Fascination (game)

Fascination is a game commonly found in North American amusement parks, boardwalks and arcades.

At the other end of the table is a series of 25 holes, roughly 5 cm (2.0 in) in diameter, arranged in a five-by-five square matrix.

He or she starts each game by pressing a button which rings a bell and activates all machines.

He or she also announces the winner when the bell rings again, which the machine does automatically when a win is detected.

Fascination was invented in Salt Lake City, Utah by John Taylor Gibbs who moved to Beverly Hills, California, where he formed the business Taylor Engineering Corp.[citation needed] The game was a popular attraction at amusement parks before the modern theme park drained visitors away to the newer, more modern facilities.

The game was also popular in oceanside resort towns, particularly those with boardwalks and especially on the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic shorelines of the Atlantic Ocean.

[2][3] The game has declined not only because of the demise of old-style amusement parks, but also the age of the machines themselves.

The game could easily be made more reliable and less labor-intensive with updated computer-based technology (as was done in the mid-1990s at the Indiana Beach parlor and at the Tributes and Traditions Retro Arcade & Fascination[4] in Wildwood, NJ, during 2019-2020) and automatic coin collection and coupon dispensing equipment such as that on a skee ball game, but the closure of many Fascination parlors has made such an effort unlikely.

Moreover, some Internet sites indicate that there may have been Fascination parlors that instead operated under the name "Lite-a-Line," but the evidence is inconclusive.)