John Popadiuk
| John Popadiuk | |
|---|---|
| Residence | Bartlett, IL |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Occupation | Pinball Designer |
| Years active | 35 |
| Employer | Zidware |
| Known for | Cirqus Voltaire, World Cup Soccer, Theatre of Magic, Tales of the Arabian Nights, Star Wars Episode I |
| Spouse(s) | Michelle Popadiuk |
| Children | Isabella, Donna, Sophia |
| Website | President, Info site |
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, and later at WMS Gaming from 1989-2000.
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.
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 between 2006 and 2007.
Between 2009 and 2010, Popadiuk developed two iTunes Apps: Pinball Scrapbook and Pinball Wizard.
Currently, his company, Zidware, has designed three pinball themes, and has collected pre-orders all three. Magic Girl (loosely based on Theatre of Magic),Retro Atomic Zombie Adventure (formerly known as Ben Heck Zombie Adventure), and Alice in Wonderland. He also worked on a foam board prototype of a KISS Pinball machine in 2014 with the intention of obtaining a license to produce a KISS-themed game. Other project ideas that he claimed to be working on during all this was a makerbot pinball project, a pussycat bowling themed pinball, and some sort of EM project. Individuals who had paid for pre-orders for Popadiuk's other three games that were under development complained about wasting time with the KISS project and other concepts, 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, 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 where he intended to license the themes and find a way to manufacture them. Between various volunteers, they took one of the prototypes as far as they could in a few short weeks (which included getting the vacuum formed ramps completed) so it could be shown at the Northwest Pinball Show. 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.
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