THQ Wireless has been bringing an arcade's worth of classic games to mobile recently, including the underappreciated Bally/Midway bar game, Root Beer Tapper. The premise and execution of this little gem are equally simple: As a mustachioed bartender, you have to slide mugs of ice-cold, refreshing root beer to thirsty patrons before they bum-rush you. The simplicity of the controls make this a proper fit for cell phones, and the quick rounds make it easy to squeeze in a game on the go. There's also a shell game-style minigame in between rounds, which breaks up the action nicely.
The graphics appear to be lifted directly from the Tapper arcade game, and the bright, colorful visuals retain their saturation, though the bartender and the patrons look pretty muddy, likely because of the size of the screen on the Nokia 6620. The sound effects are pretty sparse, with a short ditty that plays after each round, which recalls the full sound of the arcade original. This is about as good a version of Tapper as one could expect on a modern cell phone.
