Tapper

"The feeling of rusty taps against my blistering gaming fingers is almost orgasmic..."

Who can argue with a beer? Cold, refreshing...it's the perfect escape from reality for a while, save videogames. Sow hat happens when some bright spark says "Hey, why don't we blend 'em together?" and like that, Tapper was born. A beer-swilling, bar-tending fun fest in the way of a frantic..."move the guy here and there" kind of action, for lack of a better description. O_o

Now, the series of games developed by Midway back in the day all had a similar feel to them. Simplicity, and Tapper is no exception. The games were easy to play due to the basic controls and basic premise, and as the levels went on, their difficulty increased - so from one simple thing to keep your eye on at Level one, to Level Seven, where there's seven things coming each and every direction, coming thicker and faster. Just because there's more things to deal with, doesn't mean the game becomes more complex. Same controls. Same game. Tapper is no exception. The back story to Tapper is that you're the local barkeep with a backlog of annoyed and angry patrons who desperately demand for their beers...It's your job to serve them.

Simple ideas are picked up early on, such as what loses you a life or what wins the points. No need to be handed a massive manual about +5/-2 Negative Dexterity Multipler Bonuses, and Triple-Twister Combos, it's a "Play-'n'-Learn" game. Okay, crash-course on Tapper for 'ya: Now, there are a load of counters where customers advance from, and you need to get to the beer-taps at the end of each bar in order to slide a cool glass of the liquid down to the angry customer. You need to dash backwards and forwards supplying this beer in the same fashion. Miss a customer and he advances too far, he'll make you lose a life with ANGRY rage. Breaking beer mugs is also a cause for life-loss, either by sliding a full mug down a counter with no customers, or failing to catch an empty mug which the now happy patrons return. The gameplay is simple, but it's tense when you've got a tonne of ticked-off alcoholics getting closer and closer, as well as a stream of empty beer tankards as they fly down the bar. Can you handle the strain?

There's a total of four different locales for you to visit and serve beer from, only playable once a certain score is achieved on the previous level. As you'd expect, the higher the level, the higher the points, and thus the harder the game becomes. The graphics aren't super, and you wouldn't notice any significant difference between each bar that you visit, just the challenging difficulty. The graphics are actually very poor. They're blocky, but colourful. There's a variety of colours. The large bar counters, the angry customers...even the cheeky bartender's outfit is greatly done. It's not as good as some game's graphics, but they fit and suit the theme of this title. When I say "variety of colours", it's an understatement, though, as each different bar changes it colour scheme, and they somehow end up mixing Yellow, Blue and Green into one scene. It's an eye soar, really, but you'd be focusing more on the action than how pretty the scenery is.

Sound doesn't flow so well, as the music is just beeps and blips really, and you'll probably end up turning it off and relying on some heavy speed metal track to entertain you sound wise. Sound effects are of the same quality - "CRASH!" and whatnot as the glass tankards smash to the floor. Same thing applies - you'll want to turn them off.

As fun as it is, finding it is hard, but dozens of free online Flash game sites will have this game somewhere, probably called "Bar Attack" or "Bar Wars" or "Bartender" or something similar. It's a great game and addicting for the time it has you. A must play, even if it is just a weaker Flash version.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/05, Updated 06/20/06