Note: This is presented here for historical purposes, not because it's a particularly good example of quality schoolyard games. Don't blame me, I didn't make it up...
Pizza is a particularly inane, violent childhood game I used to play growing up in Canada. How it ever caught on is beyond me, but when I changed schools and introduced it to the new playground, it took off like wildfire. There's no accounting for tastes. So here is the 'recipe' for little broken feet.
The game is played on a 'foursquare' commonly found painted on schoolyard asphalt. It looks like this:
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Any number of little people can play, but it usually works best with at least three and no more than six, depending on the size of the square. To begin, all players stand with one foot touching the middle circle and the other held back. One person starts play by calling "ONE, TWO, THREE, PIZZA!" at which point all players leap backwards in an attempt to get as far away from each other as possible. This must be done in one shot, and without moving the feet twice or stumbling, lest ye be 'out'. At all times during game play, a player must remain within the boundaries of the outer square.
The object of the game is to get all the other players 'out' by stepping brutally on their feet and holding them down for an appropriate length of time. Each player, in turn, has a chance to move one or both of their feet, usually either attempting to stomp down on someone else's poor toes or get further away from anyone else. If a player sees that another player is going to stomp them, they can opt to move out of the way, but they had better be correct, because if the player doesn't do that, they have moved out of turn and are thus 'out' of the game. Malice and trickery abound. This leads to a lot of last-moment moves, and often a player is faced with having to yank their tiny extremity out from under some larger child's burly foot.
So, there are three ways to get a person 'out':
Stepping on their foot and holding the screaming child in place for, oh, let's say five seconds or so
Moving out of turn when it is unwarranted (i.e. thinks another child is about to maul them but doesn't)
Stepping out-of-bounds OR stepping on any of the inner lines (leading to much instability and falling when a player realizes he is about to step on one of these no-go-zones)
Bruised feet! Skinned knees! Black eyes, if the kid retaliates!
Perhaps this game is played because it's easy to learn and appeals to both the athletic and cerebral alike. I don't remember what induced me to introduce it to a new school, but much suffering ensued. It even merited a trip to the school office, where they promptly labeled me a troublemaker. I don't know why it's called 'Pizza' either, perhaps because of the layout of the court into "slices" where you're allowed to step (or get flattened into the ground like so much green pepper). Who really knows.
Addendum: I have no idea where this came from or who made it up. Nobody I've spoken to about it has ever heard of it. It's entirely possible that it was local to that one single playground. Or maybe, just maybe, your child will come home limping and cry out, "DAMN YOU, STARSANDGARTERS!" (Then you ground the young sprout for cussing.)Thanks to jessicapierce for asking about locality.