The Judges (demogroup)

The Judges was a Dutch Commodore 64 group from Roosendaal known for being one of the earliest dedicated demogroups. The Judges released several demos for the Commodore 64 home computer between the years 1986 - 1988.[1] Groups such as The Judges are regarded as early pioneers of what came to be known as the demoscene.[2]

In some respects they mirrored The Lords, a "rivaling" ZX Spectrum group also from Roosendaal, to the extent that concepts, artwork and even titles were identical between the two groups.

A technical milestone often attributed to The Judges, particularly the programmer Bart "White" Meeuwissen, is the invention of the FLD (Flexible Line Distance) technique,[3] which was used in the Think Twice series of demos. As the name implies, FLD made it possible to have a variable distance every eight pixels between the individual text or graphics lines generated by the VIC-II video chip.

The group's musician Jeroen "Red" Kimmel went on to compose and sell video game music commercially for different platforms such as the C64, Amiga and MSX computers.[4]