h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is a classic american game that requires nothing more than a wall, some sort of tennis ball, and a group of people. You just throw the ball at the wall over and over, but if you touch the ball and drop it or it hits you on a bounce you must run to tag the wall and say safe when you tag it. Depending on the game (Wallball you hit the wall, suey you hit the person), one or the other must be hit before the person tags the wall in order to give the person an "out". If you get a certain number of outs you must sit out and count to 100 or are permanently out of the game. There are other rules that apply, like if someone calls a "Challenge", you must throw the ball from where you stand, reguardless of distance. A "Chicken" is when you hit the ball more than once without catching it. The first person gets a free shot at you from a certain distance, and if you move you they get another throw. It's a great game.

Great game? Really? I've seen it all my life and haven't participated once. It just looked dull to me.

Your loss. Its kool when you play it, unless you cant throw, in which case it becomes quite challenging.

Here's an English version of the above which was popular when I was at school, from 7-year olds right up to 16.

Required equipment is a soccer ball, and a wall. You take turns to kick the ball against the wall. All that is required is that you hit the wall, with one kick. If you miss, or the ball goes out of any boundaries that you set at the beginning, you are out. Simple, but fun. We used to enjoy playing it against the back of the bike shed - this had ceramic pipes set into it for decoration and this caused the ball to fly off at odd angles.

There iis another form of the game called Handball in which I think the peopple all have to hit the tennis ball with their open hand into the wall. It is much more challenging and less accomidating to larger groups of ppeople. I have only heard of this game, I have never seen it in action.
Ultima

I remember this game....We played the "Suey" version, except we called it "Butts-Up". When a kid is tagged out, he has to face the wall, put his hands on the wall, and the person who tagged him gets a free shot with the ball, at the kid's butt. Hence the name Butts-Up! It should be part of everyone's childhood!

I remember every day 25 kids would always grab a tennis ball and pick the tallest wall on the school and play one or the other. We only got to nail someone when they touched the ball twice in a row though. The worst part was when someone roofed the ball, then everyone would yell and whine and carry on because we couldnt play anymore. Those were some great days.

I used to watch those people and think how stupid they seemed. Of course, they were simply being little kids, which I, unfortunately, never was (which wreaked havoc on my social life.) I then would decide to have some real fun, so I would (without drawing attention to myself) incite an antisocial element self-named in an odd fashion "the Herd" to attack the wallball players, resulting in a nine-year-old style brawl which inevitably caused the loss of twenty people's recesses the next day (never mine). How odd that I thought that fun.

boys will be boys...lol i just played cause thats what ppl did. I didnt have a 'herd' like u did, i was the only one, so i just went with the flow. Of course, bgibbs was there often, and we went and did other strange games (ask next time u see me).
Live Long and Prosper.
Ultima

I can remember playing the Suey version of wall ball during recess, but in our version you had to throw the ball from wherever you caught it, and it was cheating to throw the ball even further out than you were standing so that you couldn't get hit as you ran to the wall. Also, if you hit the person that was running to tag the wall but you failed to manage to hit both the person and the wall before the ball bounced then you had to run to the wall as well and hope nobody with better aim picked up the ball. While it can be played with tennis balls we found that raquetballs were the best ones to play with, and for added fun and large groups of kids, multiple balls were used. I recall it being primarily a male game, but some of the more adventurous females in our group joined in to show those baseball playing 9-12 year olds a thing or two.