Sega/US Gold
48K cassette £9.95
48K disk £14.95
1/2 players
Joystick
Sega's range of Atari computer
games is gradually becoming available in this country thanks to
US Gold. TAPPER is one of their new releases and, in this game,
you play the part of a frenzied bartender whose job it is to serve
a never ending flow of thirsty customers. You guide the bartender
between the bartops, pressing the fire button to 'sling' sodas at
the customers. The aim is to knock them back through the doors of
the saloon (the customers, that is!) in an effort to clear the bar
and progress to the next round of play. You must only serve one
soda per customer, otherwise you lose one of your five allotted
lives. Sometimes the customers will remain in the saloon and try
to catch you out by slinging their empty glasses back at you. If
you allow any of these to drop off the end of the bar you also lose
a life.
After a set number of rounds you
are required to tackle the bonus round. Here, the mysterious Soda
Bandit shuffles five out of six soda cans on a solitary bartop and
challenges you to choose the only unshaken one. If you guess correctly
you gain 3000 bonus points. If you guess wrongly, however, all you
get is a face full of soda!
The disk version of TAPPER features
five different screens - Old West Saloon, Jock Bar, Punk Bar, Space
Bar and, of course, the Bonus Round - but the cassette version has
only three (the Punk and Space Bars are missing). There is a very
good reason for this. The cassette version is really only the Rom
version of the game transferred directly onto tape. In effect it's
a 16K game but it still requires 48K as it retains the original
Rom memory addresses.
I can thoroughly recommend the
disk version of TAPPER. It's ridiculously simple to play and highly
addictive into the bargain. The cassette version is okay, but lacks
variety. One more thing - do not be fooled by the on-screen photos
on the cassette inlay as these come from the arcade game and the
graphics shown are much better than any computer version. Sega have
gotten into a habit of displaying arcade screen-shots on their computer
software and I, for one, don't approve. Apart from being misleading,
it surely contravenes the Trades Description's Act in some way?
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