Year: 1983
Your mission as a barman is to serve your thirsty patrons with cool refreshing beer. They are a persistant lot and love to come back for more!
The barman stands at the end of 4 bars, with a beer pump located by each one, and your customers come running towards you demanding their beer. You must activate the beer pump and slide a glass of cool Bud down towards them before they reach your end of the bar, or else they grab you and slide you down the bar into the wall at the far end!
You must also collect the empty glasses as they slide back to you before they fall off the end of the bar and smash. You move up and down to get from one bar to another and left and right to walk along the bar to collect empty glasses and tips left for you.
The fire button activates the beer tap, and holding it down fills a glass with beer and releasing it launches the glass along the bar. If a customer gets a beer soon enough, he/she/it will leave the bar with their glass and not require a refill. To complete a screen all customers must be served early enough to clear the entire screen of patrons.
After completing a screen, your barman enters a bonus game. Six cans of beer are placed in front of him, and five of the cans are shaken up. You must keep your eye on the sixth unshaken can as they are quickly mixed up, and pick the correct one to safely open it and not get drenched with foaming beer. Choose correctly and you receive bonus points.
An occasional respite comes in the form of dancing girls who momentarily distract some of your patrons at intervals. While distracted watching the dancers they do not want to drink, and this gives you a few seconds to clean up your bar and serve those who are still demanding service!
Later levels feature increasing numbers of customers moving more rapidly towards you. It is also less easy to satisfy a patron with a single beer, as they keep coming back for more! Also, the bars may be staggered, for example two facing left and two facing right to add to the confusion. There are four different bar locations; a cowboy bar, sports bar, punk bar and alien bar!
An extra life is awarded for 20,000 points and every 60,000 points.
Serving a cowboy/girl patron with beer: 50 points.
Serving a sports bar patron with beer: 75 points.
Serving a punk patron with beer: 100 points.
Serving an alien patron with beer: 150 points.
Collecting an empty beer glass: 100 points.
Collecting a tip left on the bar: 1,500 points.
Guessing the correct can on the bonus screen: 3,000 points.
Root Beer Tapper
Suntory Tapper
First extra life score can be set from 1,000 to 99,000 points (default is 20,000).
Additional extra lives score can be set from every 1,000 to every 99,000 points (default is every 60,000).
Starting lives can be set from 1 to 9 (default is 3).
Game difficulty can be set from 1 to 9 (default is 3).
If you are midway along a bar to collect a glass, pressing up or down will immediately take you to the end of the bar above or below you.
If you are midway along a bar, pressing fire will instantly return you to the beer tap on that level and fill a glass ready to serve.
Accurate timing will enable you to send a beer down the bar to reach a patron as soon as they finish a beer. Too soon and the glass will smah on the door at the end.
Ensure you collect as many tips as possible as these are the biggest single score available in normal gameplay, excluding bonus levels.
The bonus level is relatively easy if you keep a close watch on the unshaken can.