Welcome back to the Theater of Magic. Meditating woman. Shoot the center staircase. You must concentrate. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. This is the Waterboy, Alex, coming at you live from the basement studio. I'm joined today by my faithful co-host, Alan. Alan, how are you doing? I'm doing fantastic, Waterboy. I'm doing extra fantastic this week because I get to do the coffee plug. If y'all don't know, if you're listening to this show, we do this each and every week, a new podcast for you. We set up a coffee.com slash Wedgehead podcast. That's KO-FI.com slash Wedgehead podcast. Go there. You drop a couple bucks. Appreciation for the show. Gets you access to our private Discord channel where we shop it up with all the boys and girls in there talking about pinball and non-pinball related things. And you get to it gets pretty crazy in there. But maybe it's a little bit too much. We might need to split it into some more channels lately because it's overwhelming when you come back to 500 messages or whatever because you're trying to work for 20 minutes. If you're sitting there and you're at a shitty job and you don't got a lot to do and you want to have more pinball talk with us or everyone else, everyone else slacking off from their job, donate a couple bucks, we'll get you a link and you can pretend to be working with us on the Discord. It's a pretty good time. It's a pretty good time. But what are we going to talk about today, Alex? What's the episode about? Today's topic is, you know, something that's not even particularly near and dear to both of our hearts as we'll get into. It's kind of funny. But yeah, you've already seen the, if you've already seen the title, if you clicked on this, it's John Papadiuk, Pinball's Magic Man. He's a name in this hobby that some know very well, but also one that's easy to miss if you're only tuned into modern games. He is, or was, depending on who you ask, a pinball designer best known for his work at Bally Williams during the 90s. His work you hear about most is contained to that golden era of DMD games. But in a weird way, his work kind of spans like all pinball generations. We'll talk about that. I'll put a little spin on that, you know. So we're going to run you through a brief history of his career in pinball, just to give you guys some context. You want a really thorough breakdown of his career. Podcast Silver Ball Chronicles, who I believe have an episode on John. We also want to just discuss his games that you'll actually see on location, our thoughts on them. what kind of makes the magic in these games and you know just go from there yeah so and the reason i started this by saying it's not particular a lot of people i would say John Papadiuk is their absolute favorite pinball designer of all time and me and alan were we both like his games i say but not nearly as much as some people they and we'll get into it here but i think it's like they really uh have become very valuable that's part of the collector market John Papadiuk why i call him the magic man is because you know he takes your money and poof makes it disappear well we'll get to that later too the games are worth a lot of money if you're if you're playing on location he's stealing your quarters if you're a collector these games are worth a shit ton and if you're an investor that money disappears too yeah so we got an interesting story today i mean i see you wrote here for his career that john's canadian which explains the dot what does that me you'll just you know you'll have to extrapolate from that what you want well i have one good example as we get into it but he is canadian okay it does explain a lot uh young john i think he grew up in like toronto it doesn't particularly matter but he read roger sharp a previous guest of this show's a famous book pinball with an exclamation point the first kind of like historical book and john was very into pinball he was working for an operator as a tech uh i think he was always a fan of classic games. And after reading this book, he decided to look up Norm Clark, Mr. Norm Clark, very, very famous, highly esteemed electrical mechanical game designer, who was working for Bally as kind of the, I think, head of creative there, like the George Gomez there. Yeah. Of Stern now, but at Bally in 1980. So John looks up Norm because he's a fan. Norm says, hey, if you're ever in Chicago, we'll give you a tour. John just gets a ticket to Chicago. He's up in Toronto still, but Norm gives him that offer. He gets a ticket, goes to Chicago. He gets a tour of the factory, and he somehow talks his way into getting a job there, working as an engineering tech because he had prior experience working as a tech on route. So after that, I guess I should mention, I didn't actually look up John's age, but this was 1980, I think. It's kind of hard to actually pin down things. Pretty sure it was 1980. So he's probably just for reference in his late 60s now. So he starts out as a tech, 1980. 1989 is kind of where we see the first proof of interest of him wanting to be a designer. Him and his buddy, Mike Hanley, they make a prototype game, Alice in Wonderland. It's a prototype. I wonder if we're going to hear anything else about Alice in Wonderland and pinball ever again. Maybe, if you see the future. But it's a prototype game. It's not a whitewood. A lot of designers made whitewoods. john did not make a whitewood and there's a big difference there in that a whitewood is something focused on design and being a functional game this was not a functional game it's like a model this is like a model 100 showing somebody a model it's like a concept drawing and was when you see it you're like oh like at first i was like oh shit like i didn't know there was like an earlier like john popadook like prototype game floating out there and then you see it and all of the plastics are like drawings done with marker on paper and the ramps are made out of like tupperware that's cut up and you know it's just it's a concept to kind of just be like look at this is what you could imagine an Alice in Wonderland game as it's not something you could actually flip I think that's very very noteworthy because that's not how most designers got into the industry if they if they have something to show for their early work it's not with something like that where you're pitching a vibe most designers pitch a design yeah they bring in a prototype game and that's kind of the crux that's like john's career in a nutshell it can start feeling like we'll we'll get into it more as i always say but it is just this is a you can see in this single in the singular move in 1989 you see the foundation of john's career so apparently though, this prototype game, for whatever it was, impresses the people at Bally enough to give them a shot at designing a real game. They set them loose on something called Ice Castle. It's a game that, I don't know how far along it made, it's just something that he's mentioned in interviews. That was also in 1989, though. So it was a game that never made it to production. There's no photos of prototypes. There's literally like no record of this outside of his interviews, as far as I know. But it was clear that they had eyes on him as a potential designer. Five years after that, 1994, he finally gets a production game. That game is World Cup Soccer. It's a game that all of you probably know very, very well. But before we get into the game itself, I just want to point out that's 14 years of work in there before John actually made a game. Gets a design credit and a game into production. That's a long time. That's like a lot of people's whole careers in the industry are less than 14 years. And so it's noteworthy to be like, well, 14 years before he got to do a design and he was just kind of like working as a tech or whatever. I did hear John say in an old Coast to Coast interview that Nate Shivers did way back in the day with John when jumping ahead here. He's coming down. He starts his own boutique manufacturing company. Doesn't go so well. He's not such a great businessman. And he's explaining himself. he does say that world cup soccer took he was working on that game for 10 years and when he started it wasn't world cup soccer obviously so he was starting with that so i wonder if that was part of ice palace yeah if it was something like that like a reiteration or alice in wonderland like common there's common enough design threads throughout a lot of his games i feel like like one i guess there's multiple ramps on world cup soccer but the whole right side of world cup soccer kind of that game's pretty soccery now that i'm thinking about it no it's well integrated at the end but i think you know for the people that work there and our own uh guests of the show and frequent uh contributor to the pinball discord greg dunlap would tell you larry damar saved that game this is what a lot of people think a lot of people say this about this game that world cup soccer 1994 it's got john uh this is the designer but it's also got a larry demar design credit on it larry demar is also on software kevin o'connor is on art tim Tim Kitzrow is on call outs who you might know better from like nba jam you know the like boom there goes the dynamite or whatever boom shakalaka yeah that's what he's yelling right yeah you know him you love him that's also something again so this game's got a very good artist it's got a very good programmer kind of uh like the goat yeah helping with helping with the design it's got like the king of call outs on it it does well it's a licensed game which is also notable for John Papadiuk yeah licensed game it's got striker of the world cup soccer uh mascot for 1994 yep the world cup that was happening here in the u.s yep and it sold well like even for the time period this thing sold 8700 units huge seller and you wrote here that it's but it sells for roughly about five grand now yeah this is probably of his dmd games this is the definitely the most obtainable and it's not even necessarily the lowest regard it's just kind of like the least cool looking i think because it's a very dog soccer forward game i think it's hard to find people that really don't like the game no people fucking love this game yeah i'd say it's really easy to find especially newer players like gravitate towards this thing in a way personally this is the only game i've had people that don't play pinball at all they'll bring up they'll be do you ever play that like that soccer game with like the dog on it where you hit the goals and it yells goal at you and you're like oh yeah man and you know what's interesting is as we talk about all these John Papadiuk games that's kind of what all these games he made in the 90s are they all do that they all dude that's why i brought up the call outs on this game one fucking good call outs it's not a center bash toy but it's a center central toy it's got good feeling ramps it's got a bright cutesy uh art package on it even though it's soccer based it's very like it is very cute you know yeah it's a lot of teal yeah it's a lot of teal it's definitely like a unique color on it it's got another guy kind of picking up the slack with larry tomorrow on there you know helping with the vision so do you do you like this game like when you see a world cup soccer now do you go play it no is that because oh sorry was that that's so fast is that because uh are you sick of it or is it too easy or whatever liked it really never liked it oh i fucking i really love this thing i'm kind of sick of it at this point but when i got into pinball i was like this is a good game i was This is what every game should be. It's hurting some listeners ears right now just to hear me say that. But I've already said it on our earlier episodes of the show. So I'm not going to be a hypocrite about it. But it's like I've never really liked it. But I'm not going to say it's a bad game. It's just not a game that I like for various reasons. Yeah, I can. I mean, I don't understand that position. You want to hear more about it? Come into the discord. I'll tell you all about it. But we're here to run a show. OK, so that's 1994. 1995 one short year later he doesn't get 10 years to work on this one he gets one year and he puts out theater of magic there's no co-design credit on it it's got Ernie Pizarro and jack scalin on mechs jeff johnson on software linda deal on art linda deal that's a big deal because she's a woman and it's weird to see a woman in pinball yeah i don't know how we like feel about that we're gonna need zoe on the episode yeah it is it is wild because unfortunately and we cover this in our women on pinball episode unfortunately still rare yeah to see women working in pinball for no good reason because her art package on this game is iconic yeah and fantastic so and unique it looks different than other shit at the time despite it's not it's not like oh it's It doesn't look like you don't look at a theater of magic. I never would in clock it as like, oh, a woman drew this, but it looks different than everything else. Yep. It's not like aggressive. If that it's weird because it's like if they made a if they made a magic themed game. I mean, well, they do later. We'll get into I guess there is a new modern magic themed game kind of. And they did make everything like aggressive and mean looking. And you're like theater of magic doesn't look like that. It just looks like magic and it's good. And it's also a good game, I would say. I think it's a great game. Dave Zabriskie on music. Yeah. Dave Zabriskie is a legend. Did a lot of work for Gottlieb and then some work later for Bally Williams. But, man, he – killer shit. Like, so this guy – He's good at composing music. He's really good. He's really good. They also have another very talented person on call-outs, Kathy Schinkelberg, who is not a name I'm familiar with at all. But the call outs on theater are, I would say, like iconic, very well done, very thematic. It's the woman on the back glass talking to you, I assume. Yes. And yeah, it's another very good overall package with a killer theme. And it's integrated very well, I would say. Oh, it's got the magic trunk as like a central kind of bash toy. But it's like a state changing diverter kind of, you know, like a better version of something you would see on Harry Potter nowadays. Yeah, like a better version. and it's like a better magic pin than anything else it's it's kind of nuts man it also features the best animation of all time when the dude falls down the stairs when you sneak into the back of the trunk and has a little guy bouncing downstairs it's got the worst video mode of all time the with your plane pinball and it's the pinball on the people on the wide street with like two dots when the vault at the back of the play field it's it's just like two dots wide that was a mistake yeah they messed up on the video mode but hey it's 1995 the kids are into video modes it sells 6600 units and uh good amount of you know and it sits right around nine to ten grand for to get one nowadays so yep it's expensive if you everybody this is another game i would say widely loved oh yeah this is no if i've ever ran into anybody that's like ah now fuck that game no it's usually tournament players that start to get into deep rule sets or rules exploits um which some of these later games have all these John Papadiuk games starting with this one and on have but damn it's a fucking fun game the theme integration is amazing yeah i love this game. I used to play the hell out of it all over Portland when I first got into pinball. And it was the game that got my wife, Casey, to enjoy pinball, which is so important. When you get sucked into pinball you need your partner to at least tolerate pinball This is one of the earliest games I remember Megan like specifically liking to It got the cool toys So it got the state trunk the magic trunk or whatever that spins And it holds your ball up on the magnet when you bash the side. It's got the little secret kick-out scoop that pops up. That's a really cool mech. Because it'll grab the ball, and then it'll pop back up and then spit it back at you. Which is very cool. The magnet, when you hit the ramp, the magnet that sucks the ball into it and then sends it down the alternate path. It's cool. Yeah, it's got the vanish feature, so it makes you think that the ball vanished off that magnet. Yeah. It's got the mirror over the... The mirror over the pops with the mirrored graphics underneath it is fucking sick. It's just banging. Like, it really is... It's well done. It feels like a magic show when you're playing it. I think John really, his strength as we go through these games, are his theme integration and his creativity. Yeah. Like World Cup soccer is a theme that was placed onto him. But after that, but even that game, you're like, damn, this feels like a soccer game in the 90s. It is. Like, it is good. I cannot imagine. Like, you could tweak that game so I like it a little bit more or whatever. But I can't imagine an overall package being, like, a better soccer. You're like, no, the way it's like you're not just shooting goals, but, like, the goalie mech is really well done. You get the little free kick or the whatever you call that corner kick. Yeah. I can't remember. I don't know soccer terms or that game that well. But it's like it's just got cool shit. It's got a bad use of a magnet save, though. It does have a very odd magnet save. And John likes using magnets. Oh, this has the. This has the magnets over the outlanes, the automatic magnet saves. Yeah. Yeah, which is very cool. Which is also, yeah. Because, again, the first time it happens, you're like, whoa. Oh, and unlike other games where it expects the player to use an extra button and know that it's there, which new players don't, this happens to them. Yep. And so it feels like magic. Yeah. And it's like, which is cool. Again, another one that it just it seems to earn very well on location. Location players love it. Collectors also love it. And they've driven the price, you know, up to whatever, nine grand, which is a lot for Bally Williams. Yeah. okay so from there speaking of expensive games we go to 1996 john's next game it's tales of the arabian knights commonly known as totan because tales of the arabian knights is a mouthful he's the sole design credit same met credits as theater but now a third guy so he's got two mechanical engineers from there and now they got a third guy on here joe loveday okay we should also going back to theater what do you think of that trunk mech uh i think the mech is awesome but damn it's problematic on location all the time that's all i wanted to say yeah so we had two guys they made a fucking cool mac but it breaks so we get into we get into totan and now they got those same two guys but they also have a third one yeah uh joe loved it he's got his work cut out for him on this game but uh yeah it's got lewis cosiers is that how you say his name lewis cosiers uh on software who's a really good time following him he was a prolific software guy during this era He is on Blue Sky, the, you know, good Twitter. And he posts all the time with old Ballywilliam stuff. Go follow Lewis if you listen to this. It's got Pat McMahon on art and Dave Zabriskie on sound. I put in the notes here. At this point, 1996, so he sold 8,700 units, sold 6,600 on theater, which isn't that many, but the game's a banger. I feel like they knew when they saw that game. They're like, this is good. I want to clarify, 1995, the market's sliding back down, and this, 6,600 units, Attack from Mars came out this same year and only sold about 3,000 units. Oh, shit. So, yeah. So it was a big success. It was their best-selling game of 1995. Okay, that makes sense then, because Arabian Nights, they fucking let him do whatever the hell he wanted. This feels to me like them just being like, John, go fucking nuts. Whatever you need, you got it. And they get him this fucking sick art package. They get him just all the like goofy shit that he had ever imagined taking from an EM and putting into a modern game with the he's got his spinning disc, which I fucking hate spinning discs. But it's got a spinning disc, which is the big lamp on it. The magnet that sucks the ball under makes it disappear when you hit the genie. it's got the genie bash toy with like the glowing led eyes name another game from 1996 with leds it's rare dude the shadow had him in the little ring or no those were those were little baby incandescents dude it's weird this is like like all like everything on this and it's got like the biggest fucking plastic ramp that i think the molds could put out at that time the big swoopy right yeah and it really only has one ramp but it's got a diverter and it swoops and it's just man it just doesn't feel like any other game dude it's good it's really good it's my favorite John Papadiuk game another anecdote is i had my father who you know was a teenager in the 70s during the heyday of pinball so he played a lot of pinball go to rock and roll shows and all that kind of stuff he knows i'm into pinball he's visiting me in portland about a decade ago at this point um i take him to ground control we're playing all the games playing all the games upstairs and my dad's going down the line playing every one of them and then he comes up to me excitedly and he goes alan alan alan have you played tales of the arabian nights and i go yeah he goes this is the best game and i was like yeah it's pretty fun and he was like no this is the best one he's like i played all of these he's like this one's the best one done the research alan and like i'm telling you you can save all your fucking money and just play this game this is the best one So it speaks. It's once again, a cool central bash toy. Cool central bash toy. Spinning lamp. Great sound. Yeah. Unbelievable sound. Brilliant art package. The world under glass is amazing. This also has probably the coolest outlay and save ever where it's got the little cages coming up. Little cages, spike cages come up out of the play field and trap a ball and then drop back down and it falls through into your in lane. Once again, automatic. automatic which is the way those things should be it needs to be if you're trying to get yes i so we were just completely unrelated to this we were talking about jungle lord earlier in the old barry owsler solid state game and i'm like jungle or it's fun because you could use those second buttons swing the ball around with the magnets that is not an intuitive thing for beginners at all no that's like a waste of a bill of material i can't tell you how many people have played my rick and morty and these are like experienced players and won't notice there's a magna save on it because It's on its own button and it's not communicated clearly on the game. And it's like, if you're going to put these parts into a game, especially at this era where the games are expected to go on location, you need to get your money's worth out of them. And I feel like John, his games were loaded, but he got his money's worth out of everything on there is used to great effect. Yeah, you have great moments. You have the fireball moment, you know, where it'll catch the ball on a magnet at the top of the ramp and then divert it down a different path. And then you'll get a great sound call and then it wants you to throw it back at the genie. it is just theme executed perfectly it looks fantastic it sounds fantastic i think the rules and software are really good there are scoring exploits on the game which for experienced players will go i hate this now because now i know that there's one safe thing to do but if we're looking at this as far as like if you're getting people to play pinball i don't think that there's many games better than theater of magic tales of the arabian nights dog soccer yeah at getting a new player that doesn't give a crap about pinball yeah because and make them have a good time give them something the objectives are self-explanatory and rewarding outside of the score or anything else and so they just work really well with new players yes and that's what makes it a shame that they only sold 3100 of these things and now they're worth 12 grand or so for a nice one yeah because you don't see you're seeing them less and less this is what you're talking about 12 grand for a machine that was definitely on location oh yeah that was routed and now you know there's replacement parts and some people do high-end restorations on these games they're also kind of like again they're jammed full of shit and i don't know if these ones are particularly unreliable or anything i just know they got a lot of shit going on now we have one we should bring it back but yeah that's that's a hell of a game i love this arabian nights i really i'm just like This is kind of like why I'm so nostalgic for this era, because I would play these games. I'm like, damn, dude, like every time a loaded boutique manufacturer comes out with a loaded game, I just go, yeah, but it's not good like this game is. You know what I'm saying? Like you're like loaded for the sake of loaded. Yeah. Different than like that's what I mean. Like John's using his shit. Well, yeah, the dude can design for all like I know there's going to be already been very critical of John. and we're going to get into some other things after this, like after his design time at Bally Williams, where I will probably come off more critical, but he can design one fucking hell of a game. So we got to talk about his last fully featured regular pinball machine, 1997 Circus Voltaire. He gets a co-design credit with Cameron Silver, who also did the software. You know, you got Jack back on mechs. With Louis Toy? Louis Toy. Interesting. Yeah. Interesting names. Linda Deal is back doing the art package. This game has a crazy art package. The last time I felt like, before we get into the art package specifically, I was like, on the last one, I'm like, they're letting him throw everything into this game. And then I kind of was like, well, they didn't let him do shit on Totan compared to Sergius Voltaire. They let him do whatever he wanted here. The art package, starting with the art package, which is the most standout thing on the game, it looks nothing like a pinball machine from that era. No, and I think if John has one excellent skill, I think he does. I'm going to give him a lot of credit for a few things. I think, as Greg mentioned, every project needs a visionary in our last episode. John, he has no shortage of vision. Yeah. You know, like. No, not at all. He's not the guy that can do it on his own. but what he's also really good at is selecting an interesting theme and making that thing totally immersive yeah and then he finds artists and he gets the best work out of them yeah it's amazing incredible dude like a lot of these artists this is the best art package they've ever put together will be on a John Papadiuk game yeah and that continues into the future too but circus voltaire is definitely a good example of that linda deal fucking snapped on this thing it is i love the art package on circus voltaire so much it's if if anyone out here has never seen a circus voltaire just pause the episode pull out your phone i don't care if you're in the middle of fucking stop and go traffic it's more important that you look up circus voltaire right now because it is so sick it's a like french electric circus themed game right absolutely insane from the spelling of the name circus like it's it feels very very much like if you saw a pinball machine invented by roald dahl and fucking willie wonka world type shit you're like this is crazy dude it's like mardi gras colors it's all green and purple and gold and you're just like they let him okay so unique unique cabinet shit is that they let him put the trim pieces and i always say him i have no idea who's making these kind of decisions but i i'm using him as the creative team behind this they let them put like picture frame trim around the backbox which makes this game difficult if it has that original trim you can't really fit it in a lineup with other shit super easily so that's immediately odd the the backbox has an interactive toy with the ball that bounces into a bell or whatever because and they have all the space to do that because they were able to put the dmd underneath the playfield glass at the back of the playfield which is kind of rad when you're actually playing the game makes it really hard to spectate if you're playing like a multiplayer game you have a hard time telling what's going on yeah it's awesome i mean and now barrels of fun does it on their games i mean they still have a normal screen in the backbox they didn't they didn't just migrate it but they have an extra screen and what you're seeing when you're playing labyrinth or dune is what you know it is in circus voltaire so it was very innovative very interesting game again the mechs are crazy the okay the the max has got the pop-up the ringmaster head that has a magnet on the top that can hold the ball it pops up and it's a bash toy and it can go all the way up and it's a subway entrance yes and it's surrounded by stand-up targets so it can like serve multi-functions in every which way it's like the theater it's like the trunk from theater but like on crack it's fucking it's so good and It's like the enemy in the game. It's very, very well utilized. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's a fantastic game. It's got the horseshoe around the ringmaster. And the horseshoe, once you have that shot figured out, suddenly the balloon, the pop bumper that raises from the playfield, comes up and will fuck you on the feet out of that horse. It's incredible, dude. The juggler little kicking mechs, they use all these solenoids. They use four different solenoids just to do a physical ball lock. it's like not even a prominent part of the play field it's so cute though the games are memorable they leave a lasting impression on the player in a way that yeah not many pinball machines do to a new player john's games and i see it all the time you put people on one of these games they will remember it oh yeah if you're not a pitbull player they will remember playing that game. Yeah, I mean, they're all, that's what I was going to say, they're all, they either have memorable toys or art packages or both and themes and sound and call-outs. That's why it's hard to give John all of the credit because the teams behind these games were incredible. But like you said, he seems to get the best out of people he's working with. He's definitely talented. There's no doubt about it. I mean, these games speak for themselves. So Circus, I would say of the four games we've talked about, Circus is probably the least beginner friendly. It seems to be kind of the most polarizing from an actual gameplay perspective. A lot of people don't care how it plays for, and it doesn't necessarily, it doesn't make a ton of casuals like topless, but that also might be because it's rare. They only sold 2,700 of them, and they're not on location much. Yeah. I've also seen at the time from my internet perusing that people fucking did not care for this game when it came out. A lot of the pinball scene in its constant toxic way. Toxic masculinity. did not appreciate this game not like the art package it's definitely definitely not a conventional cool guy art package it's got little like john drawn on it with long hair and tights and stuff and the whole thing's pink and purple and like neon green it's not no fear right yeah yeah exactly it's like i love both of those i love both of them yeah i want to own both of these games because of the art packages and themes but like those are the two polar opposites of that and so i know it did not go over well when it came out i've seen people saying distributors were refusing to buy the game yeah we won't drop who told us this information but uh you know apparently there were some prominent distributors back in the day like how am i going to sell this game i don't have any gay bars on my route yeah and that's the kind of shit that you get when you take risks in pinball yes which sucks it sucks that's like the shitty part and i i'd like to think we're past that we don't have any you know not traditionally masculine games yet So we can really say everything that we been seeing for the past as long as i been the hobby is just shit that supposed to appeal to guys that were born in the 80s right yeah and so we can really prove that we doing better than this but i can also see when you see how negative they put everything into this game did not sell particularly well but more than the sales it had a very controversial kind of reception i can see why companies aren't eager to repeat that yeah that being said the game looks fucking sick dude And it stands out, man. And now because it's rare and it's valuable and you don't see it everywhere, it kind of just makes it even cooler. Yeah. So. Yeah. Yeah, this is, again, an 11 grand game. These are fucking expensive Bally Williams once you get into these, like, the rarer J-pop games. Yeah, that's the end of his career, right? Well, I mean, that's the part that people like talking about. So those four years. So John worked for Bally for 14 years, and then he had four years making these four DMD games. Some of the highest regarded games. Again, widely loved games. Everyone loves. And then shit kind of hits the fan, right? Yeah. No matter how much you put in a game, you can't fight a shrinking market. Bally Williams really tried. They went into the Pinball 2000 thing. We touched on this a bit in our recent Die on the Hill episode about John's next game and his last game for Bally Williams, which is 1999's Star Wars Episode I. The sole design credit on this, he was involved with the Pinball 2000 development from the get-go, but the form factor it ended up taking was not what he wanted to do. Neil Macastro, president of Williams, was basically challenged the team to go, hey, listen, sat them all down, was like, hey, nobody cares what you guys are doing. You guys always come up with me with these new, cool, crazy gimmicks, this new mech. Nobody cares. Nobody's buying the games. Nobody cares anymore. Yeah. So you got to change pinball and make it popular again. Like when we used to sell units not even 10 years ago in the early 90s. Yeah. We're in the late 90s or we're going to shut it down. So bring me something, you know, visionary, different, reinvent the wheel. And John was working on basically a combination. his vision for pinball 2000 was going to be a pinball a small pinball machine with a monitor and you would go back and forth between playing a video game and a pinball machine which has been done before i was gonna say in the 80s yeah his idea for pinball 2000 from everything i've seen i've not seen that much but it basically was just an updated version of you know a baby pac-man or granny and the gators type situation where you're like okay there's a crt in the backbox you get to play games up there you have a little shorter play field in front of that you now have ramps and stuff but it's basically going to be a baby pac-man those games didn't do that well they didn't set the world on fire they definitely didn't revolutionize the industry or take away from the sales of other games so i can see why they went with gomez's plan which is a much different experience than anything else to that point. George Gomez and Pat Lawler creatively went away as the troublemakers because they were both not impressed with the development. They developed in Pat's garage after hours working all night what became the Pinball 2000, which we now know it does incorporate a screen, but it's reflected onto the playfield glass. So it creates an effect where it looks like things are happening on the playfield that aren't there. right yep and so it's very cool because it's augmented reality so it felt different it felt cool it felt fresh definitely feels unique it seems like the kind of thing that an investor that's never played pinball would look at and see and go that's different yes and considering that was the entire goal of the project i don't think they could have done better than that i do think the pinball 2000 games are both fun in their own way and if you don't believe us regarding episode one you should go listen to our recent die on this hill episode about it and we'll at least convince you that the art package is sick yeah dude at least sad because the art package is fucking rad episode 1 1999 john does have to go work on gomez's version of pinball 2000 he gets the absolutely monstrous license of star wars episode 1 i imagine this was probably the most hyped movie of all time that there will ever be because after this we kind of lost the american monoculture and i think we also learned from this that reboots aren't always good so yeah i think it's hard to really understand how excited the world was for episode one and then how quickly that got deflated well and now we get so much star wars shit right like disney bought it so we get so much but this is after like 20 years of like everyone telling their kids that these are the best movies of all time and now the new ones are out and they're coming out and everything so it's crazy that they secured this license and were able to do it and they sold 32 or 3500 units which is more than his last two games yeah which is definitely noteworthy when everyone says this game was like a flop and killed bally williams it sold more than theater of magic or sorry of arabian knights and it sold more than circus voltaire so i guess like arabian knights is a flop and a shitty game too if that's your metric williams wms industries the story's been told a bunch of times we've talked about on the show but really they wanted to get out they wanted to focus on slot machines they're a publicly traded company it was the company's worth more the stock goes up if they cut the pinball division which is really expensive and really not making that much money it's just a big risk yeah yeah so it's sad that's just what happens in this kind of uh fizzles out these things are worth about 3,500 bucks. It's the cheapest Williams, uh, John Papadiuk game you can buy, but it's not the cheapest John Papadiuk by a game you can buy. That brings us to what did John do after this? This, this, so you're like, well, you already told me his career ended once when the DMD game stopped and you're like, well, that's the career people talk about. And then you're like, well, now his career ended at Williams entirely. But where's John go next, Alan? He goes to your house. he gets hired by zizzle a little like arcade toy manufacturing company to design a couple little teeny tiny home pins for them that were sold at costco and the likes for like 300 bucks these little things are interesting you see them i think themed just as pirates of the caribbean and marvel there might be one other one of those the only two i've ever seen those are the ones i remember they're like one third scale toy pinball machines meant for children with like cardboard on the bottom of them and shit but they're fully functional pinball machines with a little tiny pinball and like pop bumpers and ramps with ball trails and it's kind of insane that they could make and sell these things for 300 bucks yeah they're they're very much they feel like a toy yo yeah they don't feel like i mean they don't feel anything like a commercial pinball machine but they also don't feel like if you've ever played one of those little like tomai's or whatever where your finger is literally the force going into the flipper button yeah it's like world's better like yeah these i so our buddy jay had one of them in his garage for a while that he got off craigslist for like 50 bucks and i was immediately just in there i'm like i can't believe how impressive this little thing is yeah they're kind of cool it's also wild that he goes from just making crazy loaded games and with all this tech and engineering and then he's making the most low-tech version of a pinball machine that's ever been sold the man's got range dude it speaks to his ability that he could actually make a game in like hit this bill of material and they could sell these in there that you see them all the time still despite being like almost disposable they must have sold this was probably john pavaduke's best sell yeah i'm sure they sold this shit out a thousand of these things yep because you still see them regularly on craigslist for 100 bucks i'm just gonna say if you are like what the hell is alex talking if you see one of for $100 and you have never played one, I feel like you should buy it just for the novelty of you and your friends getting to play one once because it's pretty funny. Yeah, no, it is. It is fun. They're good for like dollar games. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. So anyway, pretty funny, pretty funny little like side quest there, John Pappadoo. That's 2007. So that was already eight years after Williams closed. I don't know what he was doing between those two. Another short five years later we get into our first kind of sad john story which is zidware i'm going to just kind of blaze through this summary alan because there's a lot that i ended up writing so i can't even i can't really cover this all i'm going to kind of do my best zidware is a company that john some others started up they were promising to bring the the magic of pinball back in like a new boutique company this is 2012 for reference jjp maybe is on the scene when this was announced They're announced, but they haven't released the game. This is all like the beginning of the boutique. Spooky's not out yet. It's the beginning of the boutique era, and Zidware was going to be like the fancy boutique. A bunch of people plunked down money for games. The first title is Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland, designed in some sort of collaboration with Ben Heck. It doesn't ship, but the company doesn't just stop just because the game's not shipping and people have already paid for this game. So he starts teasing the next game, a foam core prototype of Alice in Wonderland, very similar to his original prototype, but now in 2012 form with like updated, cool, angry art on it. It's yeah, it doesn't ship either, but that doesn't end there. He shows off another game, an EM inspired low budget title called Space Mission X. Space Mission X. Alan, how many units do they sell Space Mission X? Space Mission X does not ship any units either. Yeah, but they make one more for good measure. They announce a fourth and final Zidware title, the one to make everything right, and probably the most famous. Well, Roz is famous now, but not from Zidware. The famous of the Zidware games is Magic Girl. It's shown off. It features art by a formerly unheard of little artist named Jeremy Packer (Zombie Yeti), now known as Zombie Yeti, also known as the current studio art director of Stern Pinball. They announced Magic Girl. Shit has kind of hit the fans at this point. Investors and not investors, just customers are mad because John has all their money, hasn't delivered a game, and it's been years. So American Pinball. You know, that has since become a company. Yeah, they've become a company, but I don't think they've shipped any games at this point. And they see a potential to collaborate here, make things right for the Zidware customers, kind of snag John Papadiuk for a designer. And just this could be the collaboration they need. They have manufacturing experience, but they don't have a designer. They don't have a game ready to go. So it kind of looks like a win-win. They do have John show off yet another foam core prototype of a game, his Houdini. It gets an art package and everything. It looks like a very finished game if you ever see it, but it's obviously not production ready. They try to make Magic Girl, as they were told it was the most production ready of the Zidware games. They managed to build 21 of them, but they're not functional games. The code's not there. They ship those 21. The whole thing just falls apart. They were taking it to shows. They were trying to sell it to people. They had it turned on, but wouldn't let people play it because they knew it wasn't functional, that it was just a box of lights. And this is where it just gets it all falls apart because it's all smoke and mirrors. Yeah. At this point, they just American does what was right for their company. They part ways with John Papadiuk. Zidware dissolves. I think they just announced bankruptcy. Nobody gets anything. All of the people that paid tens of thousands of dollars for their special boutique games five years ago, they get nothing. We see this happen again and again, but this is where it all started. He was taking money for deposits. Then he was taking full price for their games, using that money to develop other games, never making any of them. It was just like trying to get ahead of it and trying to do anything you can to keep building hype and keep getting money, hoping that somehow you would get there. And really, it was just digging a deeper and deeper hole. And the way John talks about it, he was just not a good businessman. And he's sorry. And I don't doubt that he is sorry. But, you know, like, it's hard to understate how angry the pinball community was at this point. Like, I wasn't buying games, so it didn't affect me. But, man, John Papadiuk went from being the pin side darling. This guy makes the best games. Why isn't he making pinball machines? Oh, my God, he started his company. oh my god these are gonna be so much cooler than these stern games i'm gonna give them my money then other people like oh you're dumb he's you know he's announcing another game like no it's fine it's fine it's fine and you have to pick a side and then when it all comes to fruition that nobody's gonna get their games the money's been spent then it was unbelievable anger yeah and it tarnishes legacy there's people 10 years later that are still i mean justifiably to some extent are still just absolutely livid about this situation. I want to say, too, though, that this is, I think, why Spooky got so much goodwill from the community early on. Because they built naturally, they grew naturally. They grew naturally and they always delivered what they promised. Yeah. In an era when they were trying to come in and everyone was super skeptical. That's the big thing. why i brought made such a big emphasis on john's first game not being a whitewood and not being functional and just being the vibe and like he's selling the vibe and like above anything else because that's like all he did with zidware he just kept making foam core games and getting people hyped and the games look rad if you go look up like his his version of houdini you're like holy shit this thing looks awesome yeah why didn't american make this and the answer is probably because it wouldn't have worked the way it did. It didn't work. Yeah. Well, and he didn't care, because as we saw with his Bally Williams games, many different mechanical engineers are on his projects, because John wasn't a mechanical engineer. Now, to be fair, most pinball designers aren't, although a lot of them start as mechanical engineers and then become designers, or at least have some kind of crossover experience. Because John worked for 14 years before he made his first fucking game. that's the crazy i'm like what was he doing not understanding like like he's just he's just like you know what they should do is make it like the ramp look cooler and you're like yeah john but like where's the ball go from there he's like that doesn't matter yeah if you'll figure it out like yeah fit a subway under there and you're like but you put eight magnets under the play field already it's shit like that where you're like how are you gonna do this man and that's what like they start running into with these designs it doesn't work well and it all falls apart but what i will say about zidware is i don't think there was any intention to rip people off there no i don't think so either that seems like not a noteworthy distinction but where we go from zidware is john recognizing that he's not a businessman teams up with what looks like a very successful businessman robert mueller and they start yet another fucking company called deep root deep root is probably the most insane debacle i've seen in pinball this was happening in probably 2017 i'm trying to remember when it kind of starts it was going something like that when it carried well into my time in the pinball hobby and i really got into this hobby in 2019 but robert mueller was an investment banker that had access to a lot of money and he embezzled money from his investors and used it to start his pinball project fucking vanity project deep root And it just was a nightmare from start to finish We got to do a whole episode so i don even want to touch on it but all i will say is that they did end up making a functional version of uh retro atomic zombie adventure land raza they brought a couple versions of it around to shows it's a flipping playing game and then the company dissolved the fucking government the federal government shut down robert's company because he was taking investment money from like retirees in using it to fund the pinball company amongst other things including three different divorces and weddings which is just if you go if anyway it's an insane story you guys gotta if you want a deep dive on this inside in the forums bad i think john got taken for a ride here just like all the investors and buyers of deep root games did i also put a little note in here that the deep root games had a you new unique cabinet and i think every time someone designs a new pinball cabinet the company fails yeah i mean it's almost fucking always it's almost without fail you see like you go walk if you go walk through like past times and you're looking at all of like the weird shit from the 80s and you'll see like an aft or in there you're like oh yeah after made one production game look at that cabinet looks unlike any other one yeah that's waiko made that one game yeah they always are doing shit like it's just crazy anyway so a bit of a positive ending though after deep root i guess this is this is somewhat positive at least to me is that in 2024 dutch pinball creators of brad pinball 2.0 most notably the big lebowski purchased the rights to produce alice in wonderland that paper prototype that he had been showing off that zidware they've been really really i don't know if the right word is good but they've they've really made sure that people know they're like no we're not like working with John Papadiuk he's not involved with the company at all we just purchased his finished design and kind of like tweaked what we needed to to make a production ready because John Papadiuk at this point in time is like no nobody wants to touch him it's just radioactive it's i mean obviously john started his company made promises took money couldn't deliver yeah it's a hard one and people are still mad as hell we're still mad about it and so the but but regardless of that or despite that they did actually get this design ready to go it's playing they have been they've actually started production just recently in their shipping games despite tariffs i think they just started shipping to the u.s the hard part about this is that it's 12 and a half grand which is expensive you're probably never gonna you might see one in location here and there but it's not gonna be like a game that you go see at a bar right it's 12 and a half grand game it's gonna be at like special locations but it's cool that 25 years after episode one we get a new commercial John Papadiuk game yes because no person has had more canceled projects and failed endeavors and it sucks because his games are fun his games are fun and he brings a unique perspective to pinball it's unfortunate that for all of his time always trying to bring an alice in wonderland game in and in fact you listed Jeremy Packer (Zombie Yeti) here zombie yeti as the magic girl artist but he also did an original art package for alice in wonderland oh god for John Papadiuk's game that's incredible yeah i didn't realize he was the one behind it yeah and it's just it's sad that he couldn't be it's sad that he couldn't be supported in a company with the people around him he needed to make that game yeah because it's almost in a bizarro world i could have seen john working at jersey jack you know what i mean like jersey jack would have given him the resources the timeline just hadn't gotten twisted just wrong if he hadn't started up his own company and jjp had just been a year or two earlier especially jjp came out of the gate swinging with loaded games and it's like if they had gone John Papadiuk on there they could have you know they could have fucking changed pinball like that could have been a lethal combo they could have been making fucking the best location games of all time instead of you know basement games it's possible we'll never know never know closing thoughts and uh some closing thoughts and questions for you so one thing that i think is very interesting is that John Papadiuk his he's got a game in production right fucking now you can go buy a brand new John Papadiuk game the allison wonderland he's essentially been present in the pinball industry this entire time since 1980 45 years working the industry and his entire real career condenses down to a five-year run at Bally Williams from 94 to 99. That's crazy. I don't mean to dismiss the work he's done. I don't know anything he's done outside of pinballing. He could be in all kinds of shit, but I don't want to dismiss his earlier work, his later work, whatever. But it is just kind of crazy when we think about like these designers and you're like, yeah, he's a really, he's a successful designer. Like we all know his name if you're in this hobby and you're like such a small sliver of his life. Yeah, it's true. It's just crazy to think about it's true that's just something for everybody at home if you've been like what have you what have you done in the last five years did you make like four of the you know best ballywilliams yeah exactly dude these amazing games that people still love to this day crazy okay another another just thought from me another amusing is that a lot of his games have become collector pieces which sucks because they're really really really good location games when they're working and new players generally fucking love these titles i agree i mean and that's a big it's like come on chicago i know it's been rumored forever that chicago is going to remake theater magic but it's like please for the love of god like they need to do it they got to get more of these j-pop games out or tails do one of these two dude yeah like yeah the problem is even theater the thing why i think chicago probably doesn't want to is because like do you want to make those games from scratch they should and they should sell them for 10 grand if they can sell it yeah they should do it man i mean a new 10 grand we'll start seeing these things in bars again which is what that's where John Papadiuk games deserve to live and i say that with the utmost respect they're like he designed the fucking he's the man for making his games supposedly you listen to old interviews or you read old play meter magazines and like they fucking earned money on location dude they had to like they earned money like crazy money that's the funniest part man i love hearing about if you get rid of the 70s and 80s which was like ridiculous like gold rush era hard to like stuff where it's like ridiculous they were making you know pinball machines would make you know a thousand dollars a week in the late 70s which is insane yeah insane especially because of how much the games cost back then like per play like you're getting multiple plays for a quarter like it's just crazy dude how many plays those games got but then even into the 90s which we consider is something of a modern era like these games are making six eight hundred dollars a week like you hear stories like that and you're like this is crazy different world dude it's like because pinball machines today for all this like we're living in the golden era man like we're getting all these great new games pinballs increasing in popularity they ain't earning like that dude no they don't earn like that it's because we don't have john popadoop games man yeah and that's the other shitty part is that he's designed a shit ton of games but only like five now six of them have gotten made and that's kind of like my next point on this is that it's the the shame about those games becoming all the bally williams being collector pieces is even more so for all the unreleased shit and like now with dutch charging 12.5 for alice that's probably going to be hard to find on location so it's kind of it's just a shame you're like this guy's games need to be on location he's making games for everybody he's not making games for pinball nerds he's making games that open people's eyes to pinball which is so valuable and so rare and he's so good at it yeah and he clearly loves pinball there would be a spot for him unfortunately nobody can forget what happened in the 2010s like exactly and nor should they really i guess i was right like that's one of my one of my questions for you is how do you feel about the guys that never want to see john work in the industry ever again because they were burned on a previous failed venture personally i don't have any sympathy for investors in companies because when you invest, that's the risk. If every investment was a guaranteed return, we'd all invest in fucking everything. That's not how the world works. So I don't have sympathy for investors. I do have sympathy for the guys that thought they were just putting down a deposit. They love John Papadiuk games. John's a guy that everybody that's ever worked with him says he's a super nice guy, massive pinball nerd. He would go to the shows. He'd be at Expo. He'd be rubbing elbows with people. They're trying to support who they kind of look at as like a friend and someone they respect and everything and then they just kind of got robbed out of their 10 grand back in 2012 that's i feel bad for those guys because within the context this was the first time this happened now it's a trope right we always are like don't buy from a boutique company until you see the fucking game you see the games in people's houses at the time if i was like i could definitely see if like if you if i had the money in 2012 and you're like this is the first time you're like something besides the stern is coming out like i'll gamble on it yeah like surely they'll ship me something eventually and so i can see those people a falling for it and be being mad as hell but what do you think do you think john should be allowed to work in the industry do you think would you support a company that john's working at i don't know if i'd support it but i wouldn't boycott it do you think if stern okay if stern just was like hey we licensed john papadu game would you go buy it for sure see with me without a shadow of a doubt i'd be like With Stern, for sure. He's a fucking 65-ish year old man that only got to work for five years. Get him a fucking game out here. This is what I always say on the show. We've talked about it before, but it's like we buy as operators. We buy based on trust. And so it's funny to say this about John Papadiuk, but it's like, for me, I'm like, but George Gomez is there. They have a team of experienced engineers and software engineers. They know how to make a pinball machine. So even if he showed up and he's out of his mind and can't get it together, they would get it together. Like George Gomez would fire him. He would leave. George Gomez would finish up the project and get it out the door. Whatever happens, the game will get finished. It'd be fine. If he was hitched to the right wagon, I would 100% go in on the J-pop game. Yeah, I think he's got talent. That's why I made the distinction between I don't think Deep Root was John's fault. That's Robert Mueller. I mean, he was doing shady shit before John was involved. Yeah. So I don't view Deep Root as any reflection of John. I feel bad for him the same way I feel bad for Dennis was working there, and he had a whole bunch of designs that never – Dennis Nordman – that never got to production. I feel bad for both those guys. Oh, yeah. You said John Papadiuk is the guy with the most unmade games. It might be fucking Dennis Nordman, dude. Dennis is up there. But John is definitely responsible for Zidware. But, again, it's just – I think he was naive. He was naive. He made a mistake. He tried. People make mistakes. He did what – John, you look at what he did for these other games, and he's like the visionary. He's the creative, and he kept doing that as hard as he could there. It's funny when I read it all back in a mean voice talking about how none of these games got made, and he just kept making games. But when you think about it, he's doing whatever he can with his abilities to try to bail this company out, and it all just didn't work anyway, which is really just sad. It is sad, and it's unfortunate because he made so many very cool, very interesting games. That brings me to the last question for you before we end this. Four traditional games all possess a charm that you don't see in a lot of titles. What makes a J-pop game feel the way it does? You get bonus points if you don't say the word ramp or whimsical. Well, I think all of those words you used are good. Charm and whimsy are very good because that is how they feel. I would say that John has a special gift to make a pinball machine not feel like pinball. Like when I'm playing it, I'm not even considering multiball with mode stack, multiplier. I'm fighting to get the princess. I have to save the princess. The modes feel thematic and integrated. And there is something fanciful. You're in an alternate world. All of his games are like alternate worlds. Yeah. And it's put your mind aside and pretend you are a dog playing soccer. I really it's it really is a special gift in his games. Don't feel like anything else. And I do believe that his ball save mechanics, whether it's the magnets or then the, you You know, the cages in Tales of the Arabian Nights are just inspired genius because they're they do the thing that other designers did. But John's insight was like, hey, they're not going to know about the extra button. They're not going to know about that rule. Like he did it in two. He's like, first of all, let's make it a spectacle and then let's do it for them. Yes, that's some of the best use. You could cut a lot of shit out of his games. I think like if you were to make these games in the modern era and make a pro version of like Arabian Nights, you could cut a lot of shit out of it. But it's like those ball save mechs are critical. He also did some interesting skill shots on dog soccer and then on Toton on Tales of the Arabian Nights. Like just very interesting, very different. all of his games feel like a John Papadiuk game unmistakably in the way that you look at five seconds or 10 seconds of a wes anderson movie trailer and you know it's wes anderson 100 in the same way he's the wes anderson of pinball like it's that shit like it's twee it's cute it's fanciful you know like they're different and they're unique yeah enchanting And God, OK, well, that's they are enchanting, though they enchant new players. I think at the core of it, when I was putting this together, it's funny to think about how a lot of them are just a fancy wrapper around a center bash toy. That's true. And when you give them a good center bash toy to a new pinball player, they're going to like the game. And he also did very interesting work with hidden kind of ball paths. Yeah, but he always made sure you saw the magic trick that he was doing. He got that's the thing. He gets his money out of the his bill of materials. He does. Everything feels like a spectacle. Good shit, dude. It's good pinball. It's pinball magic and all magic. He takes those quarters. Poof. He makes them disappear. Yeah. So we'll end this episode about the great enigmatic John Papadiuk, one of pinball's greatest designers with a very interesting story and hopefully we can all move past the negative chapters of John Papadiuk and celebrate the games that he did make and maybe he will make in the future for all you listening go out find some pinball on location go find find an episode one find a zizzle pirates find a dog sucker go find a John Papadiuk game near you and go play it Thank you once again for listening to the show. And until next time, good luck. Don't suck. Thank you.