Whether you're serving Budweiser beer, Root Beer, or Mountain Dew, you're sure to have a good time with Tapper, the 1983 arcade classic from Bally Midway! ● Please consider helping support LGR on Patreon! / lazygamereviews
Home computers were made to be bought by pretty typical consumers. Hence, they were made with cost in mind, and as such weren't on the bleeding edge of technology. But arcade games, well, the point was to attract enough people to the game to cover the high cost of manufacturing/maintaining it. So they used the best technology and often used custom hardware to achieve that quality. As such, they were often used as technological showcases, and surpassed the much weaker home computers of the time.
Nice that Wreck-It Ralph featured this game as a hangout spot for characters. And for those wondering about Root Beer on tap, look at the A&W restaurants, they have a giant root beer tap isolated from the rest of the soda fountain.
Yeah, it was also on "Midway Arcade Origins" for the XBox 360, which can be played on the XBox One through their backward compatibility program, so it's well worth picking up if you can find a copy. (To me, this is basically "the disc with Robotron: 2084 on it," but my daughter recently became surprisingly fond of Tapper after a visit to Funspot, which had the original arcade cabinet with Budweiser theming.)
I actually played this on the N64 Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits Vol. 1 (of 1). It was my favorite...mainly because I absolutely loved Root Beer when I was that tiny. Despite the fact that I was..like, 5 when the freaking Gamecube launched, I absolutely loved these classic arcade games.
I enjoyed it! Ended up seeing it a couple times, actually. Really liked the ideas in it, where arcade game characters all hang out and have jobs and stuff, and the glitches being a thing was really cool. Would've liked more usage of licensed characters but ah whatever, it was a fun movie.
***** Well... They tried to make music and gameplay at the same time... they failed. They were able to summon aliens and have gameplay at the same time though.
Just to clear up a mystery, at least in the arcade version, the dancing ladies only appear when you pick up the tips. So there's a bit of risk reward with the tips... they're worth points, and in the more panicky moments it may be a relief to distract some patrons so they stop moving forward. On the other hand, you can easily make a mistake a slide beer to the distracted peeps, and it will make you have to play longer to clear the level. I tend to avoid the tips unless I'm really trying to challenge myself. I get better scores by just getting to higher levels and trying to survive.
Hi LGR. I know this is kind of out of the blue, but I was watching your Yoot Tower video today, and I remembered this one. 6 years ago I was a middle school kid recovering from a major surgery. While I was bedridden and out of my mind on pain meds I don't remember much. However, I do remember I would watch many of the same shows, movies and videos over and over again for some reason. Well, long story short this particular video was one of those. I watched it countless times. Your voice, your sense of humor and this neat little dose of video game history helped me through a really rough time, and I wanted to say thank you.
Im still very impressed with the arcade Tappers graphics. They look amazing to this very day. I think that large difference in quality between the arcade games and the consoles of the day played a large part in the North American Game Crash of 82/83.
This was one of the first video games I have ever played. I remember playing it on my Dad's Commodore 64 back in 1984. It's still a great game even to this day.
I grew up on the original IBM PC version. I remember finding a bug that when you lose the game, the part when the drunk throws your character on the counter, you still have control over the left and right movement. So basically you could mess around and postpone your death by pressing left then right to make your character go right which eventually you'll go through the wall and come out the other end of the screen. Good times, good times.
This is probably my favourite arcade game ever, I played this hundreds of times...on the midway arcade treasures compilation. Sadly there are almost no arcades in germany.
Having played the arcade cabinet version of Tapper, as a child, in a bar (the 80s were a weird time), I can confirm it never made me want to drink... just help feed my growing video game addiction!
That fricking challenging stage in Tapper. I've probably chosen the right can maybe twice in all the years I've been playing it. Great review Clint, thanks!
Just wanted to say that your channel is the reason i really started to collect games and also got in to retro games, so thanks LGR for all the amazing vids and the inspiration to do what i like... and now i need a bloody rom of this game purely to say to my friends that i got a came called fapper... that will freak them out :P
I have an N64 cartridge called Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits Vol. 1 and on it there was this game, Joust, Robotron 2084, Defender, Spy Hunter, and Sinistar. I played Rootbeer Tapper more than any of the other games on the cart, I absolutely loved it ^^ In fact watching this makes me want to hook up my N64 and play it again.
I remember playing the IBM PC version of this with my cousins and we never paid any attention to any "Mountain Dew" labels and even called this game not Tapper, but just Beer.
Did you know that Finnish sculptor Kain Tapper was fucking great (one of the best) at competitive Tapper and set multiple Twin Galaxies records in the arcade version. In fact, he changed his surname to match his awesome playing skills. Rest in peace Kain, Tapper scoreboards have never been the same.
I just staggered over this! Oh man! I never knew Clint did arcade reviews! :D Also - Retrovision -- and The Video Game Years is how I became subscribed to: Roo - The Gaming Historian - LGR - Game Chasers - Retrovision - Pat the NES Punk and on and on.. :D
This was and still is one of my favorite games of all time. You can really tell that a lot of time went into make the cabinet look memorable. Also, if to anyone that want to play this and they live near the New England area, there is one at Funspot in NH. That is where I played it last.
The PC Booter version was also "cracked" to an .EXE file that runs from DOS, but of course, there is no way out but a 3 finger salute. The Booter version also supports IBM PCjr (and I suppose Tandy, for that matter) sound. On my PCjr, there was not only the option for sound and no sound, but also external speaker, which would utilize the jr's sound chip. That sound chip always emitted a pop from the speakers when initialized if I remember correctly. Played it tons when I was a kid.
I stopped using them over two years ago because they got old, and in many ways. I got way more comments from people saying they didn't like it than I ever did of people saying they did, and I personally just got bored with it and was tired of messing with editing an intro each time. Plus, according to my stats 90% of people skipped it anyway, so why continue? A short, simple logo of some kind works better for me as a result. It's gone, and for the time being I feel it's better that way.
Pro tip: Ignore the tips. They really mess up the rhythm of the game and I always do MUCH better without them. This is my favorite game from the various Midway arcade collections I've played over the years. I was excited to see it was coming up next, and the review did not disappoint. :)
Nice job with the video! I used to play this all the time in the arcade and always wished they would release it on the Colecovision, but that never happened. I'm glad they included it on the Midway PS3 collection, even if it is the root beer variety.
I never knew why, but when I first tried tapper as a kid, I found it absolutely addicting. Maybe it was the cheerful guy or the fact that I really like soda. XD
I'll be playing both the original arcade cabinet and PC re-release, so check next week :D And haha, I'm glad someone caught that "Intellivision-murdering" reference!
Most home ports of Tapper had an endorsement deal with Pepsi Cola (as evident by the Mountain Dew logo). The Coleco version is a port of Root Beer Tapper due to financial troubles, being the last Colecovision game, the video game crash, leading to their bankruptcy and their biggest liquidation being the Cabbage Patch Kids.
I remember playing the Commodore 64 port, in fact it is one of the very first games I remember playing as a kid (disturbing?). The graphics and sound were much better than the ports you've included here. I also seem to recall that a port for the Spectrum was made, and Wikipedia seems to agree with me, though I don't remember anything particular about it. It would be nice if you made another video about the C64/Speccy port once you have the time.
First version of this I ever played was on C64 and that too was a really good port. Nowadays, there's MAME for the original in all its glory. I love how crisp the graphics look.
I've mainly played this on Midway Arcade Treasures, there's some really interesting trivia such as the fact they were going to add digitized burp sound effects to the game, but decided to omit them because of how annoying it could get.
The music in the PC version was the very reason my dad modded our XT clone with a volume button. I loved the game, but that awful racket really wasn't something you wanted to hear through a big honkin' 3" PC squealer. Guess I could upload some footage of the composite version on the off chance that someone cares. :)
Tapper is an awesome game (even the root beer version). This old arcade game is much much much (x99) better than this "level" from Back to the Future on the NES. And - of course - nice review and nice video.
Valid point, it's probably not worth the hassle; although in that case I would recommend to use the music briefly in the beginning, much like your monthly summaries. Thanks for the reply.
