Tapper

Tapper, also known as Root Beer Tapper, is a 1983 arcade game released by Bally Midway. The goal of the game is to serve beer and collect empty mugs and tips.

The Tapper game screen features four bars. Patrons arrive periodically at the end of the bar opposite the player and demand drinks. The player must draw and serve drinks to the patrons as they slowly advance towards the player. If any customers reach the player's end of the bar, they grab the player-as-bartender and toss him out the far end of the bar, costing the player a life. You also die if any of the glasses break.

Originally intended to be sold only to bars, many of the cabinets were designed to look like bars, with a brass rail footrest and drink holders. The controller was designed to look like the tap handles on a real keg. Digitized belches were recorded, but never used.

Several variants of the game were released, with similar gameplay but different graphics and music. The first was with Budweiser branding, followed in 1984 by Root Beer Tapper, which was developed specifically for arcades because the original version was construed as advertising alcohol to minors (since many of the games appeared in video game arcades).

There's a version called Simpsons Tapper with The Simpsons characters hacked into the graphics.

This game is best-known in the 2010s for appearing in Wreck-It Ralph and Ralph Breaks the Internet as Ralph's after-hours watering hole.


 * The Eighties
 * Endless Game
 * Frothy Mugs of Water: For Root Beer Tapper.
 * Noob Cave: the first level can be reliably completed within two seconds by pressing fire, up, fire, up, fire, up, fire. The second one as well, by doubling up on the fire key in the sequence above. After that, things get noticeably harder.
 * Palette Swap: several later levels are mirror images of earlier levels.
 * Product Placement: The Budweiser logo can be clearly seen in some levels. The original, not for kids version had its marquee glass proudly displaying the Budweiser logo instead of the game's actual name.
 * Trope Maker: This was possibly the first game with a port to have background music.