Tedium - For Amusement Only 🎟

Today in Tedium: An “arcade game” might conjure up images of Pac-Man or Daytona USA. But a different type of arcade game has dominated most arcades since the early 1990s: the redemption game. These machines dispense tickets you can exchange for prizes. Although they might seem simple compared to video games, these machines have a rich history. Today in Tedium, we’re taking a whistle stop tour through the rise of redemption, from Skee-Ball to Chuck E. Cheese’s. — Michael @ Tedium

Today’s GIF is of a guy trying to win at the redemption game Cyclone, but just barely failing. It must be rigged. Right?

A Cyclone machine with a card reader. It’s claimed to be the highest-earning redemption game of all time.

Trade Stimulators, Rolling Ball Games, and Cranes

What is a redemption game? I argue there are four key elements:

• The machine is coin-operated.

• It incorporates some degree of skill.

• It automatically rewards tickets, tokens, or electronic points.

• Its rewards can be combined with winnings from other machines for prizes.

Going back to the earliest days of the coin-op industry in the late 19th century, you can find many different types of machines that incorporate at least some of these elements.

Consider the trade stimulator. These countertop machines were a cross between a vending machine and a slot machine. You dropped in your nickel and then the machine did something random (spun a roulette wheel, dropped your coin down a Plinko board, etc.). At the end, you’d call over to the clerk or bartender to redeem your prize. They “stimulated trade” because the chance of winning an extra cigar or stick of gum was fun enough to attract repeat use.

A Bennett Trade Stimulator for cigars. Landing on a 2 or 3 got you extra cigars for your nickel. (Trade 2/Internet Archive)

Some trade stimulators even automatically dispensed a prize ticket on winning. But we’re not quite in redemption territory yet. These machines were not games of skill. And their tickets couldn’t be combined to earn bigger prizes.

Another redemption prototype was the crane, also known as a claw machine or UFO Catcher. The earliest cranes were known as “diggers” and relied on the novelty of using a crane to scoop up dirt. By the 1930s, they had evolved to resemble the machines we know today, but with one important difference: most machines had cash prizes. This led to a national ban on all these machines for a few years in the 1950s.

Cranes, unlike slot machines, do have some element of skill. But since you directly win prizes from the machines, they’re usually considered “merchandisers.” (Cranes where the prizes were rolls of tickets didn’t take off until the 1990s.)

A Japanese Rolling Board game on Coney Island from 1904 (via So I Bought a Pinball Machine)

A final type of machine that fulfills many of the requirements for a redemption machine is Tamakorogashi or Japanese Ball Roll. As related in great detail by Cait at the So I Bought a Pinball Machine blog, there’s evidence from as early as 1906 that operators of these games kept track of scores over an entire season. Players could redeem high scores for prizes. The only element lacking was an automatic ticket dispenser. That would come with a more famous ball rolling game.

Two Skee-Ball Alleys from the 1930s. They’re big! (Vineland Historical and Antiquarian Society, via Seeking Redemption: The Real Story of the Beautiful Game of Skee-Ball)

Skee-Ball and the slow roll to redemption

Skee-Ball is the game where all the elements of redemption come together for the first time.

Chances are, if you’ve ever been to an arcade, you’ve put a few quarters into one of these ball-rolling games. Maybe you even won enough tickets that you got to take home something fun.

But it took a few decades for Skee-Ball to evolve into the automatic-payout game we’re familiar with today. And a few more decades before Skee-Ball had more than a handful of competitors in the ticket game space.

Skee-Ball exploded in popularity in the 1910s. The game thrived on boardwalks, resorts, amusement parks, and even as a “gentleman’s game” in Masonic lodges.

Where it didn’t flourish was in penny arcades. There are two main reasons for this.

First, early Skee-Ball machines were considerably bigger than they are today, closer in size to a bowling alley. They simply took up too much space in a storefront arcade.

Second, by the 1910s, penny arcades were in steep decline. These businesses peaked in the 1890s, driven by the new technology of the moving picture. As dedicated movie theaters started replacing mutoscopes, penny arcades went down market. (Often literally—they moved from high-rent areas with lots of foot traffic to dingier parts of town.) They earned a reputation as seedy businesses where one might see a risqué peep show. Proprietors did not have money to invest in Skee-Ball alleys.

Skee-Ball did appear in some of its own purpose-built venues, though. A 21-alley behemoth constructed in Atlantic City hosted the first National Skee-Ball Tournament in 1932.

An enormous Skee-Ball venue in Atlantic City, the host of the first National Skee-Ball Tournament in 1932. (via Seeking Redemption)

In Skee-Ball’s early days, the appeal of getting a high score was enough to draw people in. But by the 1930s, we have firm evidence of a Skee-Ball Parlor that adopted almost all the elements of a 1980s redemption arcade.

In the photo below, you can spot a Blue Eagle with the letters “N.R.A.” above it. This dates the photo to around 1933, the height of the National Recovery Administration, a short-lived New Deal agency. To the right of the eagle is a prize cabinet that bears many similarities to a redemption prize counter. The placards to the left of the cabinet describe how many tickets are given for high scores (divided between men and women). The signs even mention how you can cash in the tickets for a check to build up your points over multiple days. The only thing missing is the automatic payout. Those came two decades later.

A Skee-Ball Alley with a prize cabinet next to it. The National Recovery Administration Blue Eagle logo next to the cabinet dates this photo to the early 1930s. (via Seeking Redemption, page 272)

According to Seeking Redemption: The Real Story of the Beautiful Game of Skee-Ball, the first automatic ticket dispenser for an arcade machine was invented by Frank D. Johns, a Florida businessman who owned a rooftop minigolf and some 75 coin-ops. The Philadelphia Toboggan Co., the company that manufactured Skee-Ball, soon started adding Johns’ ticket dispensers at the factory. An ad the company ran claimed that the ticket dispensers brought in “50 percent More Games Per Hour.”

The first automatic Skee-Ball machines. (via Seeking Redemption, page 380)

These bulky mechanical ticket dispensers were improved in the 1970s with an electronically controlled one from ticket powerhouse Deltronic Labs. An ingenious clamping mechanism prevented miscreants from yanking out the whole ticket reel.

Four notable types of redemption games that might have taken your tokens

(via Reddit)

Wheel ’M In: This game from the early ’90s is a notable example of the “token action game.” These games use your coin to drive the gameplay. Your coin is rolled down a giant treadmill that’s always spinning. The player’s goal is to position their token onto the center of one of the ticket tracks. If the token is just slightly off center, you don’t hit the jackpot. The best strategy is to aim about halfway up the side rails to reliably hit the 25-ticket strip.

This game is apparently an updated version of a gambling game popular in British arcades in the 1960s. British arcades never went big on redemption because several important economic and legal differences compared to US arcades that are explored in my favorite book of 2022, Arcade Britannia.

(Game Room Planet)

Slugfest: This game is stretching the boundaries of “redemption game” a bit but it’s unique enough that I wanted to include it here. Slugfest combines elements of pinball, redemption, and competitive arcade sports games like air hockey. It’s an evolution of dozens of earlier electrotechnical baseball simulators from Williams.

In single player, the computer “pitches” a pinball at you. The game uses magnets and other techniques to vary the speed and direction of the pitches. You try to time hitting the big “BAT” button so that the ball is directed at one of the targets where a hit or home run is lighted. Missing the ball or hitting the wrong target can lead to an out. Score enough points and the game spits out your reward: a baseball card.

The controls in Slugfest. Notice the “Win Cards” sign in green to the right of the coin slot. (Game Room Planet)

A recent “research visit” to Dave & Buster’s revealed companies still make updated versions of this game, although without the cards.

(Courtesy Arcade Flyer Archive)

Feed Big Bertha: By far the weirdest redemption game in the third-rate Jersey Shore arcade where I worked as a teen was one called Feed Big Bertha. The problematic premise of this game is that you need to throw plastic balls (the type you’d see in a ballpit at Chuck E. Cheese’s) into Bertha’s mouth to help quench her insatiable appetite. As you did this, Bertha’s dress inflates to give the player some visual feedback of what’s happening. Yikes!

This game was one of the biggest hits for Smart Industries, a big player in the redemption space. Smart even tried to expand the market for redemption games with the Smart Redemption Center.

An ad for the Smart Redemption Center in PlayMeter.

This thing was basically a gigantic vending machine that you fed tickets into. It eliminated the need for an attendant behind the counter giving you the prize. It was marketed for smaller arcades and “street” locations. I personally never saw one of these and suspect it was a little too impractical to gain a wide market.

An Angry Birds redemption game. Many of these games add some physical component like balls to shoot to make them stand out from a phone. (via Tumblr)

Angry Birds Arcade: Jumping ahead two decades, Angry Birds Arcade exemplifies how redemption games have evolved with the times. Familiar IP remains important. Rather than hot ’90s properties like Bobby’s World, arcade manufacturers have found it lucrative to convert games kids are already playing on their phones. All these games add some twists to make it more of an experience. In this case, players grip the handles to fire actual plastic balls at the screen. I find this viscerally satisfying in ways that the phone game never was.