Zidware Pinball

Zidware Pinball was a boutique pinball venture founded around 2011 by Designer John A. “Jpop” Popadiuk Jr., best known for his 1990s Williams designs such as Theatre of Magic and Tales of the Arabian Nights. The company aimed to produce ultra‑premium, artistically detailed collector pinball machines using an unconventional preorder‑funding model and announced ambitious titles including Magic Girl (listed here as BLkP Magic Girl), Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland (RAZA), and Alice in Wonderland, but development was plagued by rising costs, engineering complexity, and inadequate business infrastructure that stalled all projects. Magic Girl ultimately saw a very limited run of machines produced in partnership with American Pinball in 2016–2017—reported at roughly 19–22 units—and many of those units were delivered unfinished, leaving collectors disappointed despite the rarity and high collector interest. Subsequent rescue efforts by Deeproot Pinball to complete RAZA and Alice and “make whole” Zidware customers failed after Deeproot’s collapse and related legal actions, and no mass‑produced versions of those titles were released, leaving Zidware’s story as a cautionary example in the pinball industry about the risks of crowdfunded boutique ventures and the importance of robust planning for complex, high‑end pinball projects.