He is credited as principal designer for many popular pinball machines from the 1990s including Theatre of Magic, Tales of the Arabian Nights, World Cup Soccer, Star Wars Episode I, and Cirqus Voltaire.
Popadiuk read Roger Sharpe's pinball book, and saw the name Norm Clarke, who was currently working at Bally at the time.
He also worked on a foam board prototype of a Kiss pinball machine in 2014[15][16] with the intention of obtaining a license to produce a Kiss-themed game.
One of his buyers, Bill Brandes, formed a company called "Pintasia" in April 2015[19] where he intended to license the themes and find a way to manufacture them.
[23] In 2016, John Popadiuk contracted with American Pinball to produce his Magic Girl prototypes in an attempt to fulfill obligations to preorder customers.
In 2017, Popadiuk joined deeproot Pinball, a company founded and managed by Robert J. Mueller of San Antonio, Texas.
After repeated delays and missed deadlines, a prototype of Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland was revealed and went up for preorder in December 2020.
On August 20, 2021 the SEC charged Robert J. Mueller of misappropriating investor money into deeproot Pinball and his own personal enrichment.
[24] Customers who preordered games through Zidware filed legal action against Popadiuk for being unable to honor his obligations stated in his contract.
On February 14, 2017 there was an email sent out both by Popadiuk and Scott Goldberg claiming that all of the Magic Girl games were complete and ready to pickup or ship by the end of the month.