You can make a very strong case for Steve Ritchie being the most creative designer of all time, simply because of the number of 'firsts' his games have had... first flash lamps, first lane change, first wireforms, first two level playfield, first SS multiball, first magna save, etc.

he changed Midway's "Combat" to "Mortal Kombat" then did the voices for "Fatality" and all that stuff. Everybody knows all this but lets not get crazy and forget about how great Steve Ritchie is.

I believe that no one here doubts jpops commitment and passion for pinball.
what many have issues with is his business conduct. which is a train wreck.
I think its great that he is into doing his own thing.
just not on other peoples dime.
time to deliver the goods or throw in the towel.

I'm behind on the last one thousand posts, what have I missed? Cliff notes anyone.

Nothing. Still no flipping games shown.

Last 1000 posts similar to first 5000. Four years elapsed, $1M +/- paid in, 3+ pins under design, no flipping whitewoods, little communication from JPOP except for broken promises, heavy criticism on Pinside and small-level threats. Tales follow of speculative bets made (nobody has admitted to this yet), cracked piggy banks, disappearing funds with little chance of a refund, broken dreams, family fortunes destroyed, comparisons to 5 stages of grief, lost dreams and the pre-order model is broken and possibly even beaten to death.

At least two parts vendors have been stiffed for 7k and 25k (likely). Multiple contractors / employees have not been paid for their labor and have each quit in disgust. Aside from choosing an architecture that requires specialized skills from a limited applicant pool, low offer wages are expected to bog down efforts to secure top talent, leading some to believe that John will eventually be wearing that hat himself. Stories abound of John constantly changing direction and being impossible to work for. Currently there are needs for a program manager, lead programmer, programming support and a sound designer.

Many armchair quarterbacks and business managers here to offer free advice (some of which is very good, and the rest, not so much) and a group of Owners has informally tried reaching out to John, offering to help organize his affairs, assess the pulse of where these pins stand and come up with a path going forward.

Major reveals of MG & RAZA are on the horizon. AIW has been pushed out a few weeks.

You forgot the part about the large number of suppliers he has worked with not being paid for products delivered, and not to mention disgruntled/disillusioned former employees seem to be the only employees he has.

Let's not forget as it relates to Jpop as well, that Ritchie came in and helped finish WCS 94. No wonder it flows so well. I still think Lawlor does gimmicks better than Jpop, but prefer Ritchie's designs overall.

If we're talking about gimmicks, you can't top the greatest in all of pinball.. Mist multiball!

At this point it is hard for me to believe any Zidware machine released would be worth the journey those who prepaid have been on.

Anyone in the MG owners group able to share any positive news?

The difference between Heighway and JPop is experience.
H didn't have experience designing playfields (afaik) so had to learn from scratch what works and doesn't. Then you need a whitewood much more and will spend a lot of time in this phase.

I think John has enough experience to already have a good idea what works and what he wants on a playfield. And yes you still need to flip a whitewood and see if it actually flows like you thought, but it'll probably need smaller, easier to make modifications to fine-tune, and not drastic changes like leaving out complete toys or changing the whole layout.

And about software - I guess it depends on the liberty the developer would get ?
I have no idea how it works ie at Stern or how it was at WMS, how the creative process goes - maybe someone who knows can give me details as I'm interested to know ?

I guess the designer sits together a lot with the developer and they both come up with modes (and even names for modes ?) but once the whitewood is ready, the software developer has a lot of creativity himself and continues on the 'guidelines' the designer made.

You don't really need this - I get the impression JPop designs everything, the whole rulesheet is already in his head and he only wants to decide on it. He just needs someone who will implement what he wants. Then you don't need a developer who's also a good player.

Not that it's the best way to go - you probably get more creative designs when you combine the ideas from a large team, now you'll 'only' get what John will come up with. But that's what people signed up for, a custom game totally designed from scratch to finish by John.

that's fine and dandy, but considering he can't seem to find a programmer to come work for him, and he won't ship a playfield to mission, how exactly is that going to get done?

John would be able to defend his way of doing things if any of it actually got a game out the door. Right now we're at end of March, and he has basically disappeared on us again, no updates since Feb 27th, other than Alice and "great harm".

We know that the talks with FAST never panned out, and he has no programmer working for him, so month after month things are stalled. Other than having Zombie Yeti work on Alice, which is literally the last thing that should be happening at the moment with 2 very overdue games.

Yeah, it's looking like game over.

image.jpg

Magic Girl update on the blog, “Magic JINX Whizzing Disc”:
https://magicgirldev.wordpress.com/2015/03/30/video-of-the-day-jinx-outlane-whizzer/

Sounds like a vibrator when it's on Interesting though

Well, if nothing else that should settle the "was there a whitewood" debate. That's good I guess.

Very interesting...

Look nice!
https://magicgirldev.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/mg_bb_table.jpg?w=600&h=450

Of course it's nice... What else do you expect from "The Most Creative Guy in Pinball"?

That is old news. It has been there for a while.

Groovy!

notenoughtime.png

Yeah, the Whizzer is cool but wasn't the video made a while back? John does mention that he is putting together a new video so that would be a good thing.

I'd like to see video as much as anyone, but at this point that is all just spinning of the wheels if there is no plan in place to finish things.

only skimming this thread but there's no one left here actually arguing that jpop is ever going to release a real game, right?

PDXMonkey seems to be the only true believer left as far as I can tell.

Seems like most people have lost all illusion

He's the only one left on Pinside. Seeing comments on JPop's Facebook page seems to show proof that there are still people out there who would probably consider putting money down on AIW!

these posts from a thread in 2012 (if you are keeping count).

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/magic-girl-what-happened-to-it#postbox

I am sure games will be made. At least a few Magic Girls will be put together in some playable form someday. No idea when and no idea about software. The realist in me doesn't have much hope for anything else. But the idealist in me can't help but to cheer for Jpop to prove me wrong

:shrug:

These games are $17,000 and no programmer its currently employed to create code for the games? Who was originally suppose to create code for these?

Wait, so now the MG blog is open to the public again? I'm so confused.

The MG blog never stopped being public.

Sorry gweems I confused you. He had AIW open and closed it after folks talked about it. The rest has been the same.

Its a spinning disc on a playfield, didnt whirlwind have that 25 years ago? What am i missing, the placement or the catchy name..

It doesn't look like a spinning disk.

It looks like a poorly balanced magnet attached to a motor (think shaker motor with magnet instead of weight). He even changes the speed of the motor to change the effect.

The beginnings of something new in the Zombies blog as well. Look to the new page.

Much of nothin' so far but at least the link is opening.

ugh. this is exactly what I'm talking about. he's been spending time on an html "reveal" page, same as the MG one, which is just showing pieces of art and media and we know there is no complete game to show and no road map to completion.

The only thing I'm interested now is someone like Ice coming in and figuring shit out on the books, seeing if the business can even exist or whether this is all just a big circle jerk.

At least we finally got some good pinball news with heighway going into production!!

No kidding.

I went back and checked, the big Pinball News reveal (a REAL reveal) for Full Throttle was July 29, 2014. After that they brought it to some shows, made changes and tweaks, and we're entering production exactly 8 months later.

And that is with a full team of people working on it. Going from fully playable prototype shown to the world to games being made for customers.

Looks like the new RAZA blog is coming online tonight.
image.jpg

RAZA blog now has a few short videos of LCD animations, some sound files and some more artwork.

Like what I posted on the blog.... it's just become a source of verbal masturbation...

More specifically, *everything* on THREE games.

Too late now to leave, is that a reference to refunds?

Someone remote cannot fix this, unless they have a crap ton of money and throw it at the situation. Which would be crazy with John running the show. Circle jerk indeed.

I'm not sure, it seems as if John has not even remotely thrown in the towel. I think it's more a matter of it taking much more time than expected, so another 2-4 years would be my guess.

I believe John will pull it across the finish line. However by 2019 Stern and JJP will be catching up to where John is pointed.