Skee ball
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Skee ball (also spelled skeeball or skee-ball) is a common game found in arcades and one of the first redemption games. It is similar to bowling except it is played on an incline lane and the player aims to get the ball to fall into a hole rather than knock down pins.
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[edit] Gameplay
Gameplay varies depending on the skee ball machine, but is generally similar across almost all variations. The player, after inserting some quarters (on modern machines, usually 50 cents) into the coin slot, is given (on average) nine baseball-sized wooden or plastic balls to use. The machine has a long ramp which the player must roll the balls up. At the top of the ramp (the ball-hop), there are several holes (usually separated by circular borders) that the player must try to get the balls to go into. Each hole gives the player a certain number of points based on which hole the ball rolls into, the harder-to-reach holes usually giving the most points. When finished playing, the player is given tickets dispensed by the machine based on how many points were earned. These tickets can be traded in at the arcade for prizes. The more tickets the player earns, the more valuable the prizes they can get.
In some arcades, prize-winning is achieved by scoring a certain minimum number of points within one game. As this requires an attendant to hand out prizes immediately at the end of games, it is not common. Usually small prizes can be traded up for medium prizes and mediums for large. Perfect or nearly perfect scores earn the largest prize available. On the other hand, low-scoring games earn nothing, not even tickets.
Most machines provide the player with nine balls per game, either made from smooth polished wood or heavy plastic; this can vary from machine to machine, however.
Good players could regularly score perfect games by banking the ball against the side of the ramp/alley. Modern machines have pieces of molding affixed to the sides - called banking strips, to make this technique unreliable.
[edit] Variations
Mega skee ball is a version of skee ball in which the machine is much larger than the standard size. Skee-daddle or Mini Skee-Ball is a version in which the machine is smaller, thus allowing young children to have an easier time at playing the game.
[edit] History
The game was invented in 1909 by J.D. Estes in the city of Philadelphia. In 1935 the rights to Skee-Ball were purchased by the Wurlitzer Corporation, which in 1945 sold them to the Philadelphia Toboggan Company, an amusement park ride manufacturer. In 1977 the Philadelphia Toboggan Company set up Skee-Ball, Inc. to market the game, now located in Colmar, PA.
When Skee-Ball alleys were first sold in 1914 to the outdoor amusement park industry by Maurice Piesen, the game had a 36-foot lane. This was much too big for most arcades, and made it so that only people who were quite strong could play it well. As a result it was later changed to 14 feet, but was eventually changed again to the modern length of 10 or 13 feet. Soon after these changes, skee ball became very common in arcades around the United States. Due to the fact that prizes were given to the players, the game was considered a form of gambling in some parts of the country. This led to restrictions on the number of machines allowed in an arcade in some places, and banning of the game in other places. These laws, however, did not last long, and thus skee ball is now found in almost all arcades in the country. It is also a staple of the restaurant/arcade chain Chuck E. Cheese's.
In 1935, the first ever skeeball tournament was held in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Coney Island inventor Morris Goldberg also claims to have invented the game of Skeeball. While this claim cannot be verified by a patent, there are records of his manufacturing plant at Coney Island as early as 1927. Most of the Skeeball games at Coney Island for at least the following 20 years came from his company, leading some to wonder who really invented the arcade game.
[edit] Skee ball in popular culture
In an episode of The Simpsons, the character Nelson Muntz is seen cheating at skee ball by standing at the head of the machine and simply dropping his balls into the high point circles. In another episode, Lisa practices the "Maggie-oop" which is scoring extra points by launching the balls up the skee-ball slide and having Maggie Simpson place the balls in the higher point value cylinders. Nelson says that she's cheating, then rips open the coin slot and takes the entire roll of tickets inside. This kind of cheating is also seen on several other shows, many of them for children.
Skee ball figured prominently into the Kevin Smith films Chasing Amy and Dogma, as it was a staple of arcades dotting the boardwalk of Asbury Park, New Jersey, located close to Smith's former home. In Dogma, God is a skee ball fan; she escapes from heaven to play it once in a while.
In one episode of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force cartoon on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block, the Mooninites are seen cheating at a skee-ball-like game. They then trade the ill-gotten tickets for the Foreigner Belt.
A retired pricing game on The Price is Right called Super Ball!! is based on skee ball.
In the Futurama episode "Episode Two: The Series Has Landed", people are seen playing a variety of skee ball machines. One is a classic skee ball machine. The next is called "Virtual Skee Ball", and consists of a person wearing a virtual reality headset and gloves and making the physical motions for skee ball, despite the absence of an actual skee ball machine. The third is called "Virtual Virtual Skee Ball" - Amy is seen merely sitting in a chair wearing another virtual reality headset, and she proclaims, "I could swear I was actually playing Virtual Skee Ball!"
In the game Spongebob Squarepants: The battle for Bikini Bottom, A variation of skee ball was available as a mini-game in the Goo Lagoon Carnival.
In an episode of Rugrats, Angelica Pickles wants to win a Cynthia beach car, so she hands all the balls to her cousin Tommy, who is standing on the machine, and he drops the balls into the high score circles.
[edit] Cheating
Most skeeball machines have a vulnerability that allows for unlimited point and ticket scoring if the player can access the chutes with his hands. As a result, operators usually install netting or other physical barriers to prevent this cheating.
Older, Electro-Mechanical Alleys used switches and relays. On older machines, when a ball lands in a hole, it activates a series of switches to cause the points to score. There are five switches - one behind each of the main holes (10, 20, 30, 40, 50), which are tripped in succession for 10 points each as the ball travels inside the game. For example, when a ball lands in the 40 hole, it activates four switches to score the points, and then activates a fifth switch to remove the ball from play.
Newer Alleys utilize modern electronics for score keeping/ticket payout and optical sensors in the ball path in place of switches to score.
The switch that removes the ball from play is located below the gutter - the place where the ball sinks if no points are scored.
It is possible to grab the ball from the gutter before it hits this final switch and reinsert it into a point scoring hole (such as the 50) to score more points. If a ball is grabbed from the gutter, it is never counted against the player's nine initial balls, and unlimited scoring is possible. If a cheater isn't caught, he can drain a machine of its entire supply of redemption tickets for the price of a single game in a matter of minutes.
Chuck E Cheese, one of Skeeball's largest accounts, uses a special metal frame on either side of the target board flanked with several optical sensors called E-Nets that will lock out or "tilt" the game when something obstructs its path.
