John Dark: Psychic Eye

Welcome to the micropage for John Dark: Psychic Eye! This should be your one-stop shop for info relating to this unreleased PC/CD-i title!

Sections:

Info Table -- Articles and Interviews -- Leftovers in Chill Manor? -- Faked Box Art

Info Table

Articles and Interviews

To unravel the mystery of John Dark: Psychic Eye, it's best if we started out with the first two (and, for a while, only) mentions of the game anywhere. First, let's take a look in the February 1995 issue of CD-interactief, a Dutch magazine dedicated to the Philips CD-i. Inside this issue was an article detailing Philips' showcase and exhibition at the then-recent 1995 Winter CES, with one event in particular being of importance:

John Dark: Psychic Eye was shown off at a "video presentation" in a private press conference. While there aren't any photographs of the game, the magazine was able to give an overview of the game. It was going to take place in a "three-dimensional wonderworld" in which the titular character, a ghost hunter and private investigator named John Dark, had to fight and outsmart numerous foes. The game was going to be released on the PC first, and then get a CD-i port afterwards. The article also revealed that John Dark: Psychic Eye was the first project done by Animation Magic and Capitol Multimedia/CapDisc, as the former company had been acquired by the latter.

An interesting start, for sure! Given the timeline of events and what Animation Magic was doing at the time, it can be assumed that John Dark: Psychic Eye started production at the end of I. M. Meen's development or shortly after it went gold.

The March 1995 issue of Home PC Magazine also mentioned John Dark: Psychic Eye. It confirmed that the game had animated cutscenes (yay!) and a scheduled release of Spring 1995. Pretty dang close to when this issue was released, and I.M. Meen, too!
A bit too close, actually...

So why was John Dark: Psychic Eye cancelled? You can blame Capitol Multimedia for this one.

On the (sadly now-defunct) Interactive Dreams blog was an interview with a former CapDisc employee, done around a decade after the aforementioned 1995 Winter CES preview. The acquisition and merger of Animation Magic with Capitol Multimedia was not a smooth one; management decided to lay off half of the staff in a effort to restructure the company. This wasn't a good idea. More employees left as their friends and coworkers had been fired, and when Capitol Multimedia had to rehire their fired employees to finish their contracted projects, most of them had been rehired by competing businesses.

Needless to say, the Capitol Multimedia conglomerate didn't survive past 1997 or so.

As for John Dark: Psychic Eye itself, some progress was made on the game during these difficult times. The aforementioned CapDisc employee wrote an unfinished intro story for the game, and saw some of the game's cutscenes after being laid off. The gameplay had been partially decided upon, too, with there being both puzzle and fighting elements. However, this wasn't enough, and the game would be silently cancelled soon afterwards.

Or was it?

Leftovers in Chill Manor?

There are three files in the main directory of Chill Manor that might just be leftovers from John Dark: Psychic Eye. Let's check them out real quick.

The first of these files is TEST.SCN, a list of cutscenes and their respective backgrounds. A similar file, CHILL.SCN, is used by Chill Manor to gather the assets used for its in-game cutscenes. The name "dark" appears several times in the backgrounds' list, implying its connection to JD:PE. Check it out:

sc08
sc58
sc59
sc30
sc71
sc31
sc32
sc34
sc35
sc33
sc51
sc52
sc21
sc69
sc22
sc09
sc63
sc10
sc11
sc64
sc12
sc53
sc54
sc13
    

derlet8a.pcx
fidd5859.pcx
gina30.pcx
dark71.pcx
gina31.pcx
gina32.pcx
gog3435.pcx
hatma33a.pcx
hatma33b.pcx
isis51.pcx
isis52.pcx
yevet21a.pcx
yevet21b.pcx
dark69a.pcx
dark69b.pcx
rich.pcx
dark6364.pcx
dark63a.pcx
rich11.pcx
tas5354.pcx
tas53.pcx
anabel_a.pcx
anabel_b.pcx
    

TEST.SCN lists 24 cutscenes, but its naming format implies that it either had (at least) 71 cutscenes. Interestingly, this format is similar to the one that I. M. Meen uses, AND the file has a last modified date of January 23rd, 1995; this lines up with it being developing around or after that game's tail-end.

The very first name in the list appears to be short for "Derleth", a last name that's associated with the Cthulhu Mythos. A function within Chill Manor's development spreadsheet refers to the Outer God Azathoth and is rather out-of-place in that game. Could John Dark have had Lovecraftian inspiration for its story??

The second file is JD.INI - JohnDark.INI? - which contains a set of key binds meant for a game that is not Chill Manor. I'm certain about this because that game uses CHILL.INI for its key binds instead. Here's a comparison of its two .INI files, with extra key definitions added for CHILL.INI:

ESCAPE                  0x01                    VB_ESC,
UP                      0x148                   VB_UP,
DOWN                    0x150                   VB_DOWN,
FORWARD                 0x148                   VB_UP,
BACKWARD                0x150                   VB_DOWN,
TURN_LEFT               0x14b                   VB_LEFT,
TURN_RIGHT              0x14d                   VB_RIGHT,
MOVE_LEFT               0x14f                   VB_END,
MOVE_RIGHT              0x151                   VB_PGDN,
SHOW_MAP                0x0f                    VB_TAB,
SHOOT                   0x11d           0x39    VB_SPACE,
OPEN                    0x39                    VB_SPACE,
USE                     0x1c  VB_ENTER  0x3a    VB_CAPSLOCK,
STRAFE                  0x138                   VB_ALT,
SPEED_UP                0x12a                   VB_SHIFT,
ZOOM_IN                 0x0d                    VB_PLUS,
ZOOM_OUT                0x0c                    VB_MINUS,
WEAPON_1                0x3b                    VB_F1,
WEAPON_2                0x3c                    VB_F2,
WEAPON_3                0x3d                    VB_F3,
WEAPON_4                0x3e                    VB_F4,
WEAPON_5                0x3f                    VB_F5,
WEAPON_6                0x40                    VB_F6,
WEAPON_7                0x41                    VB_F7,
WEAPON_8                0x42                    VB_F8,
WEAPON_9                0x43                    VB_F9,
SWITCH_TOOLPACKS        0x14                    VB_T,
TOOL_LEFT               0x27 VB_COLON    0x1e   VB_A,
TOOL_RIGHT              0x28 VB_QUOTE    0x1f   VB_S,
ENTER_CHEAT             0x2e                    VB_C,
KILL_ALL                0x3f                    VB_F5,
RECHARGE_LIFE           0x40                    VB_F6,
RECHARGE_MAGIC          0x41                    VB_F7

SAVE_DIR                ""
CD_PATH                 "w:\bin\"




    

BACKWARD                 0x150                   VB_DOWN
DOWN                     0x150                   VB_DOWN
ENTER_CHEAT              0x2E                    VB_C
ESCAPE                   0x1                     VB_ESC
FORWARD                  0x148                   VB_UP
GOTO_GUIDE               0x22                    VB_G
KILL_ALL                 0x3F                    VB_F5
MAP_MODE                 0x1                     VB_ESC
MIDI_VOLUME              0xFF
MOVE_LEFT                0x33                    (Comma)
MOVE_RIGHT               0x34                    (Period)
OPEN                     0x39                    VB_SPACE
OPEN_DOOR                0x39                    VB_SPACE
RECHARGE_LIFE            0x40                    VB_F6
RECHARGE_MAGIC           0x41                    VB_F7
SHOOT                    0x11D                   VB_SPACE
SHOW_MAP                 0xF                     VB_TAB
SPEED_UP                 0x12A                   VB_SHIFT
STRAFE                   0x138                   VB_ALT
SWITCH_TOOLPACKS         0x14                    VB_T
TOOL_LEFT                0x1A                    (Left Bracket)
TOOL_RIGHT               0x1B                    (Right Bracket)
TRANSPARENT_MAP          0x32                    VB_M
TURN_LEFT                0x14B                   VB_LEFT
TURN_RIGHT               0x14D                   VB_RIGHT
UP                       0x148                   VB_UP
USE                      0x1C                    VB_ENTER
WAVE_VOLUME              0xFF
WEAPON_1                 0x02                    VB_1
WEAPON_2                 0x03                    VB_2
WEAPON_3                 0x04                    VB_3
WEAPON_4                 0x05                    VB_4
WEAPON_5                 0x06                    VB_5
WEAPON_6                 0x07                    VB_6
WEAPON_7                 0x08                    VB_7
WEAPON_8                 0x09                    VB_8
WEAPON_9                 0x10                    VB_9
ZOOM_IN                  0xD                     VB_PLUS
ZOOM_OUT                 0xC                     VB_MINUS
AD_KBD 1
    

Overall, the biggest differences in terms of controls are moving the weapons to the number keys instead of the function keys, and moving the "toolpacks" keys to the left/right brackets. Neat. JD.INI is the newest of the three files, last modified on April 18th, 1996.

The third and final file with ties to John Dark: Psychic Eye is JD.VMC, which is dated July 3rd, 1995 and appears to be related to some sort of virtual machine. There's not much in it, only having four strings as its contents:

minmem = 2000
virtualsize = 8192
deleteswap
swapname = c:jd.swp
    

The existence of these remnants and their used equivalents implies that code from John Dark: Psychic Eye was reused for Chill Manor, though it's hard to tell if the former game actually evolved into the latter one or not.

Faked Box Art

For some years, the only visual associated with John Dark: Psychic Eye was the alleged cover of its planned CD-i release:

It was assumed by CD-i/Animation Magic fans (including myself!) that the cover was legitimate, and that it was sourced from a CD-i catalogue of unknown origins. But as it turns out, this cover is fake. On December 12th, 2024, Tumblr user "generic-toy-shit-fucker" pointed out to me that part of the cover was taken from the 2004 book Abby Cooper, Psychic Eye:

This specific cover belongs to a hardcover pressing of the book that was released on April 20th, 2005, at least ten whole years after the development and cancellation of John Dark.
It's nice to have some closure on this matter, though this does mean we have no confirmed visuals from John Dark: Psychic Eye. Maybe we'll get something in the future. Who knows?

(Part of me wonders where the "JOHN DARK" portion of the image originates from...)