The Bouncer.

An absolute oddity of the early-PS2 era. Perhaps one of the most obvious tech demos a company has ever released. Completely half-baked on all fronts in service of showcasing Square doing a real-time combat system where the character models no longer have fused fingers and you're meant to be excited by both of those prospects. A beat-'em-up from an alternate universe where combos don't exist. Vertically-stretched Sora from Kingdom Hearts is here to rescue his girlfriend, Robo-Kairi, from the evil clutches of blonde Sephiroth. Marketing boasting seven to eight hours of gameplay to complete, making this the greatest lie Square has ever told.

The Bouncer is fascinating. I don't think anything could be described as a fever dream more than this. It feels like something that dropped out of another reality where games are designed for people who have shit to do later. Barely two-minute combat vignettes with lengthy save prompts bookend barely two-minute cutscenes. You'll be let out of watching a video to beat up three guys who go down in about three hits each and then you get to save your game and level up. Sometimes the levels just start going and never fucking stop, with the sequence where you have to escort Dominique past a bunch of robots who never ragdoll taking an inordinate amount of time relative to every other encounter. It masterfully embodies the feeling of beating a game when you were staying home sick from school and trying to remember what happened after you started feeling better.

Now, sure, the game is shit. The combat mechanics are playing catch-up to 2D games that came out a decade before it, the story is insipid, the music is complete garbage (save for the English credits theme done by Shanice, my god), people on original hardware are going to be spending more time watching loading screens than cutscenes. But it's important to make the distinction that not every shitty game is a bad game, and not every bad game is a shitty game. The Bouncer is shitty, but it's so entertaining in its ridiculousness that it loops back around to being fun. Why is there a man made entirely out of tribal tattoos? Why does Volt have steel demon horns? Why does the science-fiction microwave energy satellite make the love interest robot girl overclock and beat the shit out of five cyborg-men with stretchy arms? Who gives a shit! This is The Bouncer, and The Bouncer just goes. Don't waste your time or its time asking questions. Just go.

I think if this tried going on for like five more minutes than it did, I would have started hating it, but the entire game is over and done with in the span of an hour and a half. Most movies are longer than this, and most of them aren't audacious enough to try soft-launching a new franchise that immediately falls on its face so hard that all of the Nomura designs present need to be harvested for other, more successful projects for the next decade after its release. The Bouncer is ephemera, like a poster, or an internet advert. It's as captivating as it was irrelevant on the day that it released.

Volt should have been the main character.

The Bouncer.

Reviewed on May 26, 2023


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