I second that. But as a classy French I am not allowed to send beer...

0003444_hennessy_xo_cognac_700ml.jpg

Full disclosure: I posted that in the Skit B thread after finding it in this thread

Still worth reading imo.

Another day passes.... no video, no blog updates, nothing.

I think that cabinet is going to have to be deeper than Black water 100 for that one. This better not disrupt the progress on Haunted cruise.

IMO we are holding out for a video as if that's going to change the trajectory of this project in any way.

I'm more interested in that Frozen pin at this point.

Iceman, if your visit is over the weekend, you are welcome to stay at my place. If it's during the week, I might be traveling.

Given my known record of sticking with Kevin K until the very end, are you sure you want to rely on my recommendation?

There are three current projects I am following with great interest: P3 / Heighway / Pinball circus.

Not just another day passed. Another month!

Only video I have seen on here recently was for Frozen. It wasn't flipping yet but appeared to be a real mockup. Time to ... Shutup and take my money, Frozen! Would this be considered a preorder or just a case of precipitation?

Frozen is mine. It is a 1-off I'm building for my daughter. I have no current intention of making it anything more then that for a variety of reasons.... and it flips and scores fine

Let it go!

If you call the number on the back of the Frozen DVD I bet you can get the rights real cheap

Congratulations on your video. Nice design, and I'm sure your daughter loves it.

For some "inventors" in this hobby, posting videos showing flipping prototypes is hard!

Retro - that's an unfair shot at Ben - its spin to say "phrasing suppositions as facts" - your making that up in your mind; Ben didn't say any of it was facts - to me it was clear it was opinion. I agree with Ben's thinking 100%. Also don't agree that it was rabble rousing - it added a thought as to how Zidware got to where it is now... and where it isn't. Frankly, I'm surprised that there are 157 pages for what Jpop said were just a couple dozen owners/pre-orders.

To me, John's games are cool but took an ENTIRE TEAM of experienced "everything pinball" group to make CV or TOTAN. From design, engineering, mechs, drawings, BoM, sourcing parts, quality control, build.... He worked for a business, he wasn't a business. I'm not sure why anyone would expect JPop to be able to manufacture. It was a small project with limited units - and he had Ben Heck as a coder/collaborator. Without code and a factory, or at least a small shop with minions to put it together, and a vendor(s) to give him trade-credit to order parts, and build his cabinets.... never mind.

This thread alone has more than 3 times the number of posts than the 37 threads combined in the Spooky Pinball forum here on Pinside. Yet Zidware and Spooky Pinball are both "pinball manufacturers". Strange, right?!?

What could possibly be soooo different between the two?

Ben worked with John, none of the rest of us did. I find his posts here more relevant because of it. Ben is a pretty extraordinary guy based on his projects I've watched on Element 14. Also, Ben did his coding on AMH, and John lost a big resource just looking at the result of the all-in-one board electronics and coding. I've heard from Charlie how much Ben worked on and contributed to the whole AMH success. And the opposite is the loss Jpop had to fill without Ben.

Not quiet none of us. Several pinsiders have helped/worked/supplied John with labor and parts and they are active in this thread.

But Ben worked with Zidware / JPOP and now he doesn't - being a former guy involved in JPOP projects had some value doesn't it?

And.... I hate to ask ... how did it take? My guess is - not - years.

5 months of: an hour here, a couple minutes there, I'll sleep on it, too busy this week to touch it, etc...

*cought* I mean.. *cough* 6 years... *looks around* 5 hours a night *cough* ...yeah.

I just had a look at the latest video of The Hobbit being played at Allentown. Wow. Very impressed.
Someone needs to get John to cut a deal with Jack of JJP, so they can get Keith and Ted to do their magic on the codes and rules for JPops machines.
It would be stellar.
This train wreck needs to get back on the rails! 'Times a wasten'

I think Jack will have his hands full with WOZ still selling, The Hobbit going into production soon and Lawlor's game following. That doesn't even allow for Game #4 that is likely in the planning stage. Remember, Jack doesn't have an operation the size of Stern's - yet.

Yeah, I agree, but it would be nice if it could happen, at least for those that bought in. The way it is going, they just won't have great code, and no matter how pretty the game is, without great code, it won't make it a great game.

.

The "bail out" theory sounded implausible, but in an optimistic world, would convincing a manufacturer to ship around 100-150 games to "existing customers" in exchange for 3 really great designs really be asking all that much? I could imagine Jersey Jack selling quite a few more of these in exchange.

Again, in an ideal world. It's too bad that didn't work out.

Regardless how badly the negotiations with JJP went, John's biggest failure after 4 years is that nothing has been finalized yet. Not one item on any of the 3+ design projects undertaken (MG playfield is not the last one). A tally of completed items from all games to date -

0 - cabinet designs
0 - cabinet hardware
0 - playfield designs
0 - game mockups
0 - shooting white woods
0 - software operating system
0 - game software v 1.0
0 - final game software

So how could anyone, including JJP, assign a realistic value to the projects in order to negotiate a deal? At what stage would any of them be considered complete? Taking over one of these projects would be a terrible decision, as it will undoubtedly become a money drain. However, taking over all projects along with their liabilities (which is the only feasible way to proceed to get John out of the picture), would rank as the worst decision anybody made in their lifetime. WHHHHOOOOOOOSSSSSHHHH!!!! is the sucking sound of the world's largest money pit starting to churn. Advice to potential suitors ..... RUN!!

Considering John has already been "paid" by getting his salary for several years, I think he should just cut his losses and run, and make a deal with Jack that has his customers best interest at heart. He probably wants "more" which is breaking any kind of deal with JJP. He probably wants his cake and eat it too. I'm guessing greed is getting in the way, but this is just a guess.

I would suspect Jack would want to keep his existing vendors for a lot of the parts, like cabinets. That may not be acceptable for John, who seems to have a no compromise approach to things. That from a financial standpoint, probably wouldn't work for Jack. He's already had tons of problems with vendors, so adding more complications wouldn't probably make it palatable for him. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation.

Even the infamous RAZA cabinets that were "complete".... when you look at them, you realize that the Godzilla has to be changed (and since has been changed on the playfield), as well as Mars Attacks guy, besides his eyes, he is now in cloaks and is no longer muscular. Not sure how long that art took to "finish" but it has to be redone...again. And then of course there is Robbie who is still in the game.

27.jpg
Shown at Expo '14. Notice Godzilla on left, muscular alien on right.

newZilla.JPG
New version of Zilla

newneb.JPG
new alien with robes and red eyes.

Godzilla with four arms and a horn isn't so bad. Obviously heavily "inspired" by Godzilla but I'm not sure if it is close enough to warrant litigation. The bones (or whatever they are) coming off his back are also very different than how Godzilla has always been portrayed.

The playfield version is OK, but look at the cabinet version. That is straight up Toho Zilla. Point is, the cabinet version had a lot of time spent on it to get it there, and needs to be redone.

And don't forget that zombieyeti showed up on here because John stopped communicating with and paying him. So who is going to revise the artwork now?

I don't know you frolic, but I've read your posts on here and on the blogs for a while. I commend you for always sticking your neck out to get John Popadiuk to come clean and stick to his word. I am sure that the other owners appreciate it too. If I'm ever in the Toronto area, I will buy you a beer or whatever the hell you want. I really hope that you come out of this with something.

So what happened to the video? Supposedly there were multiple pinsiders there, right?

We know pdxmonkey doesn't want to participate in this thread, who else was there?

I don't get why it would even be mentioned in public if no one actually has any intention of posting a video, let alone describing what they saw.

It's mostly therapy for me at this point. Gotta get things off my chest, all I can do about any of this. I am not hopeful I'll see my game, and the money is gone.

Yeah, but you have the guts to call him on it. Good for you. It's ridiculous what some of these guys are doing to good honest pinheads. It just puts a bad stain on a good hobby with good people. I just hope people don't get disheartened about it. Some people don't use the brains god gave them, and their hearts are not focused on the right thing. It's a shame really. People give up their integrity for some of the silliest things. A game for goodness sake.

So true. As we like to say, but often forget, it's just pinball.

The money is real! But this idea that the game has to be perfect is just silly.

Look at ACDC. One of the most beloved and best selling games of the modern era. It's unlovely to put it kindly, and full of clunk. And yet, people just love it. Because despite the warts it's awesome. You don't care that the cannon blocks the view of the inlane when you're stacking the shit out of that jackpot.

At a certain point you need to not worry about the damn hinges and just make something you can play. You don't fold the game up and down every day, you want to flip a ball.

John is like the picture of "don't let perfect be the enemy of good".

Jack can only focus on his current business.

I wonder what the complications are?

Last I heard jpop offered his designs with a royalty of $125 per machine to the larger manufacturers
The problem was who was going to supply the money for the already paid games.

Crickets???

What?!?! OMG I thought this could not get worse. Surely this is just rumor.

It seems JPop does not understand the buyer's point of view that they paid a premium price for a very limited game. Did he just drag on the design process pissing away all the funds that would have been used to build the actual games thinking that another manufacturer would buy the rights while also increasing the build run for it to work financially? That would be a blatant disregard for the pre-buyer's/investor's desires.
JPop sure seems like someone that is trying to milk a living off of incomplete work. He appears to have been collecting a salary all these years and in addition expecting a payday for selling off the incomplete work.

Given the size of most pinball runs these days, $125 bucks a machine does not seem like much of a payday (I imagine any of the three games shown would be VERY lucky to break 1000 units at current pricing). Especially when you are fending off lawsuits from your initial buyers. More likely you are lucky to say $125 X 600... not nothing, but hardly worth scheming years to collect.

Since the Big Lewbowski only sold 200 units, and that is a very popular theme, I have difficulty believing that MG could possibly sell 1000 games.

today, we are in a very different time/space than we were 3-4 years ago. That time there was BSM, Tron LE and BIBLE (to name a few) that people were looking at and saying that these games selling for 1.5-2x the price of when new. I think people thought, that if/when MG and RAZA were built they would be the next BBB.

However, now we have several problems.

-The price of MG/RAZA is already high, I understand it's a premium product but the price of MG is already 2x the cost of STLE as an example and you could buy 3 solid pro games (with change).

-The games are not in production and they don't look like they will be for a long time. Games like BBB and BIBLE were made first and then they went up in price. We have seen with MMR or WoZ, actually many games, that your 'spot' is not worth more than you paid for it. Maybe some people made some money selling their WoZ LE spots, because the price of later games went up, but not a lot of profit, and people have found that they might not be happy waiting 1-2 years or more for games they paid for. So paying up front is a risk and not really a sure fire guarantee that you will make a profit.

-the games are totally unknown. With Tron LE, BIBLE for example the games were in production, sold out and people found they were much loved. And people decided they'd like to have the best looking version and would pay more. Same with BSM, I mean after people discovered that BIBLE was worth more than a regular AcDc premium, the price of BSM started to go up. None of this is happening with MG or RAZA because they are not real pins (yet) they are not produced. Also another factor is they need to be much loved. Suppose these pins are made and they play like Gilligan's Island or X-Files or whatever. So while they may have the best hinges and look good, that's only the first part of the equation, they need to play great, have great code and have big followings like SM, Tron or AcDc (these are big sellers, so the top level of these games command a premium).

-other games like TBL for example are beating them to the punch.

-lastly, games like BSM or Tron LE may be selling for $8K to $10K but how many are changing hands at that price? It takes a seller and a buyer. just because you have a Tron LE doesn't mean you can automatically sell it for $10K. I have both red SM and Tron pro and sure I'd like the better versions, but I just don't see spending another $3-4K on top of me selling my games to upgrade to the better versions.

Vid I would think it is well over 200 machines not sure where you get this number as Barry indicated to me it was well over this. Also I really don't think TBL is a big popular theme like lets say AIW would be, it's just not.

Never gonna happen. It's just too much money. How low would it be priced? It's what? $16-17k now? Even if you slash that price to $10k it's still crazy expensive.

I was in on the TBL pre-order. I bailed before the drama. I won't be getting back in, as much as I think it's an awesome game, because I just can't stomach the price. I could afford it if I wanted it, but can't justify the expense. There's a limited number of people willing to pay that much for a game.

Once the people who are part of the cult following catch wind there are for sale, it will bring in sales from non pin people. AIW is going to sell to only pinheads