Skee-Ball

Skee-Ball is an arcade game and one of the first redemption games. It is sometimes referred to as "Skeeter's Ball," particularly in England and Australia. It is played by rolling a ball up an inclined lane and over a "ball-hop" hump that jumps the ball into bullseye rings. The object of the game is to collect as many points as possible by having the ball fall into holes in the rings which have progressively increasing point values.

History
Skee-Ball was invented and patented in 1908 by Joseph Fourestier Simpson, a resident of Vineland, New Jersey. On December 8, 1908, Simpson was granted U.S. Patent 905,941 for his "Game". Simpson licensed the game to John W. Harper and William Nice Jr. who created the Skee-Ball Alley Company and began marketing the thirty-two foot games in early 1909. The first advertisement for Skee-Ball appeared on April 17, 1909, in Billboard. About two months later the first alley was sold. Alleys continued to sell slowly over the next few years.

In January 1910, Nice died unexpectedly, leaving Harper without the necessary funding for promotion. The company struggled for the rest of 1910, 1911 and 1912. Simpson worked with Harper, but they were having difficulty making any headway, and by December 1912 the Skee-Ball Alley Company was moribund.

In 1910, Jonathan Dickinson Este of Philadelphia began playing Skee-Ball after his return from Princeton the previous year. Over the next few years, he became enamored with the game, so much so that in 1913 he helped Simpson and John W. Harper to kick-start the company again. Este installed two alleys at a location in Princeton near the university to see how well they would do. After a few weeks, interest in the game fizzled, but Este then rented space in Atlantic City on the boardwalk in 1914 and installed Skee-Ball there. He purchased the patent and all rights to the game from Simpson. Este hired Harper as general manager of his new company and incorporated The J. D. Este Company to build and market the game. In 1917 Este enlisted in the military and turned over operation of the company to his business partners. After his return in 1919 he sold The J. D. Este Company to his partners and exited the business.

Este's business partners renamed the company the "Skee-Ball Company". They operated the manufacturing and distribution of the game until 1928 when the game was sold to Herman Bergoffen, Hugo Piesen, and Maurice Piesen, who incorporated the National Skee-Ball Company. In 1929, the National Skee-Ball Company of Coney Island, New York, trademarked the name Skee-Ball.

Under the reigns of the National Skee-Ball Company, the first national Skee-Ball tournament was held in Atlantic City at Skee-Ball Stadium. The alleys that were played on in the tournament were significantly shorter than the alleys that Simpson had built. Over one hundred contestants qualified to play in the tournament. In the end, $2400 in prizes were awarded to the winners.

In 1935, Bergoffen died unexpectedly in Atlantic City, leaving Hugo and Maurice Piesen to run the National Skee-Ball Company. In June 1936, The Rudolph Wurlitzer Manufacturing Company bought all of the rights to the game and set up a games division. Wurlitzer produced more than five thousand Skee-Ball alleys and began selling them in December 1936. Wurlitzer ceased production of alleys in 1937 as demand weakened. Beginning in 1942 Wurlitzer shifted its focus from building amusement devices to supporting the war effort by building equipment for the United States government.

As the war drew to a close the Philadelphia Toboggan Company (PTC) contacted Wurlitzer to ask about either licensing the rights to Skee-Ball or selling it outright. By January 1946, the deal between them had been completed and PTC was the new owner and manufacturer of Skee-Ball. That lasted until 1977 when Skee-Ball, Inc., was spun-off from PTC under the same ownership. By 1984, Joe Sladek and three other partners had bought the company. Over the next several years Sladek bought out his partners and renamed the company Skee-Ball Amusement Games Inc. In late February 2016 it was announced that Bay Tek Games, Inc., of Pulaski, Wisconsin, would buy the rights to the game from Skee-Ball Amusement Games, Inc., and the manufacture of the alleys would be moved to Pulaski.

Super Ball!!, a version of skee-ball, was a pricing game on the American game show The Price Is Right from 1981 to 1998.

Skee-Ball is now a social sport played in bars in North America, with leagues forming under various banners.

Gameplay
Gameplay varies depending on the particular machine, but normally the player, after inserting appropriate payment as coins, tokens, or equivalent voucher or "club play" card into the appropriate mechanism, receives a queue of (usually nine) balls made of either polished masonite or heavy plastic and each approximately three inches in diameter. Each machine has an inclined ramp 10–13 feet long, up which the player must roll the balls. A sudden increase in incline at the end of the ramp (called the "ball-hop") launches the balls above the plane of the ramp toward a series of rings that direct the balls into holes of varying point values, the smallest and hardest to reach usually giving the most points. The machine dispenses coupons to the player, either during the game as various score thresholds are reached, or all at once after the game ends based on the final score. The coupons are typically traded at the arcade for prizes, the more valuable prizes requiring more coupons for redemption. Some machines award large bonuses of coupons to players who attain or surpass a posted exceptionally high score.

At traveling carnival midways, prizes are typically won by scoring a certain minimum number of points in one game. This requires an attendant to hand out prizes immediately at the end of games, which is not common in arcade settings. Usually small prizes can be traded for medium prizes and mediums for large. Perfect or nearly perfect scores earn the largest prize available, while very low scores may earn nothing at all.

Reputation
American author Harry Wilson once called Skee-Ball,"the greatest game played by man." He was said to have a deep love for the game and even had one in his house, where he would frequently encourage guests to play.