I've been reading this thread for months hoping it would eventually turn around but it's starting to look pretty bad.

I think the main thing that killed it is the prepay model... it rarely works, in any industry much less the pinball industry. It takes away all the initiative for someone to work hard or meet deadlines if they've already been paid in advance. It must be really hard to bust your ass for 3 years, AFTER you've been paid for it.

Ultimately it shows what a great job Spooky and Stern have done. Spooky just knocked that shit out, and Ben was working with Jpop in the beginning, the same could have happened there. With Jpop's pedigree they could have been churning out games every 6 months or so and the stuff would have been creative as hell. Spooky still has tons of great stuff coming down the road I'm sure, but imagine if all those machines were being designed by Jpop! It'd be on another level.

It seems like many times when a boutique starts out (plus JJP, which isn't boutique) it's in response to perceived or publicly stated complains about the way Stern does business... they're presented as the alternative, and ultimately it just makes Stern look like the better alternative. I've really got a lot of respect for Stern for doing things the old way, here's a machine, send us the money and you'll have it in a week.

Hopefully guys like Spooky doing such a great job will kind of show the way for others to follow along down that path and get boutique games designed, built, and shipped in a timely matter. Not every boutique is going to have a brilliant mind like Ben Heck helping them make it happen, though.

I don't think Jpop set out to scam people, but people have been locked up for less, i'm surprised he has let this go on so long, it's eventually going to get to a point where people are trying to get criminal charges pressed against him...

I definately think it's spill over from the Predator stuff... basically in the last day Kevin admitted that there's license problems, which confirms everybody's worst suspicions... and since the Jpop thing is a similar issue (game way past deadline, everybody's money is hanging out there) it's kind of deflating a bunch of people's hopes that either one of these dudes ever gets their stuff together.

I hope they do, though, I don't think either guy set out to scam but they're both fully in scam territory right now.

12 games built if you count MM remake and Whoa Nellie...

That's really cool that he's talking with iceman about the details. It's a shame he doesn't have a business partner that's good with the financials that could help him navigate this, it's not rocket science but when you've never ran a business I can see where it would be daunting to creative types.

He needs to get that first one banged out, and he needs to be really open about what's going on, people will still support him if they can see clear progress being made and an end goal within sight. When you just clam up or even worse outright lie about what's going on it really alienates your clients... and the saddest part is, almost all of the clients are massive Popadiuk fans or they wouldn't have gotten in, in the first place!

You can make a very strong case for Steve Ritchie being the most creative designer of all time, simply because of the number of 'firsts' his games have had... first flash lamps, first lane change, first wireforms, first two level playfield, first SS multiball, first magna save, etc.

he changed Midway's "Combat" to "Mortal Kombat" then did the voices for "Fatality" and all that stuff. Everybody knows all this but lets not get crazy and forget about how great Steve Ritchie is.

They'll prob. sell out within a couple weeks. The price is low enough rich people will buy it just for the hell of it.

To be honest, when Jpop announced he was doing Magic Girl, I thought it was a brilliant idea. I was happy for him that they all sold out, immediately, then I wondered, will he be able to turn a profit on that?

I assumed that he would make a minor profit, but maybe on his second game, which would probably be 7 or 8 months later, that he'd make more and slowly build a pinball company.

How in the world he hasn't been able to even hand build some of these machines yet just blows my mind. There are 365 days in a year, he's went to work 1500 days or so since he took everybody's money and still hasn't delivered the first guy his game?

The craziest part, in my mind, is that this isn't somebody like Kevin who's just a loser with no talent... this is a guy who HAS talent, demonstrable talent.

You've got 4 hurdles you need to jump to pull this off.

1 . design a fun machine
2. source parts
3. physically assemble the machine
4. code the software

The hardest would be the 1st... he has that ability, so one of the biggest hurdles he's accomplished. The software is another HUGE hurdle, but you could hire someone to do that, or at least get a flipping game done. I would imagine there's people cable of it right here on pinside that may even donate their services to get it accomplished.

The second hurdle, sourcing parts, he seems to have also accomplished. He had playfields made, he had cabinets made, he had all kinds of strange gizmos built, he had a gentleman make him hundreds of custom PCB's. So that didn't prove to be an issue.

The other hurdle is physically building the game, which is THE EASIEST PART but yet he hasn't been able to pull it off!

So he can design the game which is very hard, he can source all the parts which is very hard, he could have hired a software guy but screwed it up, and has stumbled trying to build the games which is the easiest part of the whole damn thing.

Just so strange. So sad to see such a well respected designer lose his entire reputation over this.

I can't see him ever doing that, he'd just file bankruptcy... Unlike the Kev situation I don't think he's done anything that he could be prosecuted for... so ultimately he'll file bankruptcy and then start blaming everybody else for it.

I think this is the main thing... MG and RAZA do look like they would be fantastic games, but what is the upside for any other manufacturer to purchase these 'designs' ? They all have great designers already who could create other designs with no baggage. There's three or four guys at Stern who are basically more talented than JPOP in the design of machines and have stronger track records. There's two big-shots at JJP who are more talented than JPOP.

Have Steve Ritchie design a 16 THOUSAND dollar pinball machine and it'll eat MG's lunch. Let Pat Lawlor design a 16 thousand dollar machine and see what you get.

Not to insult JPOP's talent, he's very talented... but lets put this in perspective... he's not creating anything that's a genius idea that the other companies can't get near. Stern/JJP/Spooky/Heighway are all making some damn fine machines right now.

Bailing Jpop out would be charity work, there's no money to be made doing it. Even an unknown company would be better off coming up with a new title with no baggage and no debt.

It doesn't necessarily mean anything... he obviously doesn't do a good job of doing things on time, like... oh... pay taxes... deliver pinball machines... give daily updates...

He may have the money and just didn't pay them because he was busy making magic or something.

If Stern bails him out, they deserve a congressional medal of honor because they sure as hell won't make any profit out of it...

The ironic thing too, is that Ben was onboard for awhile! Literally.... So not only can we say "Ben could have built it"... literally, he could have been the one building RAZA at least! He left, built another one, and is now building ANOTHER one.

You're getting thumbed down for this, but it's pretty funny, Ben's got a good sense of humor, i'll bet he can appreciate it

This is by far the biggest thing for me... once John has already been paid for the machines, the only thing keeping him focused on actually delivering them is moral integrity... which we all know can waver at times unfortunately.

Great quotes from John:
Jan 17, 2015:
Currently still on track to show a fully built Zombie Adventureland game in February.

Jan 14, 2015:
As we continue to add more information, photos and videos to the reveal site for MG, we have the run of cabinets being made and will begin production setup on March 3.

Dec 17, 2014:
I am awaiting, should have been here the 7th, the final engineering cabinet sample from the wood shop. They have all the material in place too build the current run of 20 Magic Girl™ cabinets. Off the phone today, it should be here by Monday next week and then we will begin our final checks.

Oct 23, 2014:
At this stage I have set a date of December 17th to have a nice complete reveal on Magic Girl. We will have a magic rug, although not a custom one.

I have brought in a new project manager (with pinball experience) also, he starts today and we will go thru orientation and keep us on track.

Oct 21, 2014:
The MG protos are almost done. That is how I work as I like to show my best.

Honestly I've been of the whole 'civil case not criminal case' mindset this whole time, but when you illustrate it like that, there's a possibility this crossed over into criminal territory. He clearly was misstating things to mislead people.

To slightly change the subject, is anybody else really not that into the lighting on these games? It's all colored LED's for GI when I think you'd get a lot more light out of white LED's for GI at least in some places.

Some folks have been showing the KISS machine he did, in some of the KISS threads, and it's the same thing, there's so much colored LED's that it makes all the artwork lose it's contrast.

Probably easy to fix, but I was just wondering if people prefer that look over a more traditional way of lighting it...

That's true in John's case... but in reality, actually I think Stern or JJP would absolutely show some random person the company's workshop. Happens all the time, actually! Not sure how open Stern would be to it unscheduled, but I'd bet money if you stopped by JJP you could have the run of the place, may even get a tour from Jack. He's done that tons of times.

John though probably not, lol...

Maybe John's just a genius comedian, and he's pulling this big video stunt because all of the machines have actually already been shipped!!!

Kind of like how everybody thought Scoregasm was a April Fool's joke.

He probably ran into a problem (software? ramps?) and then moved onto Paper Kiss Pinball Machine, (PKPM), then different art for RAZA, then came up with the idea for Alice in Wonderland, then started designing his EM machine, etc.

He certainly should have finished Magic Girl, even if he didn't have anything done for the other two machines at all, it would give him at least an ounce of credibility and people wouldn't be calling for his head.

Not really.... he's in the same early stage of production Nordman's talking about.

Jpop does!

The other thing is, even his most strenuous supporters can't possibly see this game as 'perfect' or so far above the bar (anymore) that it justifies all the time and expense. I'll give him that his themes are better than WOZ but is the build quality any better? Is the complexity of the game more than the complexity of WOZ? if it is, it's negligible.

He expects people to still be happy to pay that much, and wait that long, for a game that has no demonstrable advantage over a high end game like WOZ, and we have no idea about whether or not it's even as fun as WWE.

Iceman, do you think it's possible that he just added John and his wife as a nuisance thing?

Another question: Zidware also does some apps, does anybody know if those are actually producing any income, or just a joke? If there's any income there that could be an asset.

This is so f%^king sad, because John let it happen. The guy has tons of talent and is about to lose his entire f%^king reputation. Piss off hundreds of customers. Waste hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Just so much avoidable b.s.

Yeah... unfortunately this is the kind of shit you need lawyers for! They do serve a purpose, you know

Quote: They have acquired the licenses for these games not motivated by profit"

The biggest red flag in the entire letter from Jpop is where he says the new company isn't motivated by profit.

That line right there, is all you need to know. I realize that may just be John's interpretation of his talks with them, and I realize that this new group is likely composed of members right here in this thread, but "not motivated by profit" is a death knell.

I'm not a lawyer, but the way the 'offer' is worded, pressuring you to sign or else may in itself be criminal to the right law attorney.

Jack is not the investor

late as shit. It will be built, though... even you would admit that.

It seems almost impossible to me Terry would do something that crazy.

Jack confirmed he's not the mystery investor, but wishes the mystery investor luck. So we're down to Roger and Terry.... or someone else we're not smart enough to think of yet

Not sure how many people you've been in touch with, but your work is fantastic, you had nothing to do with this negative nonsense, and I'd like to see you one day doing pinball work for some reputable companies. Maybe Stern, Jack, Spooky, somebody could use a great artist. Good luck.

You could try, Ben

He was saying that kind of stuff when he first announced Magic Girl... I think that was the first time I started thinking something didn't seem right.

I remember when John first announced Magic Girl, and was talking and responding to people on the newsgroups back in the day... everybody kind of felt bad for him because he's pretty much the only major guy that Stern never hired (I think), or at least the only guy who wanted a job, that Stern didn't hire. When he announced he was just going to do it himself, the two reactions were "Yeah! Good luck! Go get 'em John! That'll show 'em!" and "Damn, I can't believe 11 people just bought that within 2 hours for 16K".

Now here we are several years later. Essentially Gary Stern called it way back in 1999 by not hiring him when Williams closed.

So yet another way Gary's redeemed himself.

Reading some of Jpop's posts from rec.games.pinball on the newsgroups is fascinating. Check this beauty out from January 2011, when he was ruminating on Jack's at the time recently announced Wizard of Oz pinball machine.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/rec.games.pinball/iD-KhRAfkwQ/HZUraEusY-AJ

and software....JJ will need the best coders + EEs on this....again
everyone thinks making
a pinball is easy....but as we all see today...you can spend a lot of
time to end up with a
crummy game....it is an art + science....

at Zizzle we spent a lot of time on hardware and had a large group
(maybeEEs
on it....and maybe 15 in engineering and QA....we tested...tested and
more....the
system...5" square pcb...was almost good enough to run a 70s
SS....that project
took 12 months....at 7 days a week in 3 offices....also had to be
ROHS...

hopefully the JJ team has something flipping by now...after 6 months??
I know I would...

IMHO

John Popadiuk

The perfect analogy was the gentleman a few pages ago who posted the picture of Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown.

Zombie Yeti, may I suggest an idea to you? There are several pinball machines that are beloved by collectors that have lackluster backglasses or translites. An artist of your caliber could likely draw custom backglasses that would really improve the look of the game and would probably sell very well. People even like to just hang that stuff on their wall. Might be something to think about!

I've met people before who had a fatalistic personality, it's like they want to fail to prove that it was destined to happen no matter what. That sounds ridiculous, but I've met many people like that, they like to talk about how bad they have it. Don't know if Jpop is like that but you get the idea from him that he had already decided quite a while ago that he wasn't going to make this work.

What's so crazy about it is, this could have turned into a profitable business if ran differently. Lots of mistakes, some of them so bad they seem intentional. Tons of competent people offering to help do things for years, but still it fails. Has a nearly complete prototype for years and refuses to show it to people.

It's literally like he went out of his way to make sure this didn't get done. EVEN KEVIN built 1 machine! ... and he had it ready in about a year, didn't he?

You can't just say John's a loser , that's why the game didn't get made... he had to go out of his way to make sure it didn't accidentally get done. What's that all about? By putting that much effort into making sure it didn't go 'well', he basically put that much effort in screwing customers.

Except John forgot the color Green. "green" it's a pretty cool color, he forgot to use it.

It's completely purple, though.... that's all I'm saying. I think it's a little too far into purple, just my personal preference.... nothing wrong with purple, but when the entire playfield and all the lights are purple, or blue, or red, it kind of needs to move back towards white light

"He still would have failed art school, his artwork was terrible" LOL

Is anybody else's "new posts" button not working right since we rolled up over 13k? I think we broke it!!!!

You'd see all the green ones!

Jpop's called Ben a drunk to many people, i can see where Ben probably doesn't have an unbiased view of this entire project....

I pulled out of my driveway once, (1 lane road) and got behind a guy driving 4 miles per hour. After about 10 minutes, we got to the red light, and he stopped half a block in front of it. I could tell the guy was obviously inebriated, so I called the police. Got them on the line (the police office is about a quarter mile from this red light), and told them what was going on. "O.K., we're trying to intercept the car". So I drove behind the guy for another mile after he started moving, swerving all over the place. Eventually he started speeding. we're on a 4 lane road going through neighborhoods, he's driving on the left lane, even up on the sidewalk at one point. Could have killed all kinds of people... every few minutes, he stops the car right in the middle of the road. The whole time I'm driving behind him (at legal speeds) talking to the operator.

We drive all the way across town, took probably 20 minutes. The guy eventually pulls into a McDonalds, and parks backwards in the drivethrough, turns the car off. The operator informed me that a police officer had finally 'caught up' with us (this is a city of a million people), and had seen the guy park the car, but since he wasn't driving it anymore, he went ahead and cleared the call out. So she informed me that I could watch him for awhile to see if he left again, then call them back.

That was the last time I tried to be a good citizen

you don't know the half of it, brother

I had a 'friend' about 15 years ago who did all kinds of horrible internet mail fraud stuff. Would sell things then never ship them, etc. big ticket items. Probably 20-30k worth of stuff. Eventually he got busted, a bunch of people got together and it went to trial, he lost, and served about 3 months in a halfway house. So he got out every day for work, church, all kinds of stuff. Basically he just had to be in a certain building by 8p.m. Doors weren't even locked. He never paid any of the 'restitution'.

Doesn't that happen in divorce a lot? Judge orders the house sold and proceeds split, etc...

Ben somebody mentioned the idea that maybe he was patenting things personally, so that he could charge 'zidware' to use the patents in the game... as a harebrained scheme to get more money siphoned to him...

either way the whole thing was stupid. Like you said almost any patent can be worked around...

The whole thing about the piece of glass just blows my mind. He made the cab a weird size, and then keeps calling the glass 'custom' because it's slightly longer.

Anybody who's had EM's or even widebodies has probably had glass cut before, it's not really that big of a deal but he acts like it was some crazy custom part that was a big problem.

Exactly! It's mind numbing. You can get glass cut at the hardware store...

The predator dude showed up at the Winston Salem auction two months ago.

Or removing Hulk Hogan from of all things, "wrasslin' " history because he talked trash about his daughter's boyfriend 10 years ago in a sex tape.

To be honest, i'm amazed that American Pinball was able to pull this off, and I think they deserve a ton of credit and respect for it. It's not perfect, I'm sure there's tons of issues with each machine both from major design flaws to workmanship problems while they were constructed... but the bottom line is, they produced what nobody thought they would be able to, and made at least some effort to make John's problem 'right' with the customers.

Still tons of problems, other machines, etc. but i'm amazed they were able to pull this off, or even willing to. I hope their first proper game under their name benefits from some of the respect they deserve for pulling off this project.

So you give the credit for finishing the game to John? I don't. AP got involved, and the game happened. They deserve all the credit and none of the blame, in my opinion.

Of course they're distancing themselves, they got involved with him not knowing what they were getting into fully... and then made the best of it, and delivered the game. They just proved their integrity with this, in my opinion. No other manufacturer would touch this mess with a 10 foot pole, but they stood behind what they said they would do and delivered. Quickly.

Can we get a gofund me going so we can hire somebody to film Ritchie's response to this? O.K., Thanx