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John A. Popadiuk, Jr. (born 1962) also known as JPop, was a pinball machine designer, who started work in the business at 19 for Bally in 1980,〔("Interview with John Popadiuk" ), The Pinball Blog, 4 July 2009〕〔("Ask Uncle Willy #1" ) Newsletter, Planetary Pinball, 23 June 1995〕 and later at WMS Gaming from 1989-2000.〔https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnpopadiuk〕 He is credited as principal designer for many popular pinball machines in the 1990s including, ''Theatre of Magic'', ''Tales of the Arabian Nights'', ''World Cup Soccer'', ''Star Wars Episode I'', and ''Cirqus Voltaire''.〔(IPDB Listing of John Popadiuk games )〕〔(Williams Electronics Games Cirqus Voltaire credits page ), Planetary Pinball, 1997〕 After Williams exited the pinball business in 2000; he started a short-lived Neon sign business named "Duke's Neon" in the Northwest Chicago suburbs. It is unclear if he himself ever bent a glass tube, added the gas and electrodes or had someone else perform that work to his design drawings and art. He also designed a line of toy pinball machines for a now-defunct company named Zizzle〔(Zizzle Pinball Products Page ), Internet Archive, 16 October 2008〕 between 2006 and 2007.〔(''Extra Zizzle'', Pinball News, 15 July 2007 )〕〔(IPDB Listing of games produced by Zizzle )〕 Between 2009 and 2010, Popadiuk developed two iTunes Apps: ''Pinball Scrapbook''〔(''Pinball Scrapbook'' iTunes App ), Google Cache, 1 May 2015〕 and ''Pinball Wizard''.〔(''Pinball Wizard'' ), iTunes Store]〕 Currently, his company, Zidware, has designed three pinball themes, and has collected pre-orders all three. ''Magic Girl'' (loosely based on ''Theatre of Magic''),〔("Magic Girl by John Popadiuk" ), PinballHead.com, 23 July 2011〕〔("Popadiuk Announces New Game Plans" ), ''Pinball News'', 23 July 2011〕 ''Retro Atomic Zombie Adventure'' (formerly known as ''Ben Heck Zombie Adventure''〔("Ben Heck and pinball legend John Popadiuk to create Zombieland pinball machine" ), Geek.com, 1 November 2011]〕〔("Ben Heck gets into the pinball business for real, pre-orders begin in January" ), Engadget, 25 October 2011〕), and ''Alice in Wonderland''. He also worked on a foam board prototype of a ''KISS Pinball'' machine in 2014〔("Kiss 2014" ), Pinside Forum〕〔("KISS Pinball Maximus" ), ''Pinball Inventor''〕 with the intention of obtaining a license to produce a KISS-themed game. Individuals who had paid for pre-orders for Popadiuck's other three games that were under development complained about wasting time with the KISS project, rather than focusing on the other machines he was already contracted to build. A year later in mid-2015, Stern Pinball released a new version of a KISS pinball machine,〔(Early Stern KISS demonstration video ), Stern Pinball's Facebook Page〕〔("KISS Pro" ), Stern Pinball's Official KISS Page〕 which appeared to make Popadiuk's KISS project irrelevant. In May 2015, Popadiuk announced that he was out of funding, and not only couldn't finish the ''Magic Girl'' prototype, he had no way of funding the manufacturing of them. One of his buyers (Bill Brandes) formed a company called "Pintasia" in April 2015〔("Bill Brandes" ), LinkedIn〕 where he intended to license the themes and find a way to manufacture them.〔("Who's working on what?" ), ''Pinball'' Magazine〕 Between various volunteers, they took one of the prototypes as far as they could in a few short weeks〔("Magic Girl" ), ''Pinball News'', 6 June 2015〕 (which included getting the vacuum formed ramps completed) so it could be shown at the Northwest Pinball Show.〔("Northwest Pinball & Arcade Show 2015" ), ''Pinball News'', 7 June 2015〕 The machine was analyzed for completeness, and what it would cost to not only finish the prototype but manufacture. When Brandes realized the project wasn't as close to completion as promised by Popadiuk, Brandes announced on June 10, 2015 that he could not move this project forward and it would be cancelled.〔("It's Official – Magic Girl, RAZA, AIW Bailout Abandoned" ), ''Pinball Bay Area'', 10 June 2015〕 ==Background== Early on, John read Roger Sharpe's pinball book, and saw the name Norm Clarke who was currently working at Bally. He wrote him a letter, and Norm responded with "If you're ever in Chicago, drop me a line and we'll give you a tour", so 2 weeks later he booked a flight and got a tour of the new Bally factory in Bensenville. After lunch Norm offered to drive him back to the airport, but John said "I'm not going back, you're going to have to give me a job". After Norm realized he wasn't joking around, he agreed to hire him. They hired him as a technician in enngineering because he had experience troubleshooting games with a Pinball router in Toronto that had about 350 games. One of the designs John had come up with on his own while still in Toronto was Alice in wonderland, which would later become a theme he would revisit. In 1989 he arrived at the new office, Jokerz! was still on test, and his first project was Ice Castle (which never got produced). He shared an office with another designer, and eventually was begged to work on World Cup Soccer 94 because nobody else wanted to tackle that theme. This is the only pinball design that had to be finished by someone else, other than being a family emergency or an accident (see Dennis Nordman's motorcycle accident on Elivra and the party monsters). He would go onto working on four other titles before Williams shut down the pinball division. Theatre of Magic was originally going to be licensed as David copperfield but they never finalized the license. While still working on it, Capcom came out with "Pinball Magic" and Williams of course thought they had stolen the idea but it was coincidence. Cirqus Voltaire originally started as "Circus Pirates", then "Circus Maximus", but eventually became Voltaire because the market in France wanted it. It was a very unsuccessful title on test, earning only $47 the first week in Waukesha, WI compared to $350–400 for some of the other titles. It did so poorly that they thought something was malfunctioning or the colors were annoying customers enough not to want to play it. In March 1998 the writing was on the wall at Williams, and management told every engineer to build their dream game because they had to impress the board of directors. Brian Eddy worked on a game, George Gomez was working on a ping pong game. They told John to work on that game with the video display in the backbox. He worked night and day for two weeks teamed with Lyman Sheats to throw together a layout. They liked the game, but decided that they didn't like the screen in the backbox. At the same time, Pat and George were working on a reflective display that would become pinball2000, and the entire team focused on that for 14 months to finish the project. SWE1 was designed to only have 7–8 shots (similar to Captain fantastic) to keep it simple for kids to easily catch on and draw them in. In 2006, the DVD ''Tilt - The Battle to Save Pinball''〔(''The Future of Pinball'' ), IMDB〕 was released, which was primarily narrated by George Gomez and Pat Lawlor, documentiung the end times at Williams, focusing on the Pinball 2000 project. Popadiuk declined to take part in the documentary, and as a result, comments about Popadiuk's design team for the ''Star Wars Episode I'' pinball machine were one-sided.〔("Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball" ), ''Pinside'', 25 May 2008〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「John Popadiuk」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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