At this point the legal risk is too high with this project to go anywhere near it. John's word is garbage, and there is no way any potential investor would know how many people are owed money, or might sue in the future. The project is dead.

Artwise? Sure...

Gameplay wise? Probably will be pretty boring. WCS is considered JPOPs best when it comes to rules, but as was pointed out it was taken from him. CV is ok. Tom and Totan are boring.

I don't know, the prototype looked pretty good

To clarify - CV 1.x is horrid.

CV 2.0 is fantastic. However, that wasn't John. That was Cameron, all the way.

To clarify further...TOM has good rules and shoots fantastic. It just has a crap wizard mode. TOTAN has decent rules too that are hampered by a couple minor bad decisions (get rid of the wishes for jewels and make the modes more difficult...like 3 ramp shots instead of 1 and the rules become good to great).

What the h--l, where did you come from? There is no game. A million dollars down the drain for nothing. I'm blown away by the sound of my $10K gone.

There is a game.

B/S, I'm an owner of the vaporware, so I've seen the video, it has paper ramps and some of the mechs don't work. The ball has to be captured and manually put back into play. B/S!!!! I could do better with a month of time, $1K, and some clip art of Godzilla, Robbie the Robot and Mars Attacks.

Sure there may be "a" game. Problem is lots of people(plural) paid for games. A ton of the stress/anguish around this deal would subside if John(Jpop "the artist" lol) would just SPEAK. Sad to see all this, and hope people get what they paid for.

Okay, I'll bite. What do you consider "a game" specifically? Maybe you just have a different definition than the rest of us.

RON

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Ronnie1114
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9 Minutes Ago Post #8352 ¶QuoteReportIgnore
There is a game.

Only game is hide and seek
As in John is hiding and buyers are seeking information

Relax bro! I'm told some "major rampage" is on the way.

2.0 helps a lot, but the game is still fundamentally broken. How many times do you deliberately shoot either end of the RM loop outside of multiball? How often do you deliberately shoot for Acrobats, or Menagerie? Half the playfield is rarely used.

TOTAN also has a major bug that allows for a huge exploit of points.

http://papa.org/2011/02/02/genies-harems-dont-mix/

Needs left orbit rules reworked to be less lucrative

This wouldn't change a thing, because all the points in TOTAN come from the lamp and bonus (when not exploiting HAREM bugs). This game was designed for beginners and the rules are just awful. 70K for mode shots when one can get 10M in bonus just by racking up spins and shooting the captive balls?

Well, sure, not as MANY time as other shots, but hell.. in TAF, how often do you *purposefully* shoot the pop bumpers, when not in Raise The Dead? NO game has t he player wanting to make ALL the shots the same amount of time.

Many here would argue that those are good and some may say great games, regardless, I think the majority of folks would agree they are fairly shallow games and any game this is 100% geared towards collectors, needs to have good depth. Given how little info has ever come out about rules, it is hard to believe the rules will live up to the aesthetics and the expectations of collectors. Great pinball machines have balance, between art, playfield design, rules, sounds, dots, toys, music, etc. The little bits we have seen, all fall into just the first two categories.

Most great games are able to keep the whole playfield interesting most of the time. SM and LOTR are good ezamples of using the whole playfield in an interestint manner across most of the game.

I doubt Stern would agree. Even if they got it for free, why would they want the liability of being involved? Stern is a competitor too, another reason to not help.

Even if they did go this route, the money situation on John's end is still a fairly big and also a scary unknown.

Rarehero brought up "Thief and the Cobbler" a few thousand posts back and it's the best analogy yet for JPOP.

Richard Williams has done amazing work over the years, from commercials, possibly the best version of A Christmas Carol ever, and animation director for Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

In all those situations he had a boss, a timeline and a due date. Thief and the Cobbler was something he tinkered on for years, and finally got funded once Rabbit hit big.

Then he proceeded to spend a lot of time and money not finishing it (despite having the resources to work on it full time) He also went through staff like shit through a goose (sound familiar?) and kept changing things (hm...)

Finally (here's the part where we use the past to predict the future) it was taken away from him and the completion bond company spent as little as possible to patch in holes to release... SOMETHING. "Arabian Knights" in USA and nobody gave a damn. (Fans have since made restoration cuts, animation is great, the story is still garbage IMHO)

During that same period Disney basically ripped off the setting, cranked Aladdin out in 2 years, and made loads of cash. Making Arabian Knights, when it did come out, look like a rip off when it was the other way around.

Yes, but in CV I found myself shooting nothing but the left orbit and ramp (and the lock targets on ramp misses). Raise a RM, start one of those three other multiballs (highwire, strike an ark, juggler), rinse/repeat. That will get you through the entire game. The center inserts for Menagerie, Spin, Sideshow, Boom and RM Frenzy just kinda happen along as you play...

Wow! Wikipedia article is astounding
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thief_and_the_Cobbler

"With The Thief and the Cobbler being in production from 1964 until 1995, a total of 31 years, it surpasses the 20-year Guinness record[5] by Tiefland (1954), eventually having the longest production time for a motion picture of all time. The film was also the final appearances of Sir Anthony Quayle, who died in 1989, and Vincent Price, died in 1993."

So what you're saying, just wait it out, and either the money runs out, or John dies of old age, but eventually the project does get finished one way or another.

Ah, see, I always went for stacking multiballs.

In either case, the point I was trying to make was that there are a LOT worse games out there as far as gameplay goes. (And in reference to someone else's comment, I'd actually put WCS *under* CV, personally, but I AM biased..)

And taking this one step further and actually back on-topic -

Since Jpop isn't dong that art himself, and can't do a good ruleset to save his life (ref CV 1.x, and other games), does that mean that the only good thing about his games that he did himself would be the *layout* of the playfield?

Debating about how deep these games will be, or even how good they'll be, was a debate for 1-2+ years ago.

Now it's if these games will ever see light of day and whether everyone who sent money in will lose it.

The closest game to completion is Magic Girl and for the first time we can see just how complete it is. We've been BEGGING John to answer that for over a year now. He put us off all this time just to show a white wood with paper ramps.

Guys there are basically three parts to creating a great machine. when you take Jpops previous games all I look at is layout, original concept design and art and finish. Programming is a separate beast all together and we know the ones out there that have mastered this craft and seems there are more on the way. Building a pinball is hard ....leave it to the business and manufacturing people! To me it is a perfect storm when all three of these come together and I think this is why there is great anticipation when we all talk about Pat Lawlor's up coming game. I need to stress Jpop is one of the masters in one of the three categories not gonna argue who is best because we all have taste and preferences. It's the business man that is smart enough to create the perfect storm who will triumph, taking the chance to do all three and produce something great in a timely fashion well it is a total long shot in my humble opinion and one of the worst business decisions one can probably make. Due diligence is the buys part...I failed on this one

I'm just taking a wild stab, but since both you and PDXmonkey are relatively close to one another geographically (and he definitely is still involved with the project based on both his and John's last posts), are you involved in the project as well at this point? If so, can you give the owners any update for the project to add some context to your vague positive statements? They heard ramps were coming back in January, along with countless other lies documented pretty well by Frolic. It would be nice to hear a truthful, informed state of the game from someone still in John's inner circle, since John is refusing to talk with anyone but those still in his good graces.

If I guessed wrong and you have no connection to the project, I apologize for assuming wrong.

Could he (or whoever takes over the project, if anyone) do wire form ramps? I know those are usually more expensive but in small batches perhaps they would be cheaper...totally doesn't go with the art package though so perhaps it is a no starter.

I'm sure everyone did their due diligence at the beginning, but there wasn't much in terms of negative findings :/. John just started his venture in what, 2011? Prior to that he was known to have his name on totan, tom, cv and wcs. So he was proven to have been involved in the creation of successful pins and everyone knew this which is why it was easy for jpop to get that preorder money. Sure there were a few red flags in the beginning but there's always going to be some red flags in any entrepreneurial endeavor. No one should blame themselves as it was pretty clear cut; you either take a leap or walk the other way. I'm still shocked about all of this, really. Jpop would have been the last guy on my list to be in this type of situation as one would think he had all the prior knowledge of manufacturing, purchasing and distribution.

I am not physically involved, but I know one of the people making parts. Its only up from here.

Are you allowed to elaborate? Or we're sticking with PDXmonkey-style posts?

I see your points however not sure I agree with them all. I don't think I would put my faith or should I say hard earn money in any of the designers to go out and do the games from start to finish. They all worked at big companies that would hold fire to their feet and had resources galore to fall back on, and even in some cases get the design taken away and finished by others. To me there is a huge difference between artistic designing, programming great rule sets and manufacturing. Like I said if their is one individual that has all these qualities and can actually spend the time needed on each facet then whoa all the power to them. I however with 20/20 vision would think this is a long shot at best and I'm no gambler. I would look for the excellent design/art and table, however also do my due diligence on the person and or team to where their skills lie in programming and most of all manufacturing. If there is a huge hole somewhere in and amongst these count me out.

Haha... ok. A lot of people know people who made parts. They all got stiffed and the contracts cancelled.

More hand-wavy non-committal bullshit.

Why do the sycophants all use the same Popaduik non-speak?

Although it's sad when you put it like that, it's the truth. I think we've all learnt so much from the whole jpop situation (I certainly did). I mean Kevin with Predator was really a giant leap of faith, but even with someone who was engraved in the industry like jpop it's never really a smoking gun.

Not the case with this guy, he hasn't had any problems with Jpop.

What a crock of shite.

It's the whole "golden rule" of paying for information. He teases and teases, then he sits and waits for someone to pm him with $20 offer to spill some info lol. Next he'll tell you to meet him in a dark alleyway with the goods...

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Please don't feed the troll.

if this person making the parts is aware of jpops deadbeat behavior paying vendors, he must have a set of epic proportions.

Paradigm shift. Trolling in a thread by saying positive things. The internet is weird.

We've had people for years now "tell" us how great everything is. A lot of good that did us.

It's on jpop right now to prove he isn't a complete flake that burned a million dollars with no way forward and so far he doesn't have much to show.

I am friends with Jpop and have tried to pleade with him to give people some sort of better updates, but he seems not to care to inform the owners anymore; which is just not right and at this point in time MAGIC GIRL should be done; I can't believe that he does not have them ramps done for it yet. I wish he would l;isten, but he chooses to just leave teh owners in the dark and leave them not knowing what is going on which is just not right.

Yeah, and it's called "Pre-Order Roulette"

Congratulations John, you have now displaced Skit-B as the #1 thread on Pinside. You are #1. Here's a tip, you don't want to be #1 on this list.

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Man, I drained the Predator thread when it became nothing but pages of people arguing about the definition of "scam", sad that it's still going.

That's what makes the size of this thread all the more indicting. There was never pages of boobs posted, things have stayed relatively on topic.

Thousands and thousands of messages about the clusterF of these games on the biggest pinball forum on the planet. That will be John's legacy, sadly.

With frineds like Jpop, who needs emenies!?!?

Or enemas!

I know at least 2000 posts on Skit-B were boobs.

I think, I'm done posting here until we hear more from John or his attorneys. Maybe once those ramps are installed he'll have a be able to do a Labowski reveal.

Xmen thread has 9600 posts and 193 pages.

when he stated that michael jackson was something to the effect of a 'class act', after working closely with him, it was enough for me to sell my WCS94 a day later ! lol But then again, I am a little on the ridiculous side!