The Bouncer (Part 1)

Yeah, these posts are going to be all over the place. Basically, I'm going to talk about whatever I can/feel like. It also helps that SOMEONE hasn't gotten me inFamous yet. You know who you are and your retribution for this misdeed will be swift and agonizing. And, since my income doesn't exactly allow me to run out and buy new games whenever I want, I've decided to talk about this little piece of work.

The Bouncer was one of the first games to come out for the Playstation 2 and the third game I owned for it. The first two were Jak and Daxter and some weird Donald Duck thing that I think I threw into the woods out of frustration. If I still had it, that might make an entertaining Let's Play. But that's beside the point. The Bouncer!

At the time, The Bouncer got a fair amount of hype. The screenshots looked damn good and it was the advent of a new console generation. This was back in Early 2001, just after that absolutely insane Christmas of 2000, when the PS2 was the biggest thing since Jesus invented sliced bread in a duet with The Beatles. I'm pretty sure that happened. But yeah, if anyone tried to get a Playstation 2 for Christmas, you had your work cut out for you. For people with poor memories, think of how the Wii was at its release. Now multiply that by 5 and you have how hard it was to snag a PS2. Most people in urban or suburban areas found every shelf lacking. It was madness. People were buying them for as high as US$1000 on eBay. If you had a PS2, you were officially awesome. Well, to anyone who cared about video games, anyway.

My mother, being the saint and miracle worker that she is, managed to get our family a PS2 for Christmas of 2000. And she didn't even pay ridiculously inflated sums. She got it for retail at some Wall Mart deep in the boondocks of Pennsylvania (my dad liked to call it Pennsyltuckey. He wasn't as funny as he thought he was). And, not only that, but she got a Gamecube too! Like I said. Miracle Worker.

But anyway, my point is this. The PS2 was hard to get your hands on, all the way into about April of 2001. So there was not much word of mouth going around about the games, except in publications like Official Playstation Magazine, which I didn't know about until like... August of that year.

I have no idea how I found out about The Bouncer. Maybe I just saw it in a store one day and thought it looked cool. But regardless, this game... ... well, in retrospect, it's a terrible game. It looks nice, yes. I still think it looks nice. But the gameplay is repetitive, the controls are wonky and inaccurate, and the story varies from flawed to laughably contrived and ludicrous. But I love this game. Oh, how I love this game. I'd probably still love it if I just played it for the first time today. And the reason I love it is probably because of how ludicrous it is. Let me elaborate.

I love anime. Alongside video games and that scary lady who lets me call her my girlfriend, it's one of my three great loves in this world. I could have a dozen of these posts elaborating on why, but I won't... yet. Anyone who has watched the average anime is aware that there is frequently a fantastic element that requires some suspension of disbelief. You have to be willing to immerse yourself in the world. You have to convince yourself that ninjas can literally vanish into the shadows, that robots can look and act just like humans, that a single eccentric wealthy guy can build a giant death laser in space (that no one will notice) or that, occasionally, a woman can turn herself into a cat. Done properly, suspension of disbelief can make for a phenomenal series. Death Note, for example. If you can accept that writing a person's name in a certain notebook will kill them, then you can enjoy the fantastic and amazing events that follow. But you see, belief can only be stretched so far and disbelief suspended so much before you have a problem.

Those four examples of things in anime, you'll notice I used the word "or" to separate them. Not "and". The reason for this is, if you throw too many fantastic elements into a story without meshing them properly, you get a big ridiculous mess that just looks stupid and if you're lucky will come out "So Bad It's Good." All of those four examples occur in The Bouncer. Also, a single playthrough of this game will usually only take about 2-4 hours. You see where this is a problem.

In those 2-4 hours, you have a hilariously psychotic ninja who can teleport and light himself on fire, a perfect android replica of a human, a giant death laser in space and a woman who can turn herself into a big shiny panther (I have no idea why it's shiny. Probably because everything in this game is shiny). This does not make for a good story. This makes for the writings of a 13-year-old who forgot his ADHD medication, as adapted from his opus "List of Really Cool Things".

But this is why I love The Bouncer. It takes itself deadly serious. You are expected to engrossed in this EPIC TALE OF EPICNESS. But I just play it because I love how ridiculous this shit is. And I love it.

Beyond the ridiculousness, there are some legitimately cool things here. Numerous, branching story paths that take you through this one-night tale of ridiculousness depending on which of the three bouncers you choose to play as. Each stage gives you the option to choose, letting you test them all out early in the game and not tying you to any particular one (except for the bit where they get separated). There are a number of problems with this, though, which I will go into greater detail with in future posts. The greatest flaw, which I think is also the game's greatest humor value, is that almost none of these ridiculous things are explained in any satisfying way. For example, why can that woman turn into a panther? The answer: Bionoid Technology. What the fuck is that? I don't know! The game uses it as a catch all for a number of things in the game. It uses it like Sci-Fi original movies use Genetic Engineering as an excuse for why there is a sharkman eating those teenagers or why the Nazis had a big purple hulk that could shoot lightning from its hands (Those two movies are Peter Benchley's "Creature" and SS Doomtrooper, respectively, by the way). Or like how Metal Gear Solid 4 used Nanomachines (They let Vamp walk on water... why?).


I could not find a picture of the Doomtrooper and that makes me sad

Everything that happens is just... you're just supposed to roll with it, no matter how crazy it is. And if you roll with it and can stand enjoying something in way it was clearly not meant to be enjoyed, you can have a lot of fun with this. I know I did.