[yse]

This could probably get a great deal more detailed, but here's what I can come up with at the moment:

JUNE 15, 2001
Sonic Adventure 2 is released to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the day the world was introduced to Sonic. Many hardcore Sonic fans pick it up and are disappointed - but a select few see a game that was suitable for time attacking.

From this day on, and moreso after the Gamecube release in 2003, the GameFAQs SA2 boards are flooded with time attack/high score topics, Jolt135's low score topics, NintenDan's challenge topics, and various incarnations of the above. Eventually a consensus is reached that time attack should go elsewhere. Jolt135 suggests a "SA Elite" whereby all members set up their own web page with their SA/SA2 times on it.

Later, Rolken challenged Jolt's idea, ridiculing the idea of everyone having their times in separate places, and vows to create one site where all of us could gather and compete.

OCTOBER 23, 2003
The ParaSonic Competition Center is born! At this stage there are only four games catered for, those being the two Adventures and the current two Advances. Submissions are done manually, and to start things off Rolken simply uploads the times from the various SA Elite sites. This process is completed, and the rankings viewable, on the 26th.

NOVEMBER 2003
An automatic submissions system is created, but still no login system. In effect, every player can "update" every other player's times.

DECEMBER 2003
ParaSonic Competition Center is renamed The Sonic Center and moves to its new home at www.soniccenter.org. Version 2 of the site is uploaded at some stage during this month, and in a highly popular move the Genesis games, along with Sonic CD, are also added to the rankings.

At the end of 2003, the leading players were:

SA(DX): SHADOW JACKY
SA2(B): SHADOW JACKY
SAdva: Rolken
SAdva2: Vgto 1*8tw
Sonic 1: yoshifan
Sonic 2: SM
Sonic 3: mike89
S&K: SM
SCD: SM
S3D: F-Man

JANUARY 2004
Sonic Heroes is released in this month, leading to another huge disappointment but inevitably more time attacking. Interest in the new game is, as always, high and competition is fierce, but slows down once Kev obliterates everyone else.

FEBRUARY 2004
Sonic R, Knuckles Chaotix and four Game Gear games are added to the rankings. SM posts the initial times for Knuckles Chaotix and they remain untouched for a long time to come.

MARCH 2004
The Game Gear collection is extended to include the Sonic Drift games. As with the other GG games there is little competition.

APRIL 2004
Another busy month rankings-wise. Sonic Pocket Adventure and Sonic Jam were added to the rankings. This month also saw the advent of ring and score rankings to go with time, which led to Sonic Battle being introduced to TSC.

MAY 2004
Sonic Advance 3 is released, and widely hailed as the saviour of the series. It is promptly added to the charts, but with ideas on ranking schemes up in the air only a Sonic+Tails combo was allowed at first. Agreement was reached sometime in June, but very little has changed.

At the end of June 2004, the leading players were:

SH: Kev
SA(DX): Cybrax
SA2(B): SS101
SAdva: NintenDan
SAdva2: Zealous
SAdva3: NintenDan
Sonic 1: Ghost
Sonic 2: mike89
Sonic 3: mike89
S&K: mike89
SCD: SprintGod
S3D: FoxLuc
KC: SM
S1GG: FoxLuc
S2GG: FoxLuc/mike89
SC: mike89/videogamemaster777
STT: P1 Pause
SPA: Rolken
SB: sonichero
SJ: TRB_MetroidTeam
SR: Turbos
SD: videogamemaster777
SD2: Turbos

JULY 23, 2004
TSC version 3 is released! Along with the new format we were promised such things as SAdva3 unidivision, a "time machine" using which we could go back to any point in the site's history and view the records, and multiple skins for the site as the original Stardust theme wouldn't suit everyone. The skins came in August, but the other two had to wait a bit longer... (and in the case of SAdva3, we're still waiting)

The next few months are rather uneventful in terms of the information I'm gathering, so fast forward to...

DECEMBER 19, 2004
Nobody would have thought this date would be significant at the time, but it became the date at which TSC time ceased for seven months. This becomes apparent some time down the track.

As at December 19, 2004, the leading players were:

SH: Kev
SA(DX): sonicam
SA2(B): Rayku
SAdva: NintenDan
SAdva2: RPGnutter
SAdva3: blueblaze
Sonic 1: Ghost
Sonic 2: mike89
Sonic 3: mike89
S&K: mike89
SCD: SprintGod
S3D: FoxLuc
KC: SM
S1GG: FoxLuc
S2GG: mike89
SC: mike89
STT: P1 Pause
SPA: Rolken
SB: sonichero
SJ: TRB_MetroidTeam
SR: sonichero
SD: videogamemaster777
SD2: mike89

JANUARY-MARCH 2005
Plenty of cool stuff happened in these three months, but it was all lost, due to...

APRIL 1ST, 2005
On this day, the site mysteriously disappeared, and nobody knew why. The word going around at the time was that s0nicfreak (who hosted TSC at the time) was running behind on her payments or something, and couldn't afford to keep us, and other sites she hosted, going. Rolken finally returned in June (he'd been missing from the chatroom for a couple of months) to say that yes, the site was broken, yes, we'd lose everything from November onwards and yes, it would be fixed by the end of June. Well not quite, but near enough's good enough, hey?

JULY 6TH, 2005
The return of TSC! RPG, Andy and myself make a stack of submissions on just about every game in TSC's library, only to find out that Rolken had a December backup (from the 19th to be precise). The December backup replaces the November one the next day, and we have to submit again.

Submissions are wild for the first few days as many TSC members rediscover the site they love and re-signed up if need be, then things calmed down and back to normal.

NOVEMBER 2005
What a big month this last one has been. The first week of November saw the release of TSC3.5, which finally gave us our time machine which I've used to construct this and the return of the percentage system of rankings.

Our first real shot at making an impression on other Sonic sites came with the advent of the Sonic Olympics. This event was organised by the Sonic Cage Dome, who specialised in Sonic netplay. Events from both Netplay and Time Attack were held, and TSC came out the victors. I'll say as little about what happened as possible, besides the events.

The 14th saw the release of the highly anticipated Sonic Rush and Shadow the Hedgehog. Sonic Rush rankings have since been added to the rankings, but Shadow's are yet to come.


Wow, that took me longer than I expected. This is only one aspect of the history, though - there should also be parts for the history of players similar to the bios that RPG and I wrote back in October, the history of time attack on the various games (which would include things like new glitches that were found to increase competition and knock total times even lower), and I'm sure Rolken can write up this section better than I did. X)

I'll check up on this topic tomorrow and see what happens.