Adrian, MI
In issue #139 (March 2010) of the PinGame Journal, there is an article titled "In The Shadow Of A Genius... The Creation Of Bally's Alice In Wonderland". This article details Michael Hanley meeting John Popadiuk back in 1989, and includes some interesting details concerning the creation of the Bally Alice In Wonderland prototype a few years later. Hanley wrote something interesting about Popadiuk in this excerpt from the article detailing him and his wife's first meeting with John:
"A couple of days went by and our new contact (John Popadiuk) stopped by to meet us in person. We ended up talking for hours! We were fascinated by him as he was different from all our other friends. It took me a few months to figure out why, but I came to realize he is an artist and can visualize like no one else I know. It could be that left side / right side of the brain thing. He can take a new concept, work it around in his mind until it is fact. Then he can sell it to other people and have them all believe in it. If he stopped there, we would call him a scam artist. But what sets John into the genius catagory is that he has the ability to then make it happen, to bring his vision into reality. He gets an idea and shortly thereafter he has a product. And he can re-invent himself."
I was recently re-reading a lot of my old PGJs and I came across that article, and I though the above was a pretty interesting paragraph in retrospect.
