Plus these guys did business with Zidware, not this new company. It's like paying for a Whopper and getting a Big Mac at the window. Same thing? Maybe, but not what I ordered.

Instead of being stuck till death, contact them If you need concrete rather than endless bla bla.

This is the second or third or more thread polluted by this unfortunate event. I understand the disarray of stolen people but is it not better to open a spécial thread where people can talk about lawsuit,fraud etc and let this one for Houdini game?

Is the title Correct? JP or AP game?

Not caring that JPOP is the designer for AP's Houdini is like not caring that a new investment company has Bernie Madoff as the chief financial officer.

It doesn't make it all right but they HAVE to settle the lawsuit before Houdini can Be sold because of the patents involved. If they can jump that hurdle, then raza and aiw builds or credits on deposits can be assessed. One step at a time.. But Houdini ain't going anywhere until that lawsuit gets fixed me thinks

If the patents belong to JPOP, can't he use them?

They would sell more units. You can disagree, it's OK.

Bingo. What are they going to do? Refund everyone? That's a lot of cash. Hey, if they've got some deep pocketed guy who says "It's just money, here's a million dollars, get me a new Jpop game and refund all the people he ripped off!" then wow, great.

That just feels far fetched, and I think it's reasonable for people to be skeptical. I asked a friend who lost money to Jpop yesterday if he's heard from American Pinball. Nope he said. If they have some kind of "payback everyone, we're rich and we don't care!" plan they haven't spread it out yet.

Let's say they aren't refunding the money, but are going to build the games instead. That's a huge endeavor. RAZA and AIW aren't remotely done, and we already know that MG wasn't nearly as done as Jpop claimed.

Finishing those games is a huge project (I speak from experience here, making pins is work, and it takes time, and people, and money), are we to believe a new company with no experience is going to suddenly build 4 games (Houdini plus the three scam games), and then what? Give the three Jpop original games away to everyone who was to be an owner? That's money right there.

Do they stop then or keep making them for everyone to try and recoup costs? MG was supposed to be super limited, but maybe if you get one you live with any random Joe being able to buy one too, since that's better than nothing?

I'm just struggling with the logic here. It's not a slam on a new company, this is purely about how big of a hole Jpop dug, and how hard it is to suddenly magically climb out of it.

It could happen.....

I think I saw a unicorn the other day too.

To be fair though, if you ordered a Whopper, and got no burger, and were hungry, and someone then said "that sucks, lemme buy you lunch" and got you a Big Mac you wouldn't turn it down right?

I would love for the people who were ripped off to see something. But it's gotta at least be the Big Mac. They can't say "oh that sucks, here have one of my fries" and then go party with the chef.

Whatever it is....they seem to be trying. People had nothing before, nor the hope of anything. If they get something, it would be great. Maybe a Houdini in place of something that they could keep or sell and make some money back.
Something is better than nothing and I say until proven otherwise, let's give AP the benefit of the doubt.

alice (resized).jpg

Yup. The contention is over if the license/conveyence is done in a way that isn't trying to hide assets from creditors.

The patents I looked at are in John's name.. not zidware. And unless John is facing bankruptcy... or granted exclusive rights to someone else.. he could license them to AP at will.

i can see (resized).jpg

<disclaimer: my personal opinion; not a moderation/pinside view>

For better or worse, you cannot disentangle the two. Just assume for a minute AP had announced a Houdini pin with an unknown designer. How many posts would you have in that thread? 10x less? 50x less? They decided to surf on JPop past brillance. Their choice. It may bring in customers. Most people would agree JPop has been a very creative designer.

But it comes with a downside... Zidware. So let people express their feeling in that thread or in the JPop thread. You simply cannot ignore JPop past when considering Houdini, for better or worse. This past will be CV for some, RAZA deposits for others.

In the end, everyone is entitled to an opinion. I'll give mine when - and only when - I know what conditions people who ordered MG/RAZA/AIW have been offered.

I should clarify since there are a lot of factors.

JJP would not profit in the 5K range.

Stern machines could be profitable in the 5K range.

If you need to analyze simply look at a Stern machine.

No one in their right mind could say they match up to a JJP game.

Well said ... Sir!

I'll take something over nothing, but I've had my fill of words.

This idea that there will be Magic Girls at expo and yet we've seen nothing more than empty cabinets still.... hard to get excited about it.

And Chris from Cointaker was promised delivery of his game by/at Expo. We won't have to wait long to see if that actually materializes.

And ted has spoken!
Can't agree more.

My issues with JPOP and my belief that any project he is involved with will have little chance of success are due to his design incompetence and dishonesty more than to the RAZA deposit that I lost. Let's not forget how bad a state MG was in after over 5 years of development, both in playability due to its poor layout and how far it was from being production ready.

I knew my deposit was at risk when I signed up and don't feel it's AP's responsibility to give me a dime. However, I don't want to see other unsuspecting people going down a similar rabbit hole. To me, AP choosing to work with JPOP shows very poor judgement and does not bode well for their future.

Yes, JPOP made some good games in the past but in this case, I put far more value in his most recent performance as an indicator of future results.

I am gonna start a new thread with this quote as the title...brilliant.
That is deep bro..

Lol. Thumb up, but please no more Houdini threads. Enough to moderate already!

I'm not stuck on my not receiving reimbursement. I have been able to move on from that. I settled with myself long ago that I will get nothing from JPop other than screwed. I'm not part of the lawsuit, I'd had enough by that point.

What I was saying is: I don't know why it's assumed that by giving people a "pseudo" Magic Girl will make all the history just go away and everything be forgiven.

I haven't contacted American Pinball because American Pinball doesn't owe me anything...nada. John Popadiuk owes me 9K bucks or a Zombie pin. Neither of which I ever anticipate seeing.

AIW, RAZA, and MG all had hand drawn art.

There's no amount of cleanser that can wipe JPOP's hands clean though, that's the issue, and by far more important than what art is on this game.

Who knew spooky, DP, Heighway..? There are much more posts.

Also count posts that talk about Houdini game and posts that talk about lawsuit...

If i was in your position you can be sure that i would call AP. What would be their intentions etc. I am sure you could find a way to talk to AP about JP.

The call is free.

It is better than no MG pins at all. So it is better, no?

This is what I would have expected the attitude to be... optimistic but skeptical. However I see no optimism, not even skeptical optimism. Pinside is an interesting study in human behavior, much like Prison.

I'm fully aware the negativity is the result of this particular designer pre-selling 3 entire game runs without delivering, and is now the designer on a 4th game going to market, but this announcement includes one of the 3 undelivered games. To an optimist this is a glass half full situation (literally, 2 of 4 games available), but the pessimists still think it's an empty glass. The glass was empty before this announcement, but now there is actual hope of games being shipped some day.

I think you need to understand that for people who have been closely following the JPOP saga, "announcements" of games involving him don't mean all that much and are a far cry from 2 of 4 games available.

I tend to think of myself as a realistic optimist and would say the glass went from empty to 1/32 full, though that might be a little high.

Excellent!

You may possibly have the Whopper part right.....

That would not make them forget who originally ripped them off for the Whopper, and more than likely they wouldn't give their business to that person again.

I ordered MG and RAZA from Jpop. I'm still awaiting a call from AP...

I dunno, my brain doesn't work that way. That's some fuzzy ass math you have there. It's not 2/4, it's 0/3. Ain't a damn thing available.

My attitude is pretty simple. F*** Jpop, all day long. If every single Magic Girl was finished and delivered (big if) it would still be f*** Jpop. How does that erase anything? He's a still a liar, a scam artist, and a thief.

He should never work in this industry again, period. He deserves no props, no business, nothing. You want to talk Whoppers and Big Macs? He can get a damn job at Burger King or McDonalds.

This is like working for McD's but instead of serving burgers, AP serves you [fill-in the blank]

Again, based on what analysis? Your privy to their financials?
You know their production, labor, overhead, and marketing costs.. Etc.
How much are you so kindly letting stern profit on their machines?

I still do thnk the whole application process is odd, but not my company.

Actually it's worse than that, it's 0/4 until one is actually available (if ever).

0/5 if you count kiss. Or is it 0/6 if you count ugly pussycat bowling?

There's a Meatloaf song in there somewhere.

Am I understanding this correctly?

A new company named AP needed a game designer

They hired a dude named Jpop

Jpop is a dick says Pinside

So now we boycott AP?

Seems weird AF to me.

I know, I've been there since the beginning... and it's why I ended my post with "hope of games being shipped some day" rather than impending delivery. The years of deception have beaten down Zidware customers so much that even hope feels elusive. I get it, just pointing out the glimmer of hope since JPop is no longer responsible for the actual deliverables this time around.

I can go with a glimmer of hope where there was none before. I can also go with delivered MGs being better than none.

My only caution would be better these projects were left dead and buried than a new round of employees/buyers get sucked in with the end result being no games produced yet again due to JPOP and/or other problems. We know making pinballs is hard and having someone like JPOP as the designer just adds to the difficulty.

It is just a *tad* more complicated than that, but I admire your attempt at making it appear super simple (and weird AF).

bump

It's more like a designer needed a manufacturer and $$ and found Scott from his Zizzle fo Shizzle days

AP didn't just appear out of nowhere and then say, hey wait a minute, what about hiring Jpop! He's awesome

Even weirder

Thats like me needing a job, finding someone not in business & saying "hey you should open a company that does shit I know how to do so I can work there"

Man that game looks great so far. I can't wait to try it!

Yep, that's what happened. John finally found an "investor" and manufacturing partner. He's an off the books owner at this point.

I hear what you are saying.

Guaranteed every mg owner now has more hope than they did a week ago. No reason to shit on that. Glass filled a bit more than empty. I wouldn't care what the long game is, some good can come of this.

Why jump to conclusions. After that, we wait and see.