(The Making Of) Dark Judgement 暗黑裁判團 the PC Game for DOS

The Dark Judgement, and the even darker days for it's developers.

Dark Judgement is a side scrolling beat them up brawler game, for PC MS-DOS, in the 90's.
It is made in Hong Kong, not Taiwan, not Korea.
For you, (who very likely didn't ever heard of it), there are screenshot and video below.

Some people in the net talked about playing it. No one can telling you about the development of this game. But I do.

The Making of Dark Judgement

It was 1996, 5 guys in Hong Kong really likes TV games went together, become "Frankenstein studio". They are:
Truman Tang: The Boss, The Leader, Programmer
Wing Man: The Lead Programmer. Game Play Programming.
Blanka: Artist who do the background, Cut Scenes, an a hidden playable character "Tomato girl" (hidden too well that no player found).
Khaki Lee: Artist who did the Cut Scenes, printable arts.
Nanjay (now Igdbonbon): I did the game play sprites (character and items).

They like to made game hiding in the dark, So, for 16 months, they worked full time (overtime), in a 300 square feet SOHO.
It was really fun, and it was really intensive as well.

On 1997, they finished on something, that is "Dark Judgement" (I will call it just DJ below).

The Selling of Dark Judgment

At that point. They looked forward for DJ to earn back the rent and wage spent before. So they can keep going on.
It was the time in Hong Kong, where majority of PC software is pirated copies. But Taiwan has a more healthy PC software market.

So they found a Distributor at Taiwan, to sell the game, to Taiwan and Hong Kong.
The sales money where coming back, but they don't know the exact sales figure, anyway the money  was just not even enough to cover the cost.

Then the Taiwan distributor help them to find a Korean distributor, to resell the game at South Korea.
Korean distributor paid 4KUSD as whole, they got half of it from the Taiwan distributor.

We never really know how good or bad our game perform, neither in Taiwan, nor in Korea, only we can seen it was not a big hit in Hong Kong. (We except better, by (we think we) fairly compared DJ to other good selling PC games at the period).

We couldn't make money from DJ, but we didn't give it up, we gave it away, to "PC Game Week" Magazine, for free, then they bundled it for free. (DJ was renamed to "暗黑拳王" in this release).
We want to have more gamers to enjoy it, even without money, our hard work was done anyway.
It feel really good to see some talked good about it, even record a full play though for it.

Around 2004, Truman met a Taiwan Game Distributor in China, who helped us to re-sell DJ to south east Asia.
This time we where paid totally about 3KUSD.

To Sum up, the total income of all time form DJ is far under 10KUSD, not even enough to cover just the rent of the place we worked in.

The end of Frankenstein Studio

So, Frankenstein Studio didn't survive.
We all found other daytime job for living. No move full time game development for us.
The End.

Well, it is not ended, actually.

We all still closely connected, and always waiting a chance to make game together again.
Truman found 01Games co., a mobile game company he ran with his sparted time.
Beside a day job as a programmer that keep me alive. I still spent all my free time on game, playing and making.
At least that prove to myself, I love game for fun, not for money (but, I love money too).

After thought

So, Why did we failed?
The Market? But, there were a few Taiwan Studios doing very fine at the time.
Our Games? I can't judge it fairly, maybe can you tell me?

Back to the 90's... What if there was kick starter? what if there was WWW? but it didn't happen, it never would.

I do think we didn't marketing ourselves enough, and we still don't.
Otherwise, at least those gamers, who liked and talked about it, would not think that it is a Korean Game.We didn't even have a website... actually, it was BBS age... but we don't have a BBS neither.

I got things to sell you (for free)

If you like DJ, please like our other works. Follow us, Re-twitch us, Help us get some exposure.
Or give us useful suggestions. So that we can make more games.


Actually, We already have games for you now, and mostly are free!!
iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/developer/tang-cho-man/id592719186
android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=01Games%20Technology%20Co.%2C%20Limited&hl=en





I don't even have a playable copy myself to capture screen, but I did keep some Sprite Sheets.