Group29 is a rating site with some special focuses. The editors have found that even while approaching "the other side of the hill", they have not really grown up. They like movies, toys, books, and games as much as they did when it was appropriate for them to enjoy such things. As they are reaching their prime earnings potential, they are able to indulge themselves by spending money on aforementioned pursuits, and letting others know what value they perceived.

Since we began the site in 1996, we have explained it this way: Most everyone else uses a 1 to 10 scale. Less commonly used is a four or five scale. It can be smiles, stars, rabbit ears, carrots, exclaimation points or whatever. The base 10 number system goes back to a time when people counted on their hands. We chose to use the number 29.

The upshot is that, if you want to rate a movie intelligently, you should be able to express a rating without holding up a number of fingers...

Roger Ebert gave a very good explanation of a moview review grading system in May 2004 when someone asked him if all four-star movies are equal. "...in the reviews I tried to explain how I felt; just counting stars makes me seem simpleminded. I have always awarded stars in a relative, not an absolute way, based to some degree on a movie's success in doing what it wants to do, and what the audience expects from it. Of course, if you think stars are limited, you ought to try working with thumbs."

The basic premise goes back to 1996. The group of us were discussing our personal top movies of all time and their rating. "Someone" gave Star Wars a 29 on a scale of 1 to 10. Although that could have been the end of it, our group agreed that the 1977 theater release of Star Wars was the best movie of all time. The world wide web was a new frontier at the time and the topic of opening our own fan web site was broached. There was not much out there to speak of. So we continued the gimmick, signed ourselves up for group29.com and the web site was born. Now, the concept is called a weblog or "blog" for short.

In later years, the content was not updated much and many other sites have proven to be outstanding movie resources. The Internet Movie database is probably the best known.