If American pinball has go a real flipping prototype to release I will be impressed. They must have some real talent in their organisation. From what I have read and heard on podcasts, jpop had basically f..kall to show for all the money he scamed off people, besides some cool zombie yeti artwork. If even 10% of what is mentioned in the press release is true, and they have an actual working game, then who the hell built it? This is a pretty small community, wouldn't someone on pinside have know if they had actually built a flipping proto type? My guess is if anything is show, it will be all glitter and no gold, I.e non working display model only. Might be wrong, just seems so far fetched that someone could bring jpops ideas to life in such short a time. The people with this sort of skill sets are very limited, and are most likely already happily employed by Stern or JJP. As has already been quoted "making pinballs is hard". Doing a press release and applying for a trademark, not so much. Fortunately everyone will know exactly how much of this is bullshit and how much is fact in just a few short days.

My sympathy lies with those that got ripped off in the whole JPOP shit storm. Reading this thread, must be reopening wounds that haven't healed yet.

If they make it to Expo they will need more then a "Display" machine only, otherwise any hype they hope to generate will soon be washed away by scepticism and rightly so. That being said I still think this is the best chance all those that were burnt by Zidware have any hope of seeing some sort of compensation or closure. This still has a long way to play out. My guess is Jpop really sold American Pinball on his "patents" must of convinced them that the intellectual property was worth taking on all the baggage associated with Zidware. Particularly if they want to position themselves as a contract manufacture maybe having unique feature sets that only they can produce will be a selling point? Question still remains is who even owns Zidwares IP?

It's not hard to see how investors could get sucked in to creating a new pinball startup, when Stern are selling out of machines at 10K plus price tags. There is so much more money on the table now when 1000s of buyers are willing to spend at much higher prices. Even at $6995 they are probably seeing a really healthy margin, particularly if they go direct to market.

Okay I might be getting this wrong but does this whole launch seem like something that was pre -arranged and exclusive to pinball news? Having a pinball machine shown in your hotel suite with no other press is not a launch its a staged event. Pinball news obviously has know what's happening for while as mentioned in the first post about American Pinball. Don't get me wrong have nothing against Tim or the site it's just that they should be a little more transparent in their announcement saying it was a private introduction to the company and machine. Pinballnews was one of the key sources to expose the whole Zidware fiasco, so maybe it's a full circle approach to finding closure.

There is just something that feels off with the whole way they have announced and launched themselves into the limelight.

Okay this might of been picked up already and sorry if it has, just crazy trying to read through 8 new pages since last login. The Houdini cabinet has dual buttons, just like the new MG cabinets shown. That cannot be a coincidence? I would say if the new MG are truly going to ship by the end of the year, then there must be a lot of similarities between the new MG game and Houdini. This might not be a bad thing and if Houdini turns out to be a great game (Big If). Then maybe MG will be seen as the Super LE versions even if they are a reskin.

Final point, the game photos really have a Bally Williams 90's vibe going on.

No live streams anywhere?

Pitty not expecting a great deal but would be nice to hear it from the horses mouth so to speak, as a lot of "interpretations" will be added by commentators here.

Do they even have a game in the room?

Should of charged admission, could of been the first step in helping recoup people's monies

For F@@k sake even having an empty cabniet would of been something, what the hell are they doing at expo now. Who is going to give a shit, pinball equation, when a company says release date multiply by 5 then divide by 2. So we should be seeing games,ship sometime mid 2018.

My Dads favourite saying "lie down with dogs and you wake up with fleas" if you decide to associate yourself with a particular person or group of people then you will be judged in that context, that is life. AP has chosen to throw their lot in with JPOP so that is how they will be judged.

Agreed I just thought they would have something, to give people some idea of where they going. I mean a keynote slideshow anything. I really don't get these guys, what reason could they have for wanting to get in front of a bunch of pissed off people, if they had nothing of real substance to show. This timing just seems way off. Should of waited till Texas festival or next years expo, come out blow people away and hit the ground running. Arrive at the show with a semi trailer loaded with 25 magic girls and people would let them spruke Houdini all day long. Got see how this tatic of coming out way to early is going to get them any praise.

No game period.

They buy Gomez Lyman Ritchie Borg games, because yes these guys know how to make great tables that keep all of us talking. However Gary certainly makes better business decisions then others running pinball companies. He has given these guys the platform and resources and they have delivered him sellable product.

Going back to the orginal revel post "not k**ds" that was a repost if you look at the timing about 10 minutes after the first post in the JPOP main thread. I would say the info came from someone that had signed up too their mailing list and just happens to get the press release. Maybe was not something that was meant to go viral in the pinball community, the "reveal" in Vegas was aimed at commercial operators of all entertainment and slot devices, none of whom would likely no shit about the JPOP connection. However if they did jump the gun, that still does not excuse their actions over the last few weeks, blatanly lying about how far along production was and making bullshit claims regarding MG deliveries at expo. Why people can't just be straight up. No one pushed them into a corner to say that MG had to ship by the end of the year, that's on them 100%. And how does a company that's never made a pinball machine before, have any idea that they are 9 months from completion? That timeline is plain pulled from the air.

Okay so JPOP managed to fool another bunch of guys with his BS. This is just my opinion no facts here, but I'm guessing the table we have seen so far was made by JPOP either during his Zidware hight or directly after everything came undone, alomst 100% with money that was meant to go into MG, Zombie , Alice games. That is why the table shown was in a Zidware cabinet. AP thought great we got a fully designed functional table ready to go, all we have to do is it get it running, but that's what we do we make control boards. They launch the game to get some early industry feedback at Vegas, during which time the story gets out on pinside. All hell breaks loose, they call in Joe who at least has an idea of what a real pinball should look and play like. He takes one look at the table realises that even if it has power and code those shots ain't going to work, and basically has to do a full redesign. My favourite part from the pinball news story Joe- " we need to add more features" is it just me all did the playfield look like possibly the most feature pack standard body game of all time.

Once they realised just what they had and how far it was from what JPOP had claimed, they had to start backing away from direct association. Don't get me wrong, I still belive these guys have every intention of trying to deliver MG to JPOP customers, but I think that's about it at this point. We supply the money and construction for 25 MG you give us Houdini. If MG was fully coded and properly laid out including BOM and construction schematics, probably would not be that expensive an excersise for AP.

I would also say they have most likely dropped the Zidware cabniet due to not wanting to infringe or get involved with any potential issues in relation to intellectual property infringement in relation to Zidware ip.

They must of offered Joe a real sweet deal to come on board with such a shit storm of a project. I know pinball design jobs are as few and far between, but that is a shit assignment. I guess they must of convinced him that there will be future games where he can be lead designer. I still don't think anything shown was actually done by American Pinball, 90% of what is there maybe a 100% was probably made by John during Zidware days. The man is obsessed with magic and making "prototype" display games. Could easily see him having put this together when he should of been working on MG, Alice and Zombies. I doubt wether American Pinball has even turned a screw or printed a plastic themselves yet.