Ice Cold Beer - Taito

Developer:  Taito

Year:  1983 

Genre:   Labyrinth / Maze 

About

Ice Cold Beer is a mechanical arcade game released by Taito in 1983. The game is in a similar cabinet to an arcade video game, but  where the screen would normally be there is a vertical wooden playfield  dotted with holes. Two joysticks on the control panel control the height  of the two ends of a metal bar that moves up and down the playfield,  with a ball bearing rolling back and forth on the bar. The playfield is an amber color, and  the holes in the playfield are suggestive of bubbles rising in a mug of  beer. 

The objective of the game is to use the two joysticks to tip the  bar back and forth and maneuver the ball up to a specific lit hole on  the playfield, while avoiding unlit holes. When the player deposits the  ball in the lit hole, the ball and the bar return to the bottom of the  playfield, and the next target hole is lit. The game begins with the  bottom-most hole lit, and subsequent lit holes become more and more  difficult to reach while avoiding unlit holes. There are also versions  with a ticket dispenser.