I was also thinking of Kevin Kline.

Does the license really just say John P .. no full last name?
How unusual is that (under any circumstance) ... it's like they are trying to hide it.

On one hand, putting Jpop as an alternate contact when there are only 3 employees seems normal. But the fact they don't show the last name makes me wonder if the deal includes any equity stake in AP. If so, that's a whole other animal.

True. I think it would have been better for AP to lay low until they can show a box that flips and has solid software.

Showing a non-flip game (essentially a box of lights) could be damaging for them in light of Jpop's empty cabinet fiasco.

That's along the lines I was thinking.

Kind of wished the podcast had asked why they felt the need to help out on MG.

Jpop's record keeping hasn't been great. I wonder if they know how much he has taken in on RAZA/AIW?

The update... did it come directly from Jpop? Or AP?

That Jpop "Lebowski effect" post reads like he was jealous at how much thunder others had taken from him. How can he take potshots at TBL (the game had ball hangers, you had to hake it and the code crashed and rebooted. But no one cared.) and not compare their reveal to his empty cabinet reveal? It wasn't booze in a private suite that made it better ... the fact something under the glass was flipable was better.

Nice! "There's always money in the banana stand".

I still think it was crazy for AP to come out too early and make all these flashy announcements. With all the baggage they got, the really needed to be damn sure they were ready to go (ie. whitewood done, successfully tested, and the assembly lining ramping up).

Silence is bad in any circumstance, but with the history Jpop has had, it's even worse for AP.

To fit the theme, there shouldn't be anything after the sixth day... just radio silence.

From the outside looking in: American Pinball has billed itself as a manufacturer - if any of us has a machine we want put on a line we could work a deal with them. BUT, I gather that the arrangement would include bringing forward a game that is ready to put on the line. That is, I'll do the manufacturing but I'm not going to finish your design and code, and that's where the AP/Jpop arrangement probably fell apart. They've probably been waiting for Jpop to iron out things to make it ready for the line and gave him until the end of 2016.

So it looks like that arrangement is probably dead and MG is in limbo again.

Meanwhile it looks like American Pinball intends to move forward as a company making their own machines - without Jpop. So they should be judged on their own - but they really need to wait until they have something more concrete, and dial down the PR.

That post does deflect back to Zidware. But I think all along they should have made it more clear where that division or responsibility between AP/Zidware (Jpop) is.

Problem is, are they obligated if Jpop didn't meet the terms of the contract? I assume the terms were:
1) Provide a production ready MG (not 90% complete, with AP to do final coding, design and engineering)
2) Pay for the production of these machines (and I think we all believe that delivering a complete Houdini was that sweat equity)

If MG is still unfinished, there was nothing to put on the line. And now it looks like his Houdini work was deemed unsatisfactory, so there isn't a payment either.

Zidware/Jpop is still ultimately responsible for delivery of MG/RAZA/AIW. I give props to all those who have tried to help get these games made, but Jpop can't dump that responsibility/blame on anyone else.