Ice Cold Beer is the name of a mechanical arcade game originally 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 object 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.
Taito also released a "family friendly" version of the game in 1984 entitled Zeke's Peak, where the artwork of bubbles rising in a mug of beer was replaced by a mountain-climbing theme.
In 2006, ICE released a remake of the game with new artwork and a ticket dispenser.
Famous quotes containing the words ice, cold and/or beer:
“Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Some men love truth so much that they seem in continual fear lest she should catch cold on over-exposure.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“Gin for executions, beer for birthdays, wine for weddings.”
—P. J. Wolfson, John L. Balderston (1899–1954)