Thanks for clarifying that.

So we were told as recently as a few weeks ago, the first Magic Girl customers would get their machines at expo, and in those few weeks since we are back to non-flipping games that no one can even try.

I though they said before the end of the year? (Not that it makes much difference..)

Yes, they've said all of them before end of 2016, but the first ones (Chris from Cointaker was specifically said) would be delivered at this Expo.

The thing is, even if a customer did not take home a game at expo, I think its realistic that they could have at least shown a final working game. They DO have a working magic girl, don't they? In any playable state? Otherwise we're right back to where we started with empty promises from John, and now empty promises from AP.

I think you're leaving out the possibility that they can't show the machine due to legal issues, but keep bangin that drum.....

Magic Girl has been SHOWN to people... but no one can play it. Non-flipping. I doubt any legal issue would allow them to show a machine, but no touchy touchy.

I'll just add, that I'm just a customer, here at my house, I am not privy to anything going on behind the scenes. But I do know this... John is a liar. He's lied about the state of his games and progress since the beginning and hid and obfuscated everything along the way. So to somehow think he's NOT the reason Magic Girl is non-flipping, that if it were up to him it would be at the show and the public could play it... that is not probable.

^X2!^

Ah! Okay! I missed the Expo comment.

And I agree - so far, it's been the same thing as John, all show and art. (And as per one of the Expo threads, the American Pinball guys *don't know who did the art*? Seriously?)

You just gotta love JPOP and his tricks. First empty cabinets. Now non working playfields with flashy art. What next ? A virtuapin cabinet with MG ?

Nope! As that implies functional whitewood development and engineering completion...

^wow, I hope that is not true... but the sad thing is, I can also believe it.

Is this for real?

Is someone from the MG group attempting to sell their spot and schilling up the crap that is AP to try and find a person to buy? Who?

As long as the buyer knew the situation and went in eyes wide open I don't see the issue. The spot buyer would be a fool, yes, but if they get burned it is by playing the speculation game and losing.

If he was selling to someone outside the community who didn't know about the Jpop saga that would be wrong.

Start with a K? There are two K's that seem to bash Heighway.

Its hard to go in eyes wide open when excitement is being artificially pumped up.... in stock trading this practice is known as Pump and Dump... is highly illegal and will land the perpetrator in jail (if caught).

I guess the police should read my spam emails LOL

Yeah lol... since when have the feds ever enforced anything.

Did he sell his position? You couldn't make most of this Expo stuff up!!

I'm not taking any sides here, but.....
I didn't see this person you are referring to, say anything different than anybody else already said, that was in contact with AP. Did I miss the "pump and dump"?
For the record, I was contacted by a person to sell my MG spot and if I had a MG spot, I would would of jumped at the chance. Although I would of told the buyer he better make damn sure of what he is doing before money exchanged hands. I'm not saying that didn't happen between the parties of any supposed sale of a MG.

storm (resized).jpg

My wife absolutely loved the Houdini playfield and all of the other Houdini art that AP had on display at expo. She kept insisting that we get one and seemed genuinely confused about why i didn't seem excited about it. After we left the AP room, i had to tell her the whole story. It was quite amusing to me but a bit of a letdown to her.

Beautiful populated playfield though.

IMG_20161014_112912 (resized).jpg

Are you doing Kaneda's podcast ice? I will def tune in for that one!

I'll only listen if ice promises to drink before recording it. Drunk ice > sober ice

I agree a few cocktails before hand = a much more entertaining podcast!

Saw this today while on the HSA pinball restoration site (http://www.hsapinball.com/HSA_PINBALL/Home.html).

(25) playfields made for Magic Girl.

http://www.hsapinball.com/HSA_PINBALL/hsa071516magicgirl.html

Good find. I wonder how many playfields were in the first batch in January? 25 + ?

Interesting. Still some artwork (which necessitates rule) changes. I hope that's a good thing, as someone sat there and goes, 'Wait, you can't do that.'.

I hope they got the money up front.

this line from HSA Pinball is fascinating

"The project was picked up by American Pinball in 2015"

I don't think it was a typo. Does anybody know anymore about this? Bill Brandes -- any comments?

This is the entire information on the linked page.

September 2012: John Popadiuk contacted us to clear coat some test panels and a Magic Girl whitewood playfield. HSA was located about 40 miles away from Zidware so this made it easy to move parts around. We did some additional work for him in 2013 and then everything stopped when Zidware started to have financial issues. In 2014, HSA moved from IL to Arkansas.

The project was picked up by American Pinball in 2015 and we got the next batch of playfields in January 2016. We were hesitant to start working on the Magic Girl project again due to the issues with Zidware but American Pinball promised to take care of all Zidware customers to make “everything right”. American Pinball told us that after Magic Girl the next batch of playfields will be a larger 100 piece order and they have several different game titles planned. The next 25 Magic Girl playfields came in July 27, 2016. We were expecting this batch of playfields to be screen printed but they were UV digital printed. Unlike the January batch, these playfields were printed on thicker 15mm wood (great). Also, unlike the January batch of playfields, someone changed the type of wood primer to an oil base sealer and the 25 playfields were no longer compatible to our acrylic urethane automotive clear coat. All playfields (25) were sent back to American Pinball. As of date (Aug 2016) we have not done any additional work for American Pinball, mainly due to the physical distance from them in Chicagoland to us in Arkansas. On a side note, I will say that my dealings with American Pinball was pleasant and I wish this new pinball company well. Hopefully all Zidware customers will start receiving their games soon.

Bill has been VERY quiet since the Houdini announcement that also mentioned delivering MG. My speculation is that jpop *conveniently* forgot to mention he no longer owned the rights to MG when he was working his deal with AP (and probably didn't tell them a lot of other stuff as well). Perhaps that's why Houdini was originally shown in a Zidware cabinet, yet that had to be yanked for expo. Unfortunately for AP, they didn't have time to get all the Z's off the Houdini parts, so it's obvious it's a zidware originated design/playfield.

I'm also speculating that Bills lawyers are talking with AP legal to try and get this worked out - hence the radio silence.

In the end, I think Iceman had the best advice - dump Jpop and start over from scratch. ....nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

Bill mentioned they had tried to reach him... but he hasn't shared detailed since. My guess is they got some iron fist once they actually started talking in detail and AP retreated from trying to use the content jpop had licensed or transfered the rights for...

Wow! nearly an 1/8" too thick, and why would you ever use oil base sealer on a wood playfield that's about to be clearcoated? that just screams of fish eye. I can just imagine some of the conference calls with John (if he actually picks up his phone).

JOHN!!! first you lie to us about a nearly complete houdini and magic girl playfield, then you lie to us about owning the rights to these 3 games and the cabinet design, now these playfields are trash!

At some point even a reputable company has to run the numbers and realize there's no salvaging this. They should cut their losses with John, design a new cabinet, a new playfield with Balcer, and move forward. They should draw up a contract that says they own all his work thus far, and by agreeing to it they agree not to also file a lawsuit against him for perjery.

John is nothing but a pudding head that doesn't deserve a designer title. At the very most, he should only be allowed to design small mechs and pitch them to pinball companies (which have to be proven to work with life testing).

I agree. ...and that makes me wonder how AP could possibly even consider giving Chris his MG at Expo (oh wait - that didn't happen.....shocker), or delivering all the rest by the end of this year. ...yeah, I'm not holding my breath for that either. I'm guessing jpop sold them on the "games are 75% done" lie.

Bingo! ...which leads me to question the "reputable" part.

Correct me if I am wrong as I haven't been following closely. None of your comment is based on facts, but speculation?

what's speculating?
Ben inspected the houdini playfield at expo, there's no way any of it could ever be playable without a ton of work
Bill Brandes spent 6 figures over a year ago which gave him rights to all 3 games
The playfields could possibly be stripped, but usually once oil penetrates wood it will always rise back up during clearing.. plus being .09" too thick, that means a LOT of sanding, including the inserts (or I could be wrong, maybe standard parts would be just fine with that extra thickness).

Also anyone else find this image disturbing?

ben_girl (resized).jpg

Those are all facts, yes. Besides BEN's opinion I was trying to find out if something happened that it's publicly known that AP is unhappy with JPOP. That does not seem to be the case.

In other words there is a lot of jumping to conclusions just like there was when AP first announced Houdini.

Besides having a project with the name 'Houdini' and who the staff are.. is there anything truthful or you can still count on from when they announced Houdini?

Oh it's bad no doubt. Just because I'm fact checking (shout out to Hillary) doesn't mean I'm trying to argue or stick up for AP/JFLOP. It looks like serious odds are stacked against them, but I'll wait it out.

Let's flip the argument. How could AP *NOT* be unhappy with jpop?

From all I've seen, AP and jpop made a deal. AP gets a 'nearly complete' Houdini, and in return AP will finish manufacturing MG and deliver it to all the original buyers - starting with Chris at Expo. That is what AP said when they announced Houdini. However, surprise, surprise - jpop doesn't own MG anymore, and Zidware is tied up in lawsuits. So when all that comes to light, AP has to scramble and get somethig to expo - so they strip as much Zidware from Houdini as they can...and bring just the playfield to expo (with little Z's all over). Then, at their expo talk, anytime someone asked about RAZA, AIW or any Zidware related item - AP's response was 'you will have to ask John'.

With all that, how could AP still be happy with john? How do they think this will play out? At what point will they realize they are better off if they just sever their ties with John and walk away from his liabilities?

I'm also curious how and why were the rights to MG transferred to Bill. Doesn't sound like anything Jpop would do.

Yes and no, many custom games are typically done on wood slightly too thin and typically that has not been a big issue, and you can always use some washers if you needed to, but I don't think I have had to do that. Slightly too thick, could result in under playfield routing to adjust for height, or some stock parts might need to be replaced with custom ones. Overall, probably not a huge issue. Sounds like it may be baltic birch vs american maple, which typical comes in 12 or 15mm, the 12 will often be sold as 1/2, even thought it is thinner than that. Recently when buying some baltic birch, I went with the 12 vs the 15, since I felt it would be easier to deal with any of these kind of issues.

Too thick? Just pass the pf through a planar and skim the under side where components attach. That is not a problem.

I think Toyota boy is right on, I know him and don't see this as speculation at all - why don't you beleive in the PF issues or the question of whether AP/Zidware has the rights or they still belong to Bill (wcBrandes).!? Hep oil base & clear can't mix, and PF are trash, re-sand to bare word and start over. See post #20135 said - that's fact.

TB's imagined conversation/reaction from AP Scott/Dhaval on the "nearly complete Houdini and MG" is exactly what we saw and heard at their Expo presentation and Jonathan Joosten/Pinball magazine podcast interview with Scott and Dhaval of American Pinball... especially the distancing of AP being owned/owing/connected with Zidware/JPop.

The rights, the last any of us know, were sold to wcbrandes / Pintasia, and Bill did put a lot of $$ into the May/June 2015 attempt to get MG from lab to a public show - Bill has been quiet to confirm (but is posting on Pinside elsewhere, so alive and well) so either BIll doesn't want to or has been advised to be silent for now.

Not only that, the Jan v. June 2016 pics show PF design elements changing since March 2016, implying there are software or other mech changes in the July 2016 version which might require even more time. Between the PF redo and the rework of inserts - does anybody see even one proto game being done by 12/31? All delivered? - that dog won't hunt!

SO ---- seems like TB's post was all based on fact, and nearly everybody here considers as fact (until someone comes up with solid evidence that ZIdware and AP do own the rights free and clear.

What's you agenda of accusation of speculation - are you doubting TB , are you doubting the PF comments and pics by HSA, or do you have some other agenda?