated to fit the skills and styles of those artists when necessary. Good times.
So here's a cool little site featurette; this is the FakeCard.com Version History, which has info on every single version of FakeCard.com all the way since version 1 of it's predecessor site, Pokémon Aaah!. Included below is a short description of each version... which can be a bit over the top and dramatic. So sue me. This is also a chance for me to speak in the third person.
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Version
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Description
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FakeCard.com Version History (February 1st, 2004 -
???)
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1.0
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FakeCard.com Design (February 1st, 2004)
PA! was turned into FakeCard.com mostly out of necessity.
Nick15 wanted to add a broader range of fake cards types to
the site (not just Pokémon fakes, but fakes for other
games as well). On top of that, he wanted to add Duel
Masters TCG news to the site. His original plan was to make
three totally different and individual sites and run them
all but the idea fell apart after Nick15 quitely opened and
immediately closed his NeoPets TCG site
NeoCards.dot.Pet. However, having just one site that
spans multiple games is easier, so Nick15 turned PA! into
FakeCard.com, the site you know and love today. ...
Technically this site is no longer PA!, although the
Pokémon TCG section is named Pokémon
Aaah! in memory of the old site.
FakeCard.com differs from PA! through the addition of
Duel Masters TCG news, more card game fakes, and the way the
site is layed out. And not to mention the design as well.
The name was also chosen to sort of add in a more secular
idea of the way the site is going.. also to remove all the
stupid "Pokeyman-is-for-kids" mindset as well. Yeah.
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Pokémon Aaah! Version History (April 10th,
1999 - February 1st, 2004)
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8.5
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Sky Blue & Red Design (November 1st, 2003)
Thankfully PA! never did die in another firey blaze of
self-destruction, all thanks to the pay server Nick15
bought. ... However the server Nick15 bought a year prior
didn't provide a whole bunch of resources that RyoShinX
needed to move the downed forums over form the unstable
pa.net to the stable fakecard.com. Therefore Nick15 and
RyoShinX had to find a new server for fakecard.com in order
to run both a website and forum off of.
While Nick and Ryo were busy making the switch between
old and new servers, Nick decided to give PA! a bit of an
upgrade by adding everything that was in the old (saved)
versions of PA! and sticking them into PA!8 (like really
really old news and missing Game Boy info). Not to mention
clean up the site from broken links and make it a bit more
navagatable.
Of course... this probably was the last time PA! was
updated before it was turned into FakeCard.com.
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8.0
(take 2)
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Sky Blue & Red Design (January 3rd, 2003)
As if the year 2002 and PA! didn't mix, one more disaster
struck PA!. Just as Nick15 was uploading PA!7.1 to the
fakecard.com web server, he somehow accidently deleted his
entire computer. And PA!7.1 with it. Aaargh indeed. So after
first taking a two month leave to undelete as much as he
could from his deleted computer, Nick15 restarts the plan to
get PA! up (see PA!7.1 above) by taking what he has
left and working on PA!8. Only without PA!7.1 up.
PA!8 does something new by using something old. In an
effort to regain lost hits and to appeal to old-skool PA!
fans, Nick15 decided to ressurect the Sky Blue &
Red design originally used in PA!4, as well as continue
using the update-by-hand news format. But the similarity
stops there. PA!8 is frameless, and uses the section
structure from PA!7. Aside from that, the file paths used in
PA!8 differ from ones used in the past, mostly to provide an
aesthetic path for the frameless design.
Also in with PA!8 was a new co-webmaster, RyoShinX, and a
new server for the forums, at www.pokemonaaah.net. All the
while the staff and Nick15 prays that nothing happens to
this version of PA! in 2003.
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7.1
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Aqua-Blueish Design (October
18, 2002)
Before PA!8 was set to go, PMX decided to leave. And almost
all the work he put into PA!8 went with him. To cope with
this, Nick15 takes a more active role in the life of PA!.
And with the advice of his advisors, Nick decided to get a
new paid host and upload PA!7 as a stall tactic in order to
have SOME version of PA! up (over say NO version of PA! up).
All this considering how frustrated Nick and his staff were
in that no full version of PA! has been up since...
March.
PA!7.1 changes a few things since
PA!7.0. Gone were themes, in were updated sections. The
pages themselves got a work around to seem less cluttered
(as PA!7.0 was disliked by 800x600 monitor users). The News
also went back to its original format, as Nick15 now prefers
to do it by hand once again. All this while Nick and his
staff worked on their version of PA!8 to have up around New
Years 2003.
But disaster strikes PA! once
again....
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8.0
(take 1)
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Ocean Design (September 5th, 2002)
But not all was lost. After PA!6 got horrible reviews, PMX
went decided to go back to the drawing board for PA! and
came up with a new, more simplistic looking design,
nicknamed "Ocean". This was the design planned to be used
for PA!8. It has many similarities to PA!6, such as the use
of a table structure instead of frames. SSI (Server Side
Includes) is also used to include the sidebar, footer and
header. The original PA!8 layout was set to use a PHP
navigation system, one was coded but never used because it
demanded too much from the server. This version also
introduced a few new sections and fakes (Razzo was finally
going to get worked), as well as two new domain names,
fakecard.com and pokemonaaah.net. PA!8 also
did away with frames, as many PA! users started to grow
distasteful of them.
This was also the version to introduce two new staff
members to PA!, one artist known as Kaizer Myuu and...
Nick15. After about a year break and a wholefully positive
experience at Worlds 2002 in Seattle, Nick15 was
reinvigorated to work on PA! again. Kaizer Myuu came on
board along side Nick15, to help him work on Razzo, as well
as have another spot on staff to fill up.
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7.0
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Aqua-Blueish Design
(February 1st, 2002)
Midway through January, a string of horrific coincidences
struck PA!. Not only did PA!'s host
PokéWebMasters decide to shut itself down
almost over night, PA!'s back up site at Zollonet.com was
lost, as well as the copy of PA!6 on PMX's hard drive. All
this mean that not a single copy of PA!6 existed. AT
ALL.
To help cope with the loss, Nick15
came back on board to design PA!7. It used frames (a move
that most PA! fans found to be troublesome), as well as
themes. PA!7 also worked on creating a larger TCG presence.
However, PA!7 didn't get much exposure as there was no one
to update it.
So for a while, PA! died. It didn't
help much that some cyber squatter stole to PA.com domain
name, leaving PA! homeless.
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6.0
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Techno-Blueish Design (August 12th, 2001)
On August 2001, Nick15 decided to step down as PA!'s head
webmaster to focus on school, he new web comic, as well as
other things. Nick15 handed control of PA! over to PMX, who
then introduced PA! version 6, which was PA!'s most
professional update yet.
Besides the totally new design and format since PA!4
almost two years prior, PA! was deframed and took full
advantage of SSI codes. It also introduced PA!'s new domain
name, http://www.pokemonaaah.com/
Things were looking up for PA!. However all this would
come to a horrific end soon...
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5.0
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Liquid Sky Design (May 25th, 2001)
Nick15.com came back up with it's new ISP, and so did the
final version of PA!5. Since the BETA version released the
previous month, Nick15 had made some changes and added some
new sections too. This update also marks the introduction of
Nick15's next set, Razzo, and it's new web address,
http://pa.nick15.com/. Good times indeed.
However Nick15 started to grow tiresome of his duties,
especially since he was recently promoted to a Wizard's
PokéGym moderator.
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5.0b
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Liquid Sky Design (March 14th, 2001)
Due to a problem with his ISP, Nick15 has to shut down the
Nick15.com server for a while in order to switch ISPs. In
this time, Nick15 decided to introducw a BETA preview
version of PA!5 over at Bulbagarden.com. It introduced the
new design to everyone, but it still had some tweaks that
needed to be made. .... Now unlike previous version
upgrades, PA!5 was not the major graphical overhaul like
before. Graphics were updated, but not as much as before.
The grand overhaul this time is with the HTML pages
themselves, along with a new NewsPro news updating format.
PA! also picked up a few new staff members, PMX and Dark
Aspenth, who would later help Nick15 keep things running as
he couldn't keep the one-man show running.
With the addition of PMX as webmaster of PA!, the PA!
forums moved from an ezBoard to a UBB, located at
http://pa.zollonet.com/
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4.6
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Sky Blue & Red Design (September 9th,
2000)
Creative difficulties arose between Ech, Pure, and Nick15,
and so E&P left PA! to work on their own site.
Originally planed was to create a portal site called
Pokémon AtoZ, A being Aaah! and Z being Zeo.
The idea, however, never took off.
PA! went back to being a one-man show, and version 4.6
was created out of it. Version 4.6 continued where E&P
left off, although a number of sections were removed in the
process.
Around the New Year, Nick15 decided to make 3 other
PA!-lookalike sites for Dragon Ball Z, Transformers, and
Battle Angel Alita news. They shriveled up to nothing in no
time fast.
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4.5
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Sky Blue & Red Design (August 7th, 2000)
A Nick15.com server crash had deleted PA!, which made Nick15
consider quiting PA!. So while Nick15 mulled over whether or
not to keep PA! alive, the Echidna and Purity decided to
help keep things going for Nick15. And thus Version 4.5 was
created.
In this version update, it included a News section, pages
for new fakes, and a number of other tweeks.
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4.15
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Sky Blue & Red Design (July 18th, 2000)
Although this version wasn't a site overhaul, a lot of the
sections were given a spring cleaning. The Fake
Edition got a makeover, the Make Your Own Fake
Card section was given a few new goodies, and a few
other cool additions were... uhm... added.
It was also around now when PA! picked up a new staff
member, an artist by the name of purity, who had recently
won PA!'s 3rd Fake Card Contest.
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4.0
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Sky Blue & Red Design (March 25th, 2000)
Nick15 got tired of Version 3.5 quick, and so started work
on PA!'s third major revision, version 4. He worked hard on
reorganizing the sections, changing the design (and
introducing PA!'s official font, Font-o-vision), as
well as going over each section and totally redoing them.
Now although it was still a one-man show for Nick15, The
Echidna earned his keep at PA! and in the fake card world by
taking over the job of Webmaster when Nick15 wasn't
avaliable to update, most notiably during the time Nick15
visited Europe for 11 days back in April 2000.
Version 4 also officially introduced the first PA!
Forums, at http://pub4.ezboard.com/bpokemonaaah, and
PA! was moved to it's new home at
http://www.nick15.com/pokemon/
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3.5
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Blue & Black Design
(mid-December, 1999)
What seemed cool on paper but utterly disasterous in
practice, PA! v3.5 added an extra content frame on the
bottom in order to free up space on the sidebar (which was
moved back to the left). When people would click on the
sidebar, the main frame would have info on the general
sections, while a frame below it would have links to all the
different sections. The idea didn't last very long, and as
you might imagine, it wasn't one of Nick15's favorite design
concepts.
In January, Nick15 got an email
from someone who called himself "The Echidna", who had a
really interesting idea about a new Team Rocket
hoax.....
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3.0
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Blue & Black Design
(September 9th, 1999)
Nick15 was still running a one-man show with PA!, and
decided that Version 2.5 just didn't cut it for him. So
shortly after, Nick15 started work on PA! Version 3, PA!'s
biggest largest upgrade since then.
It still used frames, but was now
colored blue & black, and also featured it's popular
"racing stripes" design concept, which is still in use
today. The design also took a step beyond the norm of web
design, as Nick15 placed the side bar on the right side of
the site as opposed to the left found on other
websites.
This version update filled out a
lot of old sections, and added a bunch of new sections which
included extended Game Boy info, TCG set stats, as well as
info on a new Pokémon game called "Gold" and
"Silver".
PA! also was given its second
fan-fiction in the form of Pokémon City, by
Robert. H. Magnussen. It was also around this time PA! was
accused of stealing its design from another Pokémon
site called Pokémon Zero.
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2.5
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Pure White Design (August 20th, 1999)
Prior to Version 2.5, PA! was a frameless website. However
Nick15 decided to give the site a feature overhaul and added
frames to the site. This would be a design concept Nick15
would use for a while. To make the update worth while,
Nick15 also added new info on new TCG sets and more basic
Game Boy info.
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2.0
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Pure White Design (July 22nd, 1999)
Nick15 did web designing on the side, and his style
quicklyevolved as time went on. Realizing that the version
of PA! he had up was pretty crappy looking, Nick15 decided
that now would be another good time to spiff up the site to
be a bit more presentable (especially to those who would be
interested in hiring Nick15 to design their site). So out
went the teal stripes of Toasterleavens, and in came a calm
white style. Something about that white stuck with PA! as
time went on.
Nick15 also moved PA! to a shorter address,
http://nick15.simplenet.com/pokemon/. It also made
fake cards its main focus, and introduced the classic
Make Your Own Fake Card section, including the
internet's first set of Pokémon TCG blanks. Version 2
also introduced PA!'s first fan-fiction project,
Pokémon USA, and created 150 new
Pokémon with the aide of Terry and Brian Tibke.
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1.5
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Toasterleavens 2 Design (June 22nd, 1999)
PA! hit its first major popularity spurt when Nick15 added
his GRAPHICAL spoiler of the Jungle edition. It probably the
first of its kind, since all other spoiler guides at the
time were all plain text files. But what really DID help
PA!'s growth was the mere fact that the spoiler list was
ranked #2 on Altavista when you would search for "pokemon
jungle".
This would also be the first version to introduce fake
cards to the site. Around this time, Nick15 discovered one
of the biggest Pokémon TCG websites of the day... the
PokéCenter at CCGNews.com. The site was cool and all,
but what really caught Nick15's eye was their Card Creation
section. To Nick15's surprize, they were all text fakes. And
since Nick15 had a fairly interesting history making image
Magic and Star Wars CCG fake cards, he thought he could give
Pokémon TCG fakes a try. He sent his first one,
Missigno, into the PokéCenter. Surprizingly enough,
they posted it! This alone would be but one of many great
moments for PA! and Nick15.
After that, many requests came in to make more image fake
cards, and so Nick15's rise to stardom came into being. Good
times.
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1.0
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Toasterleavens 2 Design (April 10th, 1999)
Getting more into the cheesy kiddy card game that his friend
Jimmy Cannon got him into, Nick15 decided to expand upon his
Pokémon section on Toasterleavens. This time not only
did it have some basic info on theJungle, Fossil and Team
Rocket editions... but it also had some info on the Japanese
version of Pokémon Yellow, as well as a Game Boy map.
Slowly but surely, the Pokémon section at
Toasterleavens became more popular as time went on.
Surprizingly though, fake cards weren't even part of the
site yet.
Around this time, one could find PA! at
http://nick15.simplenet.com/toasterleavens/pokemon/tcgamerica.html
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0.9
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Toasterleavens 1 Design (March 1st, 1999)
It was around this time that Nick15 decided to create
another website for himself. Prior
attempts ended in failure.... but mostly because Nick15
was just a nobody, and people don't care to visit a website
owned by a nobody (especially when that nobody had annoyed a
whole bunch of Anti-Mac websites).
After taking a 2 year break from his old Geocities site,
"Nick15 Dot Com", he decided to start working on a new one
and called it "Toasterleavens". Taking a cue from Nick15
Dot Com, Toasterleavens had info on Nick15 and the stuff
he liked..... including an obscure stupid Japanese game
called Pokémon.
In his "Pokémon, Aaah!" section, Nick15
only had a few tidbits on the next two Pokémon TCG
card sets, Jungle and Fossil. Nothing more.
Of course, since then Toasterleavens had evolved back
into Nick15 Dot Com (now called Nick15.com). The
Pokémon section however grew into something much more
than Nick15 would have ever imagined.
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