Seemed like the pitch forks were out and everyone was ready to storm the jpop castle. I'd be cheering and whooping with everyone if he revealed something cool like some dots and balls rolling on playfield video. More art after all this time seems very meh.

Trust me, I was/am ready to storm the castle. I just felt this "insult to injury" feeling when I saw the MG playfield. I used to be jealous I didn't get in on that game, but I have not been impressed with anything I've seen with that game. I was extrapolating what's recently been shown to RAZA and figuring even my upside was a game I wasn't thrilled with. So, while I have not stowed my pitchfork yet, I'm at least blown away by the RAZA art I've seen recently, and combine with some of the awesome features he's shown in the past, I think the game concept is awesome. Will I ever see it? Who knows. Am I still pissed about how this has all gone down? Hell yes! But at least now I can hope I'll get a game that I'll think is cool versus the feeling I've had recently that I wouldn't even like the game I was waiting for.

We've seen a fair bit of art, as well as pieces of colored playfield at times on the blog. Since we've been told "reveal in February", that is what I am waiting for. But the reveal better be significant, can't be more art, and talking about patents.

The only thing that concerned me about the RAZA playfield when I saw it in person was that it didn't seem like it had much flow. Unless John has changed it since then, there wasn't even a full orbit shot on either side.

anyone else excited and/or disturbed by EYE-GOO inserts?

You had me at nuance and then you lost me at skillz.

Iceman you were far more entertaining when you were ginned up to the gills, rallying the troops and demanding a sit down. This neutered sobriety is disappointing, I'm surprised you've been so deferential when old mate pop has just churned out more of the same.

I have read many times that Jpop wont be able to get the playfields inexpensively in small runs (which is true). So I cannot afford one of these machines, but I would love to buy a playfield. The art on the Zombie Adventure land is incredible. JPOP please run many many playfields I would love to have one on my wall. Beautiful work!!!!! I would also buy backglasses and translites!! Make money on all of the parts as I am sure I am not the only one who cannot afford one of these beauties but would love to support the company and buy some of the art.

He realized how much work it was going to be and settled for requesting a conference call haha. Sobering up sucks. Someone send him a bottle.

I heard the JPOP updates turned into a bit of a shit-show recently.... Are things looking like they're progressing again now?

Anyone care to give me the tl;dr version of the past dozen or so pages?

There's some nice looking art. No one has a game yet.

Here's a post of mine from before that still seems pretty accurate:

The only new development is we've been told February reveal for raza. Not sure what that entails.

There is a clear difference between making a single 'playable prototype' and actually producing pins and as far as I can tell John does not have a playable prototype that he is willing to show to the owners.

It entails entrails?

.. I was taking liberties with similar sounding words that may end in a similar fate.

Not easy, but it can be done:

This sums up the situation perfectly. Jpop has spent all these years designing multiple products and dreaming of creating a company that can produce all of these products, without focus on delivering a single one of them, much less the infrastructure needed to deliver many of them.

That South Park video sums up JPOP's business plan very well.

http://alicepinball.org/chapter2/pagemenu.html

Interesting.. What's with the "150 years"? He hasn't been working on games *that* long, has he?

Edit to add - He still hasn't fixed the 'hidden' link to '../../pinballinvent/games/zombies/welcome.html'.. using the same template for a lot of the other pages.

the bottom paragraph on the alice page:

The final vision for the backglass will take some time for me to go thru, which I will. We have designed in a cool topper and so much playfield gadgetry it will be great. One of the questions I get all the time is "how can you work on more than one game at a time". Well this has never been attempted before in pinball. In our case all the games have benefited from each other. Magic Girl was partially re-drawn and re-colored after we brough on a new artist for Zombie Adventureland. Alice has benefited as I have found my "pinball groove" again after not designing for over a decade. So it's just flowing now like a gusher, all the creativity. Also as a pinball team we have really honed in the process. At this stage I think we will reach our "Million Lines of Ink" challenge I set for myself, and to work as hard as I can for my owners. Jpop

The alice stuff looks pretty good though.. all of the 3 games seem a bit too "busy" to me but the alice stuff I like better for some reason? Maybe cause the theme itself is so psychedelic?

All images copyright 2015.. at least you know what he has been working on the last three weeks.

I think at this point I'd rather have AIW than RAZA since its less likely to become a collection of random ideas like RAZA seems to have become.

My lord, no mention of any move toward production. This guy truly has lost it.

Maybe you could get some t-shirts and posters... if you made them yourself. Jpop has absolutely no commitment to producing anything.

Well, this is the product page for the Alice game; I wouldn't of even expected the blurb that I quoted to be on that page let alone even more comments like that. Just interesting that he felt he needed to at least say something on the game 3 page / trying to cut off a bunch of hate mail for updating the alice page? Isn't that a positive step; he's aware of the optics of it?

Question: Lets for a minute assume that there will be no problem with lawyers forcing John to remove the multiple problematic instances of "Borrowed" IP in the art (Because he changes them enough or whatever).

What if he just dropped the word "Zombie" from the name? If the game was reframed as a total "Greatest hits of sci-fi" package named "Retro-Atomic Adventureland", would that make the game's theme more coherent for you, and would that be preferable to the current strategy of holding onto the Zombie theme even though Zombies have been relegated to supporting characters at best at this point? Would you guys still go for it? I know you all bought a zombie game, but I think that ship has sailed. Regardless of what he names it, this ain't a zombie pin like BHZA was.

Sometimes something as simple as finding a more fitting name can alleviate the cognitive dissonance of a jumbled theme. Would finally abandoning the notion that this is a zombie theme without eliminating them from the game be preferable to giving top billing to background characters?

Just a thought.

I love hand drawn art, so I want to support this idea, but I sure have mixed feeling about this stuff. I dunno about the "million lines of ink" (which is funny, there's no ink involved, all these drawings are done digitally) but sure, I can get behind making the game detailed. I trust Zombie Yeti's coloring skills, he'll tone down some of that busy-ness during that process. It's not like any of these games will ever be routed, so the logo being rather muddy from a distance isn't a big deal. This is meant to be viewed up close by collectors, not be commercially successful.

I don't really care for the way they chose to portray Alice, she's a rather unappealing central figure, but maybe the vision for the game has her being a total bitch instead of sympathetic, I dunno. No reason to judge too early.

I guess I just find all this breathless text somewhat grating and irritating when you know that there are people who have been waiting years for even a reveal of the game they paid for. There's a tremendous amount of work to be done to actually produce the first two titles still, it's a weird slap in the face to see all this time and effort being spent on a 3rd vaporware game.

Buy hey, he's "found his groove", so they'll be rolling off the line any moment now I'm sure.

This whole taking pre-order money at game embryo stage has to be on life support at this point, with all companies.

As a buddy of mine says, Comic books probably come close to a million lines of ink and those start at $2.99. It is an odd focus for a selling point. More doesn't mean better.

I don't remember after keeping abreast of this 73-page thread - did preorders already happen for AIW?

For some time now. I don't think its sold out or anything, but the pre-orders are open.

Okay, thanks. I'd be really tempted (I love the theme..), but won't after the lack of .. well, progress on anything.

Not that I would recommend jumping in but Alice has moved at a much faster pace than the other two. The Alice pre-order was started around 9 months ago and we have already seen what has been shown on the public site plus two or three generations of playfield design.

Since I'm an art moron, I'd like to use this chance to say I didn't understand what he meant, lol.

Does he mean that there are 1 million individual lines in his vector art? Is that insane? Seems to me that wouldn't be a good metric. It's like saying "Look how good my code is, there are a million lines."

I think that was proven by WOOLY not getting off the ground, and that was a pretty developed game. Much better prospect than all the stuff that sucked up the pre-order dollars years ago. IMO if everybody could get a refund for predator and Jpop games, they would actually be able to get a WOOLY.

Not to say that WOOLY wouldn't have its issues but they actually seem to have their stuff together on that project besides a few sound issues.

P.S. I do not want to derail into a WOOLY discussion just making a single point and move on :p

I think it is totally dead. No start up company will ever be able to generate sizable paid up deposits for any title again (at least over the next few years). JJP may be able to mine those individuals who completed two pre orders for WOZ and Hobbit in the past but even that number likely falls with each release and each delay.

And each 8k price point

Lumbergh only cares about how many lines you wrote this week. cmon'!

Check that...$8500 or $9000!

You're not an art moron, you get it just fine.

It's all just fluff. He's got a good (and patient!) artist working with a Wacom tablet. How many "lines" he draws is totally irrelevant.

Unfortunately, I agree. Several pinball startup asshats ruined it for a lot of people.

I'm all for sketches.. Hell, in my job I might sketch a dozen ideas before I start modeling up parts in solidworks. But I'm counting 6 separate cabinet concepts, all that look pretty polished (sorry, but I know artists, and "sketches" aren't usually that filled). And I'm sure this is just the early stage. Even after he chooses a layout he likes, there will likely still be revisions.

I'm so glad I never went down the path of becoming an artist, aint nobody got time for dat
AintNobodyGotTimeforDay[1].jpg

As I see it, John may actually deliver, but it's unnecessary for him to collect 4+ years in advance of production. Lots of this stuff could have been fermenting in the background for 2-3 years and he should have been starting to collect money about now imo.

I'm not just blaming Jpop, or even factoring in if the manufacturers even deliver.

Just off the top of my head, companies that took money and missed delivery timelines:

JJP
Skit-B
PPS/CGC (MMR)
Zidware

Not that I'm intending to start a pinball company with Spaceballs, but even if I was, there's no way I could do a Kickstarter style model in the current environment. It's been completely botched.

Reminded me, that there are pieces like this that we've seen, a ton of time and effort put into them, and then sent to the dust bin. I just can't see how a profitable biz can operate this way.

332263.jpg