I think John was playing wait and hope and distract myself with other projects because he knew some time ago that he did not have the money to make this machine. I think the info from applejuice supports what PDXmonkey and StevenP have been saying which is that there are two machines there that are much farther along than John was willing to admit. At some point, I think StevenP even said that MG is about as playable as a very early release Stern Pro. We will find out soon. The only reason for a machine that far along to not go farther is a lack of money to get it produced which lead to John misleading us all.

I totally get it... John gets to the point where the fun and creative part of pinball design is over and the hard work begins and rather than putting in the hard work and effort to see it through he just starts the fun and creative part of designing a new machine. Do you really think John wants to spend months designing a wiring harness and ensuring that all 3K parts are in spec and ready to order and working on the business side of things? He just wants to play and have "arts and crafts time" which is exactly what he's been doing for the last 4 years. I think he has more in common with a young child then someone that has actually grown up and accomplished anything on his own. His past successes were all in an environment where someone else did all the heavy lifting for him.

This exactly. I understand why MG customers want to overlook the fact that the Pintasia proposal is, at best, a legal grey area because it looks like the only way a MG will get delivered. However I can't reiterate enough that further costs involved:

* Increased production lessens the original value proposition
* MG customers getting fiscal priority at the expense of RAZA/AIW customers
* Revocation of legal rights
* No guaranteed delivery unless all 199 are spoken for and consumer rights fully waived by all involved.

JPop's crowdfunding was already a legal grey area, and Pintasia is proposing substantially higher levels of crowdfunding with few additional legal guarantees. It's like groundhog day all over again, aside from a 10 fold increase in MGs.

I hope that the NW Pinball show will allow the Pintasia presentation to be livestreamed or at least recorded. I have enjoyed watching livestreams from Expo and am very interested to see the presentation. Some livestreaming of gameplay would be cool too. How about taking the prototype to Jack Danger and Deadflip so they can stream a couple of hours of live gameplay for us?

You wont catch me doing this very often, but I have to give John a tiny bit of credit here. There were posts of wiring diagrams and wiring harness builds on the owners group webpage. I agree that John just wanted to do the fun stuff, but I think he distracted himself with a million other little projects because he knew he didnt have the money to produce the games and continued to hope that the situation would somehow work itself out.

Since we're getting a flood of info, it's time to ask:

How does it shoot?

If it doesn't have the trademark Popdiuk flow, and go over like gangbusters at the NW show, Bill & Co should pull the eject lever.

Since we're getting a flood of info, it's time to ask:

How does it shoot?

Ben - you and Charlie played with John. Can he play pinball?

fear of success

MG is much further along than RAZA

All the toys for RAZA are not complete
The art, theme and direction of the pin needs major rework, Godzilla,Robbie the Robot, Mars etc will need to changed.

If Pintasia can pull off MG, RAZA will be next but in terms of getting a game to a production line MG is the clear choice. Because of John actions or lack of them there isn't a lot of time to get the ball rolling.

Wait a horrible way to end a career.

I think the question everybody should be asking is:

"What are the exact terms of your deal with Zidware?"

"You appear to have most of the assets of that operation, and there are 100+ people who paid for what you have in your possession, that you owe an explanation to on how you got it?"

I'm very glad that github keeps logs of all updates and that i also listed every single changed section in a summary for each update, as well as the actual code changes of course.

I'm also glad that i kept backups of shared dropbox areas between my company and Zidware

Well, given his actions, I'd rather see it end here than continue on as a paid consultant...

I was feeling a small shred of sympathy for the guy..... UNTIL I saw the email that he was still trying to collect prepayment money as of a couple weeks ago.

Yep, game over after that.

There's no "he had the best of intentions, but got in over his head and just couldn't honestly make it work" bullshit after than revelation.

None if that. Straight-up scumbag status now.

The way you post and your recent posting history make it sound like you a a member of Pintasia.

Is this correct?

What involvement do you have on this project at this point?

Zidware still owns the assets, Pintasia has the rights to use them and the IP.

This whole thing is just so unreal to me. Guys, this is JOHN POPADIUK. The man was a literal god in pinball. One of the top creators in the hobby, and he's fallen so far. It's to the point where nobody can say his name to another pinhead without there being some raised eyebrows and a sigh. This would be like Michael Jordan running a basketball camp and when the kids show up there are no baskets to shoot on, only the promise that they'll be there on day 2 (after everybody bought their 5-day pass).

We all thought that he could do it. When the project was announced, our ability to pay was the only thing that held a good number of us back. I never once thought that this is how it would all play out.

I hope that those with money in eventually get one of the greatest pinball machines ever created, but man, I just don't see many avenues to a happy ending here.

Zero position with Pintasia
I'm just helping if I can.

For the record Bill isn't asking for any money!

Didn't you fund the development of the ramp molds?
Was that seperate to the Pintasia take over?

Not sure how you make this leap. He made WCS (before it was finished up by someone else), TOM, CV and SWE1. Most of which are considered pretty mediocre as a whole. CV, which most people would call his best game, didn't sell when it was new because ops didn't want it.

He was a guy who worked in pinball. He's rather creative with physical design and art direction. But he was just one spoke on a wheel that got games made back in the day.

Edit: Oh yeah, I forgot TOTAN. My bad. Another pretty game that most people yawn at the gameplay of.

WCS, ToM, CV, and TOTAN are all A list games. It's crazy to suggest that John isn't incredibly talented in pinball design. He's obviously just as incompetent in regards to business as he is talented at design, however.

John, get two envelopes.

I'd love to share some inside info on this project. The short of it - I can say It started well. Once Ben left (which I was never told about) I started getting strange requests to draw things that were copyrighted. (Which I refused to do - and in fact, did not initially, but repeated 'tweaks' to get to the IP was constant until it was what he wanted) I eventually got so beaten down I threw up my arms.

I'm hoping with Pintasia I can take the reigns and redeem myself on what it should be...

Listen - I'm not trying to pile on John - without him I wouldn't have gotten in front of you guys here - so not all was bad.

Guys - take it easy on PDX Monkey. He is not a John or Pintasia mouthpiece. John let certain people have his ear and PDX was one of them. I know some of you will say that is he because he was a yes man and those were the only people John would talk to. I think PDXMonkey is a straight-shooter who is heavily invested in this thing, really wants to see this game made and has spent his time and money to try to see that happen. That is why he paid for the ramps and keeps working to get these pinballs made even though the only thing he will get out of it are the pinballs he paid for in the first place.

Good games , very good games....(not great games, IMO).

One thing they have in common - to me- (I hesitate to say flash over substance) but they are stronger on art than game-play....

I love the part of the Adobe video where John says something like there was too much linework and Zombieyeti says that he starts doing the revision once he stops crying. I can't image how patient you must been to have worked with John on creating all of this.

V E R Y ....

I disagree....big bang bar does not have a superdeep ruleset? it is a piece of rare art with humor?

Ben your exactly right. I don't mind spending the dough to get it there, then analyze if its really as good and smooth as it looks. Also if it is reproducible at a reasonable cost. I have people who will step up to give me those answers. At the least us customers will have one flipping game to split 165 ways and not one person needed to put up money time and resources to get it there (except me). Again, open book here and I'm drinking no koolaid. It is what it is and just trying to get to point where real educated decisions can be made.

BBB was also $4500 for pre-order and had only Stern to compete against for pinball dollars. If/When Magic Girl is completed I have no doubt it will be worth big money but I think it's going to be difficult to find people willing to wait another 3+ years to get one, especially at a cost of $10-$16K if the gameplay is anything less than spectacular. There are just too many other options these days... JJP, DP, Spooky, Heighway to name a few. From the rumors I've heard on Spooky Pinball's new pin is that the artwork is going to knock our socks off! And that pin WILL actually get made on time and for a reasonable price!

hehehe...

By the way just to be clear there are many brothers for sure putting in there time its more figure of speach and i thank them all

BBB was limited by the number of boardsets Gene got when he bought out capcom. Anyone who wants to revisit that saga need just go back on rgp and search.

The short of it is though that BBB was always going to be limited. It took forever to get built. Beauitful art, but gameplay wise you will see people say if its value would fall between airborne and PM.

in regards to the open book....could you open and turn to the page that describes your deal with Jpop regarding Pintasia obtaining the rights to the game and share with Zidware investors what it says?

I agree.

And if this answer isn't given to the owners of all 3 JPop pins, it will certainly have to be answered in a Bankruptcy proceeding.

I do have to give Bill a lot of credit though, he is really sticking his neck out there trying to make this work.

Me neither. His resume pales behind those of guys like Ritchie, Lawlor, Eddy, Kordek, Python, Barry O...

For me he really only made one classic, TOM, and plenty of people dislike that one as well. His legacy is pretty games with creative themes and with half-baked code. Oh...and this thread.

Interesting that his least expensive/sought after game is also probably his best (WCS). You don't see that too often. I give TOM the edge but again, it's on theme/toys/overall package. That's always been Pop's strength.

Are you referring to his games or to him as a person? Because I think this describes both....

Wow, that's VERY interesting to see! Thanks for posting that. I assume that was a "flippable" whitewood, right? That's what everyone had been asking to see for so long. I can't help but wonder how things might be different at this point, if John had just dropped the idiotic secrecy and showed a picture like that along with some video of it flipping back in March of 2014.

ToM is definitely his best game, i poo-poo'd the code for a while but i enjoy the stackability of that game and now i own another one after a good break.

WCS is way shallow and linear in a way where there's really not much going on.

MG looks to me like a collection of his greatest hits, not sure how that will all come together though, one ramp games tend to get old after a while.

-c

How about a video clip of the game in action? would be really cool to see.

-c

It is clear Bill does not intend on answering that deliberate, to the point question.

I appreciate the candor.

It's good that Bill is posting in the thread, but he's not actually answering the questions.

What's the terms of your deal with Zidware?

It's funny how this thread has over 11,000 posts, and really no one has even spent a moment speculating about the rules. How the game will shoot. Anything that's the actual "pinball" part.

It sort of tells the whole story really.

I guess we'll find out soon enough either way.

Don't know if anyone wants my opinion, but I am going to give it in the spirit of myself being a skeptical person at heart. I'm more of one to take things with a grain of salt. Or more of one, if someone tries to butter me up, think what's the downside for me?

When John announced: It is with great excitement, determination and love for pinball that has led me to pursue and find a possible solution that can be announced to you today.

I am going to give my two cents. Also, I may have missed some posts, I have not read every single 2000+ posts in the last 5 days.

1) this deal is OK (so-so) for MG owners. It stinks for RAZA/AIW owners.

2) I know MG owners paid more per game, so they have more sunk cost. But let's just pretend that most of the money is stolen (I won't say spent but stolen by John). If MG owners feel they won't get blood from a stone, or decide it's not worth suing John because the assets are not worth much. Anyway lets say they are in for $12K already and RAZA owners are in for $6K. I am only using round numbers, I'm sure there are all different numbers. So in essence if/when the games get built, the MG owner pays another $4K and the RAZA owner pays another $10K (*new money) this new money plus credit brings both total up to $16K.

3) these games are getting made with *new money. That is, unless John also hands over a bag of money, that the money collected (in the future) will pay for the pins, not the money in the past. So RAZA owners are footing the bill for new money (not great with math) but it looks like my example the RAZA owners will pay 2.5x more *new money.

4) the RAZA owners while it's true have paid less individually, they have contributed the lions share of the funds to John.
RAZA $6K x124 ($744K)
MG $12K x 26 ($312K)

RAZA owners combined have paid John more money (the money wasn't segregated, it was used for Kiss, for MG for RAZA) globally the majority came from RAZA owners. One could argue that John being the jerk he is, took more time, effort, money to make MG but that time, efferort and money were supposed to have been allotted to RAZA as well but he did jack shit for RAZA.

5) if RAZA owners sign up (and I mean RAZA and AIW owners) and they are forced to pay the same as MG owners. In effect they are subsidizing the MG owners, twice. First time John when he didn't segregate the money, he used the rent and the computers etc... for all his games but most of the money came from RAZA owners. The second time MG owners are subsidized is when the *new money* is collected to pay the BOM and assemble of the games. So MG owners get a game for $4K new money and RAZA owners pay $10K new money.

6) one fair solution, I don't say good solution, but more fair. Would be for there to be 26 (super editions) they have a plaque #1 to #26 and the MG owners pay up $16K (with credit for money already paid in) so around $4K new money. Then the 124 RAZA owners pay the difference of what they didn't pay to bring the total up to $10K (around an additional $4K) and they get a regular edition MG (not the super edition because it won't have a numbered plaque).

To me, if I was a RAZA owner or AIW owner, I am not getting buttered up enough, you know the carrot and the stick. I see the stick, just don't see much of a carrot if I have to pay $9K or more for a game when I could buy any game made for $9K (except the rare birds).

I just can't see how this is good for anyone but the original MG buyers. Everyone is being asked to pay more so those original 16 buyers can maybe get their game? Maybe i'm just not grasping it, but if I'm not one of the original MG buyers, i'm telling everyone to pack sand and hiring a lawyer to bury JPop.

It also took a 3rd party to come get involved to get BBB done and out the door. Kerry Stair swooped in and saved that one.