Prepared to get served…Warner Bros. Digital Distribution is working with famous animator Don Bluth (Dragon’s Lair, The Secret of NIMH) and developer Square One to reboot Bally Midway’s 1983 classic arcade game Tapper (aka Root Beet Tapper) for a whole new generation. If ever there was a game that would be perfectly suited for the iOS platform, this classic grand daddy of time management games would be it!
Tapper World Tour for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad promises to be a modern reinterpretation of the classic arcade game Root Beer Tapper. For anyone young enough not to remember this game, the concept was really simple. You are put in the shoes of a bartender, and tasked with with serving (root)beer and collecting empty mugs and tips from as many thirsty patrons as you can without breaking a glass or a customer reaching the near end of the counter. You had to mange multiple counter tops, filling and then sliding mugs down the correct counter to the parched individuals waiting to imbibe. There was one and only one drink…beer (okay, some versions of the game had root beer) and customers started arriving more quickly and you kept serving until ultimately you accidentally tossed a drink down and empty bar and it went crashing to the floor. It got stressful and chaotic as any good time management game should.
The updated version, Tapper World Tour, features some fantastic looking new visuals, but keeps the beloved core gameplay pretty much the same, mixing things up a bit by adding some fresh ingredients to raise the difficulty bar a bit, adding a new game mode and a few mini games:
Players wander to different watering holes around the globe to create authentic, local libations. As the tender of a busy bar, you have three or more counter tops to manage. Patrons arrive sporadically at the end of each bar slowly advancing towards you demanding drinks.
Serve customers by filling a mug with their drink of choice and sliding the mug towards the advancing customer. Once caught, the satisfied patron gulps his drink and heads to the end of the line. As the game progresses, customers appear more frequently, move faster along the bar and are pushed back shorter distances after catching their drinks.
Bartenders must clear the entire lot of customers to proceed to the next level. Once a level is completed a short vignette plays in which the bartender draws a drink for himself, drinks it, then tosses the empty mug into the air with varying humorous results.
There is no official word on release date and pricing yet, but retro gaming fans should prepared to get served this Spring.
UPDATE: The First official trailer is now available…
