Resource centre for ZX Spectrum games
using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines
Archive of the
Manic Miner & Jet Set Willy Yahoo! Group
messages
Group history
The Manic Miner & Jet Set Willy Yahoo! Group was founded by Dr Andrew Broad on 20 December 1999 (initially as the Yahoo! MM/JSW Club until March 2002). It existed for over 20 years until 15 December 2020, when Yahoo! shut down all Yahoo! Groups.
The Group, which offered a message board, picture galleries and file hosting, quickly became a focal point for the MM/JSW community. Over the years nearly 7,300 messages were posted and by the end of its existence the Group had 742 members. Dr Andrew Broad remained its Owner throughout its entire lifespan.
The early 2000s marked the heyday of the Group’s activity while the number of messages declined sharply after 2010. Following a period of near-inactivity in 2013–2014 the Group experienced a modest revival. However Yahoo! first deleted user-created content from its Groups in December 2019 and then closed the service entirely in 2020.
Preservation
The Group’s messages form an important part of the history of the development of MM and JSW games for the ZX Spectrum. They contain insights and information that remain useful even today for those interested in creating such games. For this reason the complete archive of the Group’s messages is preserved here on JSW Central.
The messages, archived before the Group’s closure, were converted into HTML format for presentation on this site by Michał Gromann.
This archive contains all 7,186 messages that still existed when the Group went offline (the last message visible online was #7256; in total 70 earlier messages had been deleted either by their authors or by the Owner while the Group was still active). In addition the archive includes 37 messages (#7257-#7293) that were never published online and existed only as emails sent to members after December 2019 but before Yahoo! terminated its Groups altogether in December 2020. Some edits were made to this final batch to protect email addresses and conceal certain restricted content.
This archive does not preserve the original message threads. Nor does it preserve emoticons (with the exception of the last 37 messages), which appear only as missing image placeholders.
You can browse the archive by moving from message to message or by entering a specific message number. Errors will appear if you input a number outside the 0-7293 range, a non-numerical character or the number of a message deleted while the Group was still active.
Every effort has been made to reflect the original messages accurately. Nevertheless feedback will be appreciated if you discover any problems such as messages cut off prematurely.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|