As a company, that "isn't Zidware", all we've seen is:

-Empty magic girl cabinets
-Promise of a delivery date for the MGs
-MG never shown operational at any stage
-non-flipping Houdini with hobbled together playfield and finished artwork
-Flyers and booth for Houdini in Vegas
-Facebook page and "completed" website
-Expo talk
-"Radio silence" following Expo. Not a single post about anything, despite them being active on FB up until Expo.

They can be a different entity, but that above list could be applied verbatim towards John.

The talk of MG's by the 31st was while they were drunk of JPop cool aid. I think they have now tossed the bottle and sobered up.

Should they have made promises they did along with the timeline they did? Heck no, but they apparently had no clue other than what Jpop was feeding them so it's certainly understandable.

As long as they are working on this project with their own dime I wish them all the best. Hopefully they will succeed and be able to fulfill what they promised.

Is it wrong of me for wanting them to just come out and throw jpop completely under the bus if they get their game out? I know it's highly unprofessional, but man it would really just make my day to hear somebody from AP come out and say, "you guys were right! We never should have trusted jpop. He really screwed us. But we were able to soldier on and finally delivered on our promise. We're sorry for being late, but we had a lot of messes to clean up for not listening to you guys in the first place"

Keep in mind, if there is no Jpop, then there will be NO Magic Girl.

In the best interest of AP, that is the way they should do it. Focus on Houdini and nothing else.

Well you left out bringing JoeB onboard... which could also be the catalyst of why the changes since

I've been following this since the beginning, and that is my guess of what will happen. AP will drop Jpoop, Magic Girl will not see the light of day through AP, and Houdini may be released eventually - if so it will be redesigned by Joe (to remove Jpoop from the equation). Again, just a guess...only time will tell...

I just don't see it going any other way. I'm expecting to hear some sort of announcement to the effect of "We were going to make John's games on barter for his services, but since we aren't utilizing his services any longer there is nothing to barter with".

It's incredible to think they honestly didn't know what they were getting themselves into when they started working with John, that they believed everything he told them about the state of both the zidware games and his Houdini, but that seems to be what happened.

They won't stop at Joe B. They will also hire a programmer and sound guy to make Houdini happen. Someone has to program the game and make the original assets.

Who knows, maybe they already did. Personally I'm looking forward to seeing the first mass produced original theme in many years.

Um, hello, AMH?

Dialed In?

Woah Nellie?

Full Throttle?

All original games, all slow sellers. COINCIDENCE???

Oh I know... my point was more "you finally have someone with a clue tasked to make the project a reality". And first order of business might be "stop making promises you have no clue about. We don't need to externalize our progress".

The shift in behavior aligned with the shift in personnel- and that wasn't reflected in frolic's list of events.

The one thing i do know is, if AP folds, the artist that did Houdini should definitely be working for one of the other companies!

I wonder why Terry would include their flier with orders. That would kind of piss me off if I saw that in the box.

Until they clarify what their f-ing deal is with Jpop ...they should only be known as IDIOTS and/or fellow scammers.

given the Jpop linkage; American pinball need to be the "anti-jpop", with a very open and regular communication with facts, dates and plenty of details.

Wasn't AP supposed to get all the magic girls out this year? What happened with that?

Still 10 hours left in my part of the country. Maybe they are boxing the last of the MG's now and loading the final delivery trucks. It could happen.

I thought AP made an announcement after Expo where they basically said if you want an MG, go talk to JPop, because we aren't responsible for that anymore.

Haha. They changed their tune on that pretty quick then. What a mess.

Because Joe and Terry are tight? That's most likely the reason.

Terry at PBL is putting fliers of Houdini in with orders?

Surprising and interesting. Normally if Terry puts in a good word for someone I would put some credence to it. But here? Again, surprising. I wonder what he knows?

That would make some sense.

I wonder if their use of Houdini was in trade for manufacturing MG. So is AP still obligated to JPOP to get MG's out once finished?

I think even if they had such a contract once it was revealed that Houdini was nowhere near complete and pretty much still in idea stage they may have considered JPop to be in breach of that contract, assuming that was even the arrangement.

Hopefully they still have some sort of agreement in place to make the MG's but they are probably going to need Houdini to be a success for that to be possible.

Even if AP were going to manufacture them for him, don't forget about the part where JPop actually has to make MG a machine that works and can be manufactured. Software, engineering, art. He isn't capable of that stuff.

Whoops, sorry Ben! Momentary memory loss and apologies to Dialed in, Whoa Nellie and Full Throttle, also original theme mass produced titles in the past few years. Doh!!

Has anyone here contacted terry at pinball life and just asked him what's going on with the ap fliers?

missed that, thanks.

i guess that relationship was short lived. AP/ Jpop.

If the game is of the same quality as that bag of rubbers in the pic then we are in for a real winner.

They posted this on fb this morning

IMG_8353 (resized).PNG

......better than nothing.....by only a hair.....

translated means...

sorry we couldnt do the MG pins... but HOWEVER.

we will offer a substantial discount to those MG customers on our Houdini pin. ?

Sounds like they might give the MG customers some sort of Discount on Houdini ?

F^%$ all the MG talk. It should be all Zidware customers or none. MG only got to the point it got to from stealing RAZA and AIW people's money to fund it. Not that I think anything will come of this anyway, but I'm really getting pissed that AP/Jpop are willing to acknowledge they owe something to MG owners (regardless of whether they deliver anything on that front) but are still willing to piss in the faces of all the other swindled Zidware customers.

I honestly don't care if they deliver every single MG machine to those owners, if they don't try for equal retribution for all Zidware customers, they'll still be a bunch of assholes.

That is really a good point. It makes sense that they'd help all of the Zidware customers, or do nothing at all.

However, if JPOP is no longer working with them, why would they bother? Wasn't that sort of the deal? What a mess.

I think it makes the most sense for them to completely cut ties with Zidware/JPop and forget about helping the MG and Zidewre customers.

Start fresh as a new company.

I saw that post this morning also. I also got the flier in my PBL order. What was strange to me was no mention of Houdini in the facebook post. I guess time will tell what is going on.

"unexpected Zidware administrative challenges" = Jpop is unmanageable.

That statement goes out of its way to separate the Zidware and AP companies.

"Administrative issues" = Jpop
"Legal issues" = Bill owns the rights to MG in exchange for helping out MG prototype

My guess is MG never sees the light of day and they'll offer owners a Houdini at a discount.

And yes, the vast majority of buyers are RAZA and AiW. I've heard deposits for AIW were as high as 40 units. So like a Ponzi scheme, only the earliest JPOP investors will get anything out of it.

Maybe if John spent as much time building pins as he does suckering investors we might have something by now! Also if so many investors are willing to give him a shot (after he screwed the pooch) why didn't he try traditional funding back in 2011 when his name was golden?

Very optimistic. How will Houdini ever escape the baggage and missteps that have doomed it from the beginning?

Just more vagueness.

Even as a RAZA "investor" I agree with this, but if they choose to leave that can of worms open, they need to address the contents of the whole can, not just the 24 people floating at the top.

It should be all or nothing. Offer some restitution for all Zidware customers if they are still affiliated with Jpop or benefited with his designs in some way, or more smartly, cut ties all together and tell all Zidware customers they're SOL and to contact Jpop.

MG will never see the light of day, I completely agree with that. So, the only likely restitution (if they actually go that path) would be a discount off of Houdini. If they want to actually do that, and do it right, then:
1 - figure out how much aggregate money they're willing to discount.
2 - determine how many people were left holding the Zidware bag and how much money they were each in for.
3 - based on those two numbers, determine how many pennies on the Zidware dollar they will offer as a Houdini discount to match their total aggregate discount.

This would let them determine how much Jpop's side of the equation was worth to them, and lets them proportionally spread that money across the Zidware customer base by how much money was lost by each person. This makes a lot more sense than making 24 people whole and leaving about 150 holding their dicks.

Whoa Nellie would be a much better seller if they had made it with ramps instead of a throwback to EM's.

As a loser on both RAZA and AIW I agree... not sure why they think MG is the only skin in the game. I'd fetch it's a smaller amount of money of the total pot swindled from the community as well. As conflicted as I am I do however hope MG folks get their games. But ZERO mention of any 1 accommodation (RAZA / AIW games, Houdini credit) to the rest of us is not going to get them the free pass the obviously seek. I admire their attempt but if they want full support of this community come to the table with a full fix.

What's all this??
Sure looks like shit
Well it does smell like shit
It sure does feel like shit
Oh yeah it tastes like shit

Good thing I didn't step in it!

Happy 2017 guys!!

WTF is a "Happy New Years Toe" ???

Does it have something to do with "Real Quickstep Solenoids" ???

When I was there Friday, he said they gave him a stack of flyers cards and asked him nicely to send them out with orders. He doesn't seem to have any affiliation with them whatsoever. It's no different than when Marco shoves upcoming pinball show flyers in orders.

Sure it is. A flyer for a pinball show is for an event that will in fact happen. It's advertising a "product" that exists. Houdini and American Pinball is a pipedream/scam until proven otherwise.