You are a bartender serving Budweiser beer to patrons. You must serve everyone a beer before they work their way up to the kegs. You must also grab empty mugs before they slide off the end of the bar. Extra points for collecting tips. Bonus rounds involve locating the one beer that has not been shaken, and serving it.
Tapper was produced by Bally Midway in 1983.About 300 cocktail machines were also made.
The controls consist of a four-position joystick and a tap handle. The game screen features four bars, each with a keg at one end and a door at the other. Customers enter through the doors and slowly advance toward the kegs, demanding service. The player controls a bartender who must pour drinks and slide them down the bar for the customers to catch. Pushing the joystick up or down instantly moves the bartender to the keg at the next bar in the chosen direction, with the top and bottom of the screen wrapping around to one another, while pushing left or right causes him to run along the bar where he is stationed. When the tap handle is pulled down, the bartender instantly moves to the keg (if he is not already standing there) and fills a mug; releasing it causes him to slide the mug along the bar.
Customers slide back toward the doors upon catching a full mug, and disappear through the doors if they are close enough. If not, they stop after a certain distance, consume the drink, and resume their advance while sliding the empty mug back toward the keg. Customers occasionally leave tips on the bar, which the player can pick up for bonus points. Collecting a tip causes a group of female dancers to appear for a few seconds, distracting a portion of the customers so that they will stop advancing. However, distracted customers cannot catch drinks, and any customers who are either drinking or being pushed back at the start of the dancers' show will never be distracted.
One life is lost whenever any of the following occurs:
- The player fails to catch an empty mug before it falls off the keg end of a bar and breaks.
- A full mug slides to the door end of a bar without being caught, where it falls and breaks.
- Any customer reaches the keg end of a bar, whereupon they grab the bartender and slide him across the bar out the door.
Each screen is completed when the bar is completely emptied of customers. The bartender then pours/consumes a drink of his own with humorous results involving the empty mug, such as getting it stuck on his head or stubbing his toe when he tries to kick it. As the game progresses, the customers appear more frequently, move faster along the bar, and are pushed back shorter distances when they catch their drinks. In addition, the maximum number of customers per bar gradually increases until every bar can have up to four customers at a time.
The player proceeds through four levels, each with its own theme and appropriately dressed customers, and must complete a set number of screens to advance from one level to the next. The levels are:
- A western saloon with cowboys (2 screens)
- A sports bar with athletes (3 screens)
- A punk rock bar with punk rockers (4 screens)
- An outer-space bar with aliens (4 screens)
A bonus round is played after the end of each level, in which six cans of beer (or root beer) are placed on the bar. A masked figure shakes five of the cans, then pounds the bar to shuffle them. Choosing the one unshaken can awards bonus points, while choosing any other results in the bartender being sprayed in the face; in the latter case, the unshaken can flashes briefly to indicate its position.
After completing all four levels, the player returns to the start of the sequence and continues the game at a higher difficulty level.