I operate games, but know for a fact that there are a few credit sharks among my regulars who will play any balls or credits on any machine. I show up to a bank of games with zero balls or credits waiting every single time. The flip side of that is that one particular player will encourage kids to pull up a chair if they seem curious. He talks them through what he's doing and a little bit of the why. Actually most of my players will do something resembling this to anyone who shows a little interest.

When my teenage daughter has friends over, I find that most have no clue there are actually rules and objectives to pinball, once they do, you can tell that they suddenly have an increased level of interest.

Who gives out the lessons? You or your daughter?

I have a funny feeling we've only seen the tip of the iceberg.

Who knows how many more machines there were or are ... and I'm guessing his basement was stuffed with them.

I've started foam-coring my next game and I forgot how much FUN this step is. Knock the ball around, doesn't matter what it looks like, hot glue and tape it together.

Sadly, the rest is NOT fun. It's like the difference between coming up with the idea for a movie and then actually making it.

John clearly never wanted to go past the FUN part, which is why we're seeing all these prototypes but not completed games.

As a cog in a wheel, that could work. But as a one-man-show it was a disaster.

Creativity is indeed most important, but like they say, the devil is in the details, and he ignored most of them!

I have to think that the "not fun" part of making a game is still more fun than a monotonous job, though. Just not FUN in all caps!

True..john was in his element fiddling about and creating playfields but you need a solid programmer to make the game a rockshow to play.
We should have known from the get go,john has 0 skills programming pinball.
Our minion pinball has been easy to build in the beginning but it gets harder and harder along the way.

Btw; we will finish the minion machine...but we will be hosed by the time it is done.

It goes back to that saying "Success is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration"

John was 50% inspiration, 25% printing banners and 25% coffee breaks.

Come on, now. That's not totally fair. He dedicated a little time to deception, too.

I don't know about that, you guys come up with some pretty good movie ideas on your podcast on a regular basis.

beLIEve!

Aaron
FAST Pinball

What does Pacak have to do with it ?

Every single person who comes over to play pinball is confused by ballsave. They either walk away and I have to go "no no no no you're still up!", or they see the ball pop out, they grab the plunger, it auto launches...and they're confused. And then every single time after that, they ALWAYS grab the plunger when the ball comes back for a ball save...they never get used to the auto plunge.

But autoplunge is often used for virtual multiball lock (because it's easier to manage than a physical ball lock, especially when you're dealing with multiple players). Also I played BOP 2.0 about a week ago at a friend's house, and it was weird having an old game with modern rules, and you had to manually plunge the virtual ball locks.. couple times I was like "Oh, I locked a ball that didn't involve the mouht".. BOP 2.0 would benefit from adding an autoplunger and an extra channel to control it.

??? I am not following...

So who wants to bet that this is still the exact state of the magic girls today.

14444677_1316276058397236_6340657063610632689_o (resized).jpg

Someone spent a lot of money, that they'll probably never see again, to make that photo

ooooooooh I want one! Who do I pay? Should I pay now?

I would vote for Ben being the only one to ever comment on Jpop as he knew him, worked with him, left him, then did exactly what John never did - build a pinball machine from scratch. Oh and his posts are pretty comical at times to ! I bow down to you Mr. Heck...

They probably have a lot more dust on them by now!

All true. Plus Ben's restraint has been admirable... note that his best comments on the state of Houdini did not come out until after things publicly blew up in American Pinball's face. Regardless, it's pretty clear he could have called it from the get go, but first gave them a chance and the benefit of the doubt.

careful... you may get a surprise if you bow down to Heckendorn...

Great point - a true gentleman's opinion is always respected more than a lunatic (that wasn't directed at you Hilton - lol)

They haven't given up on MG, new PF's are being made (old ones had a host of problems)

Next question: Is MG using the Zidware boards, and do enough exist to build 25 games? If there aren't enough of them, can more be bought from the vendor? If there are enough, is the code shippable? If code isn't shippable, can the programmer be convinced to finish it?

All those stars have to align for MG to have a shot in 2017. If they have to create new boards (as they do for Houdini) it's gonna be YEARS.

Also, why in the blue blazes did John hire a programmer in ENGLAND? Horrible exchange rate for US (before Brexit close to 1.50) and it costs a bloody fortune to ship ANYTHING there, let alone giant pinball PF's. Spooky and I have issues even over 70 miles.

What's curious is most of the original vendors have posted by now that none of them have been contacted to continue/finish work.

So how is this stuff going to get finished?

I'm still suspect that the American Pinball guys went off John's word about what needed to be done, and the reality is something completely different. But that doesn't stop John from spending money getting cabinets or even wood playfields made, when there is a ton of stuff incomplete.

if you listen to this flippin podcast with applejuice, it sounds like he sent the playfield back but STILL to this day not gotten paid for his services because John claimed the parts got damaged in shipping, so I'm guessing the answer is no
http://www.podcastgarden.com/episode/episode-34b-jim-askey-speaks_91485

You get a whole lot more mileage from the "your (pay)check is in the mail excuse" ?

OR
The old "things are progessing much slower due to the language barrier of working internationally" excuse?

Maybe he was banking on sending 3d printing docs of the whole game to England to print a whole mock up there?

I know that I worked my ass off to get 'him' paid.

Maybe he said he would work for the "love of pinball", ?

Can someone tell me why in the hell they would make all those finished cabinets, before a game even existed? Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems like the wrong way to go about it.

I would have assumed the cabinets and artwork would be the last thing to complete during the development of a pinball machine.

IMG_0580 (resized).JPG

"They" are a company that has no idea how pinball design works (or trusted John when he probably told them the playfields WERE done). John (who is a consultant on this project) also doesn't know any better (even though he worked for Bally for 10 years) , hence why artwork was done on 3 games before the layouts were tested and verified.

I really feel for all parties hurt by this whole debacle.

I don't feel a ton of pity for the American Pinball investors. If they didn't do their due diligence with this many red flags waving in your face, what (positive) can be said?

IF John had two finished (coded, tested, all mechs in place) games in MG and Houdini, I'd like to think this had a chance. Still lots of difficulties, but a chance. If all they have are two arts and crafts mock up games this seems DOA.

MG has now been in development for what, 5 years and is still not done as far as anybody can tell? Horrible for everybody involved, but if AP jumped in bed with John at this late stage if anything they might deserve each other (horrible risk assessment meets horrible project management).

It's all part of the cruel ongoing joke that is Magic girl. This isn't the first time an empty cabinet has been presented as evidence of "progress" on this fiasco and
It likely won't be the last.

But half of "they" had already worked with John in the past (on Zizzle), and the experience seemed to have been worthwhile enough to get all parties working again with one another.

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

...is very enlightening. The debacle with the primer is either a crazy act of sabotage or a painful reminder of people not knowing what in the eff they were doing.

Hopefully they will someday get used but at this point, what, 3 companies have failed trying to make it happen? Its sadly looking like they are destined to be very pretty and very overpriced firewood.

Ew.

You had a typo there John!
You write it like this:"You are immoral"

IMG_0623 (resized).PNG

At what point does the amount of money wasted on a "star" like JPOP exceed the original value of their accomplishments?

Reminds me of Sharon Stone. She had 1 hit (Basic Instinct) then for the rest of the 90's nothing but flops, which wasted far more money than Basic Instinct ever profited.

Total Recall was in the 90s, but actually before Basic Instincts. Casino was not a flop. And I kind of liked The Quick and the Dead but because of Gene Hackman. But yes, there was a big list of stinkers.

That's a terrible analogy.

Ben,you back on the bottle again?

Well let's see (keeping it simple)
Voltaire: 2,704 units
SWE1: 3,525 units
TOTAN: 3,128 units
TOM: 6,600 units
WCS94: 8,743 units

Assume his salary in the 90s was $50k/year, and his development time was 2 years a piece (since he worked there 10 years), divide that into 24,700 units.. His $500k salary over a 10 year period (half of what he stole in only 5 years to accomplish nothing versus finish 5 machines in 10).. If you figure the average machine in the 90s sold for $3k, that's 74 million dollars in net revenue.

74 million / 500k = $148 per machine.
Million dollars invested into zidware= (cannot divide by zero)

I'd say he's far past that point.

Wouldn't I have to get OFF something to get back on it?

Analogy is decent. Bunch of money being spent on someone because of their past, all of it going down the drain, and along the way other new talent never getting their chance or funding.

It's like a lottery. Buy your "bring this guy back from the brink" ticket and hope they're a Steve Jobs or Robert Downey Jr. Doesn't happen very often though.