At least we won't have to wait long to know if this is in fact BS.

Would just like to point out that the heading of the PR says Sept 26, and it's the 22nd. The body says the 26th, which makes sense, but the event is the 27th-29th according to the web site. Not that it means anything, just something I saw.

The company is real and the founder has even said that he is working with JPOP (before toning it down a little). This presser though, is probably a load of crap put together from details about the company and JPOP c/o Pinside's favorite podcaster. Theatre was supposed to be David Copperfield. Change that to Houdini and combine concepts of Theatre and Magic Girl and it's not that hard to come up with content.

How do you know how many listens a podcast gets that isn't yours? Seriously, because I have a podcast but because I host it on a Wordpress site I haven't found a way to check downloads at all.

Lunch time in Vegas, anyone on the ground to see if this is actually a thing?

That's not a reveal, that's a teaser. Things are supposed to work when you reveal them.

JJP has Keith Johnson, ranked 238 in the world and #1 in Illinois.
Heighway has 2 decent players on staff as far as I know.
DP, no idea.
Spooky, have taken feedback left and right to make code better for players. Dominos is getting geometry tweaks based on feedback from Nick Lane (sub-350 ranked), Kevin Manne (sub-750 ranked), and Jack Danger (sub-500 ranked). I would imagine this will happen for future titles as well.

You asked, I answered. AP could do the same thing. Going by how JPOP's Zidware games were designed, he makes pretty things, and when MG was played, it wasn't very smooth. Being in Chicago, AP could have their pick of top 100 players to shoot the games and provide geometry/rules feedback. Have they? Will they? I sure don't know. Even if they did, would John really take that input and adjust the layout?

This is why people are rarely given blank checks to just come up with ideas. If somebody else was in charge of the money, they would have pointed out long ago that under playfield brackets need to be boring. Nothing needs Z's lasered into it before getting bent into shape and bolted out of sight.

That's what I was going to say. You want to know the current state of AP, find out what Joe is doing on a daily basis.

If MG runs on something that can be programmed by an outside party, somebody will take it on as a personal project. If the physical is there, the code will we done by somebody.

Is that JPOP in general? If so, I'd have to disagree. Of all of his games, I have the most time on a TOM. That game shoots amazingly nice. The lock shot is my favorite feeling shot in pinball and the rest of the game flows pretty nicely.

Of course if you are talking MG and H, I completely agree. Not that I've shot either one of course, but they both look like giant cluster f's.

All I want to know is if AP will force his Pinside account to go inactive.

This is my exact reaction as well. I was next in line when the left machine took a dump and was taken out of commission. I was bummed, but got in a game the next morning. Interestingly, I had no issues with the tight right shot. The catapult was amazing to see. The layout is completely foreign, but I never felt frustrated.

DI was a great experience as well, but I think H was my #1 from TPF 2017.