He's coming to Tacoma?!

Yes, trying to find a little family car to borrow if you are coming the friday? I could at least get Machine it to my GF house in Mercer so you dont need to worry about it John is coming fri and setting a small table out in the lobby area!

This is the worst update thread ever, but I admire your passion, Iceman!

I would be interested to hear if they are looking into having Stern make their games as with the MMR.

too low of numbers these will be built like Bens . Also I said before new programmers and up and comers. .. will try and get names

Wow!! What can you say about this piece of RAZA cabinet art from JPOP? Amazing.
Watch out Bad Cats, it's a Zombie Cat !!
This was posted on the Pinball Inventor FB page on July 10th.

Zombie cat.png

3 protos of what?

RAZA
http://www.pinballinventor.org/welcome.html

image-306.jpg

Very cool.

I'm curious... what are the terms of this "case of beer" bet between iceman and RD?

Whitewoods? Or with actual playfield art?

The playfield art piece is trivial. OK, maybe one step more involved than the cab art (simple decal printing) but what difference does it make if there's art on a playfield prototype? Believe it or not, the *important* part of a prototype is the physical/mechanical/electrical assemblies, not the superficial artwork. That can (and generally does) get finalized and applied last of all.

What happened to Magic Girl?

Magic girl has like at least 4-5 complete cabinets with art and semi populated play fields with full art. The plastics are done also. Not sure if its a full playing game yet but it looks close mechanically. Not even a clue as to video or code being close. Boards look cool.

This week marks the three year anniversary of its announcement.

At this point it seems a no-brainer to contract Stern to build the games... would get out faster and in higher volumes than the handful they intend to produce. That would allow more time to design games.

It never even occurred to me that it would take this long. I was thinking maybe 6 months after the payment schedule was completed (the original timeline) games would be shipping. That was 2 years ago...

Here we are 3 years later...

So now that it's 3 years later - does anyone know who's animating for the LCD, programming, doing the music/sound?

For RAZA yes

John?

Or if playfield/cab art is final.
Or when the proto(s) will be finished.
Or when production will begin.
Or when games will be shipped.

I just want a date, no ones looking to hold Johns feet to the fire but when a date comes and goes and two years go by it gets a little worrying, discouraging and frankly I'm losing interest. I don't get the impression the project is a priority anymore.

I can't believe it's been 3 years either, and seems there's still a LOT to do. NDA or not I can't say I'm happy about that. I'm still in and I have faith that the game will be astounding but from what I'm seeing I predict another year before anyone sees any games, maybe more, so I wish John would get moving. Problem is, you don't want to rush him and have the game come out rushed, but he seems in no rush at all, keeps designing new playfield trinkets and art, thought that would have all been done by now. John's young and healthy now so I'll chance it that he'll be around to finish, but if he was Gene's age I wouldn't be too happy about sending him all that money. I might be in for MG & RAZA but if he wants money up front for all his games I might have to rethink.....

I'm in on RAZA and will stay in for the duration, but I'm not doing this again.

It's interesting to see the revisions, a process most other companies don't do at all (once and it's "good enough"), and how much the work changes, but I still think we the buyers would have been happy and content with that original backglass with ben heck on it, and not have considered for a second what might have been if he created a dozen more versions.

It took Michelangelo over 4 years to paint the Sistine Chapel so we are not past that milestone yet.

Gotta disagree with you on the B.H statement. I never liked BH's name on it and it made it easier for me to stay in when that was announced. I have NO problem with BH, seems like a nice guy, just didn't want to own such an expensive game with a likeness that no one else would know about unless they read pinside, I can't imagine having to explain to everyone who came to look at it who BH was, maybe make a little placard like Tim Arnold does........

I'm not saying I don't like the new art better, but the game was sold as BHZA, we saw the art, if we had the game a year ago instead of waiting all this time would we have been unhappy?

I think the idea here is that better is the enemy of good. John always sees something better. When he was with Williams he did not have this luxury.

I think for this money I'd rather have a better game rather than a quick game.

There is a saying you can have something done quick, cheap, and good pick two.

An artist unchecked! It has been said many times . That talent needs to be under thumb . Otherwise it can always be better , different or changed and just won't get done.
Great minds and artist need taskmasters for budgets and timeline restraints In order to crank out results.

Your ok with magic girl getting made in quantity more then 21? That's the new rumor..

Between the ceiling and the last judgement it took him 10.

So we should give Jpop some slack.

all for it as long as the price goes down and I get my machine faster.

It pains me to say that I've recently backed out of my commitment to RAZA due to personal reasons. Still looking forward to seeing what comes of this though.

Would think if they are making more of them it's cause they need to offset the original build cost for over runs and unforeseen cost... I doubt the 21 will be cheaper only what ever they make after being a cheaper model/version of it. Just a guess on my part as its only rumors

I remember when the first 13 spots became available and I had a mad moment where I thought about pre-ordering.

Now it's 21 and talk of more games. I wouldn't be that happy if one of the original 13.

I do agree that the more games that are built the less valuable that game would be but, the more games there are produced, the more likely there will be a supply of replacement parts, community support, ect,. There is a little trade off at least.

I think these guys get themselves into some trouble when they say they are going to build a small qty of games. Especially on something that is going to entail as much development time that JPOPs games do. He loses out on the benefit of economies of scale and could have made and sold many more off the initial time expense of its design, thus incrementally lessening that cost of games sold.

How the fuck do you order a game from him. I was interested in AIW and I emailed him numerous times and got no answer. I called every # I could find and got no answer. I finally decided that I didn't want to throw my money on a 3rd game of his when I the first one isn't out and I have seen no progress on it and the guy won't even return a phone call or a email. I may later say " I wish I had put my money down" but I could just as well be saying " boy Im glad I kept my money" . I put the cash on The Hobbit instead.

JPop sent me a letter about RAZA. I emailed him 3 times and called him twice. Never received any response.

Great artist - for sure
Great businessman - not at all

Personally I think he may have chewed off more than he really is capable of doing.

Would love to see these games made one day.

Does anyone know what he is going to do for support once the machines are delivered? The lack of communication leads to concerns about support in the future.

I would suggest that if you don't want to or can't work on machines yourself to bail now and don't look back.

Balls

Vaporware?

Vaporware? Maybe... but at least, as a result, we can enjoy some nice Magic Girl art from freelance illustrator Matt Andrews:

http://www.artstation.com/artwork/magic-girl

http://mattandrews.deviantart.com/art/Magic-Girl-Gargoyle-Sketch-434694851?q=gallery%3Amattandrews&qo=2

https://dribbble.com/shots/1421818-Magic-Girl-Gryphon
https://dribbble.com/shots/1421825-Magic-Girl-Gargoyle
https://dribbble.com/shots/1456198-Magic-Girl-Owl-line-and-fill
https://dribbble.com/shots/1464631-Magic-Girl-Owl

Unfortunately I haven't found any further pictures of Magic Girl.

I'm really wondering how many are being made (...if any).
There are rumors that it's going to be more than 21 games.

Heard there will be a scaled down version of magic girl to offset cost over runs.

Really? I thought JPOP said there will be no compromise.
Hmm... sounds interesting.
Kinda like that... ...but probably too expensive for me anyway. I like the art package as of what I've seen so far. Good looking Magic Girl, fantastic colors with Retro Atomic Zombieland Adventure.

I never heard anything like that, If he is I would assume he would tell the MG owners, I don't think he would do that, nor do I think he will make more than what he said, it's also in writing if that means anything. I just wish he would finalize the design and start building machines.

Is there anyone here on the RAZA waiting list?

I don't think the concern is so much working on the game but having parts available for when things fail, and they do fail, in the future. Imagine the issues WOZ had on a small run like RAZA or Magic Girl, the cost to rerun all those boards one, two, three times? I don't see how Jpop is going to support his games like that.

From the rumors I heard, he wanted to increase the numbers to 40 magic girls, then the latest one I heard at Allentown was keeping magic girl at 21-22 games and doing a strip down version run. Should be a beautiful game when done. Regardless of future support, the amount of time and quality he's doing should hold up well. U won't have rgb issues like woz, he's using regular 555 and 44 led bulbs.