The Bouncer (Part 3)

Okay, so now I'm back in my house. I have my wrecked copy of The Bouncer in my hands, along with the manual. Having read through the manual, I noticed a few things. First, Dominique is 15, not 14. However, the age of consent in Japan is 16. So, she's STILL underaged, leaving the fact that The Bouncer is Sion's quest to rescue Dominique's jailbait ass unchanged. Second, you may have noticed I refereed to the company who made this game as Squaresoft, not Square-Enix. This is because The Bouncer was one of the last games from before the merger, Also, there's an ad in the back of the manual for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. This made me chuckle.


This looks like it will be a fine movie and make a household name out of Squaresoft.

Third, and most annoying to me, is an advertisement in the back for Bouncer action figures, lunchboxes, resin statues and busts made by a company called Palisades. Me, being an insane collector of toys and figures, jumped on this and went to their website, www.palisadesmarketing.com
If you clicked that link, you'll notice it's a filler. The company is defunct. And upon some research, none of these things seem to exist. I don't think they ever got made. And that makes me sad. If anyone knows anything about this company or this Bouncer merchandise, please tell me.

Anyway, I was saying something. Oh right. The floor gives out and they all fall down and get separated. You pick between Sion, Kou or Volt. I already explained the gist of Kou's. Dress as ninja, sign language. Volt's is completely unremarkable. So unremarkable, in fact, I remember nothing of his thing except the beginning and the end. He wakes up in some holding device that looks like that thing Revolver Ocelot used to torture Solid Snake in the first Metal Gear Solid. Many of you may remember this as "the part of the game where I killed Meryl." Volt, not being a pussy like you, simply breaks his bonds and gets out. I really do not remember anything until the end... which I will get to after Sion's!

Sion runs around, fights ninjas and cleaning robots and eventually comes to this one computer room. This is where Bionoid Technology and all the cyborg stuff gets an attempted explanation. Also, one of the files is about some chick named Kaldea who apparently died a while back. Seems Sion was getting action when HE was jailbait. Fancy that. Anyway, as soon as you see this a ninja runs in and punches the monitor. Then you fight ninjas. Woo. Nothing much else of interest happens and eventually you come to a dark room with Dominique unconcious on a bed. Again. Sion walks straight to her and HOLY SHIT IT'S MUGETSU! He has Sion in a headlock. I like this bit the best in Sion's path because what follows comes out of fucking NOWHERE. Suddenly, from offscreen, a ninja mook flies into Mugetsu, knocking Sion free. Volt comes out, since he's the only guy HUGE enough to throw a man like a football. Then the ninja mook gets up and takes off his mask and HOLY CRAP IT'S KOU! Mugetsu goes a bit more insane and boss fight ensues, which ends with Mugetsu getting his neck snapped.

WARNING: Everything after this,I consider spoilers. If only because some of the shit that happens is so fucking CRAZY that it's just ridiculous. The shock value of some of this stuff is amazing. Proceed at your own risk.

Sion wakes up Dominique(who has traded the pantless jacket look for some weird sports bra/underwear combo going. Makes her look less like jailbait, at least.) who is happy to see him! So now, they must escape. And what follows is, by far, one of the worst levels in any video game I have ever played. You must pick one character to play as and escort Dominique up this rocket launch tower. 90% of the enemies here are robots with absurd health that do crazy damage. Also, it's an escort mission. At the end, you come across a HORRIBLE ROBOT!




PD-4! He grabs Dominique with his EXTENDO-ARM and seems to snap her spine which... seems to just knock her out for some reason. Whatever. Anyway, the other two members of your party show up and BOSS FIGHT! PD-4 is not hard, just a pain in the ass and really cheap. You beat him up and then... surprise! SIX MORE PD-4s SHOW UP! OH SHIT! You barely beat the one! Just when all hope seems lost, Pre-Rendered cutscene! Some satellite sends out a message and... Dominique's face clicks up, revealing metal interiors! SHE'S A ROBOT!!!! She then procedes to stand up and assume a fighting pose. Pre-Rendered cutscene ends and... Dominique precedes to have the single best fight scene in this entire game. She absolutely DESTROYS the PD-4s with minimal effort, hurling them across the room, at each other, kicking them so hard their robo-spines crack. And then she vents steam and falls over. Holy. Fucking. Shit.

The party is completely floored and just kind of stare for a few seconds. Then Mugetsu drops down from the ceiling, eliciting a kind of "oh come the FUCK ON! We snapped your goddamn neck and you're still alive?!" response from Stephen Bl... Kou. Mugetsu, of course, kidnaps Dominique... again... and runs off to the Galeos. Oh, did I forget to mention? Dauragon has a giant spaceship that he is launching into space that is supposed to be some kind of solar energy satellite system but is really a giant death beam of death. Sion is confused about why his jailbait is a robot, as most men who have found themselves in this situation tend to be. Volt suddenly becomes an exposition machine! It seems Dominique was Dauragon's sister, who died. And after he got adopted by the previous head of the Mikado Corporation, he used his billions of dollars to make a robot copy of her. This may or may not have involved Bionoid Technology, I honestly forget. But anyway, this apparently changes nothing! They have to save her! So they try to go board the Galeos only to have a (not so) random encounter with Echidna! Queen of the Hobags! There is nothing special about this fight at all. So they move on.


God damn you are such a hobag.

Oh noes! They missed the Galeos launch! But a bunch of jets come out of NOWHERE and stall it. So they decide to take... a hovercraft! I found a picture of what these things look like, by the way.


I honestly cannot fathom a single reason to be sized like that, beyond an easy way to have dramatic midair battles

So they launch this to try and catch up to a SPACE SHIP, mind you and who appears but MUGETSU! He was apparently on the outside of the Galeos waiting to leap 500-something feet to their approaching hovercraft so he could have a final climactic battle. I'd really question his planning here, but it's really hard to put into words how insane Mugetsu is. Anyway, boss fight. When you win, Mugetsu is shoved over the edge of the hovercraft and lives just long enough to fall into the path of the Galeos's thrusters as the afterburners kick in, incinerating him. God, I used to love that scene.

So they SOMEHOW board the Galeos (It's a fucking space ship that's flying in the atmosphere. How the hell do they get on it?) and before fighting Dauragon, you must fight the crazy panther lady! Depending on a few different factors, what happens here varies. First, she may just fall over unconscious going "Si... on". And Sion does not acknowledge who he thinks she is. Second, Sion may recognize her as that girl he loved, Kaldea! But she's way older than Sion! Also, she can turn into a panther now. Pretty sure she couldn't do that before. Or maybe she could and Sion liked that sort of thing. But anyway, she explains that the accident she died in was staged so she could be experimented on. Why it had to be her they experiment on and not one of their random ninjas willing to dress up in bondage gear to fight, I don't know. So, she then says that Dauragon experimented on her using BIONOID TECHNOLOGY, which Volt seems to acknowledge as the worst thing ever. She says she's sad and feels sorry for Dauragon... at which point he shouts "SILENCE!" and a fucking spiked chain shoots out of NOWHERE and rockets through her chest with the velocity of a bullet, killing her instantly. Also, her blood is purple. Bionoid Technology. This, understandably, makes Sion flip a shit. Oh, and if you're wondering how Dauragon shot his chain straight out like a bullet... do you really expect an answer at this point? Really?


Bionoid Technology

So, something I forgot to mention. Dauragon used his death laser to blow up the hospital where Dominique died. I'm pretty sure it was full of doctors and sick people at the time. So yeah, he's evil... and stuff. Also, Dominique for... some reason...seems to be critical to the doom laser firing thing. I have no idea why.

But anyway, FINAL BOSS FIGHT! First round, he fights with his coat and chain. You knock him down. Your guys celebrate. He stands up and taunts your team while being British and tosses off the jacket. He's got black leather overalls on underneath it with no shirt. I didn't even know those existed. So you beat him, some end cinematics happen and the game is won! Honestly, there are like 6 or 7 different endings to this game and I honestly don't feel like mentioning them all. But there is ONE thing left to mention...

The Bouncer has a New Game+ mode, which lets you start over and continue buying fighting moves with XP Points and leveling up, until you eventually get all three characters from G Rank to F Rank and so on, up to A Rank and then S Rank. You can do this as many times as you want. But... on your third playthrough, something... different happens. You beat Dauragon the second time... the day is won... until he starts laughing like a goddamn madman and stands up. He has totally lost his shit. He unbuckles his overalls, revealing his manly chest and a dragon tattoo that magically appears on his back before your eyes. He will then proceed to wreck your shit because it is almost impossible to be a high enough level to be reasonably expected to beat him on only the third playthrough. But, some people (like me) are just that good.

Anyway, that's all I have to say about this... It's a game I hold fond memories. You can find the game for like ... $4 on Amazon, eBay and bargain bins the world over. Give it a shot. I mean, it has ninjas, robots and giant space lasers. What the fuck more do you want?

The Bouncer (Part 2)

So! Now we're into the game. I'm kind of tempted to do this in a "Let's Play!" fashion, but that would take too long. Plus, I have no way of getting screencaps (Seriously guys. PS2 Emulation. Help me out.).

The game starts out in a bar called Fate, which has three Bouncers employed. Why? Shut up. Let's go through them before anyone else, shall we? First up is Sion Barzhad, seen on the left.


Question: What the hell is it called when there is blatant product placement in a game, but the brand is fictional?

Sion is the de facto main character. You could play the game as any of the three, but he gets the box cover and his spikey hair is always poking itself into the plot. First, you may think the art style looks very familiar. This is because the character designer was Tetsuya Nomura, who also did work on the Kingdom Hearts series. Sora always looked like Sion's little brother to me.


Separated at birth?

He's a tough guy who wears ridiculously oversized silver jewlery and delivers his first lines of the game as though he were drunk, which never happens again. In fairness, I'm pretty sure a ninja attack would sober anyone up His story revolves around love, both a of girl who died when he was young and of Dominique Cross. She's the girl in yellow.

Sion totally has the hots for Dominique, who basically serves as the Princess Peach of this game. She gets kidnapped, you must save her. Also, she's jailbait. She's 14. Sion is 19. Yes, the entire point of the game is so that the main character can get his jailbait ass back. Process that. This never has attention called to it, by the way. It just says her age in the manual. Subtle, Squaresoft. Subtle.


I have no witty comment about this.

Next, we have Kou Leifoh (left), voiced by the ever-wonderful Stephen Blum. Kou was always an interesting character because his game path is radically different than Sion's and Volt's. If you play as either of them, he will always crack jokes, seem happy and carefree. If you play as him, he is actually some kind of crazy secret agent (who has like a million tattoos and works at a bar? Sure) and a lot of the events of the game only make even the tiniest bit of sense if you are seeing things from his perspective, like the random fighter jets who pop up to save your ass every now and then.

Then we have Volt (right). He is the stoic. The strong, silent type. Also, he has a cactuar on his jacket, which always made me laugh. His story is honestly pretty damn dull compared to Sion's and Kou's. There's nothing of note here besides a romantic subplot with the ever-slutty Echidna.


No relation. Knuckles is not a total ho.

So, Dominique gets kidnapped by ninjas. Yay. Volt recognizes these ninjas as Special Forces of the Mikado Corporation. There are a number of things wrong with that sentence. First off, if you can recognize who the ninjas work for by their outfits, they're not very good ninjas. Second, if a company has enough money to create their own band of ninjas... I really don't know how to continue that, actually. I really don't know what the effect of a corporation making their own elite ninja squad would be. But anyway, so they run off to the train station because Kou called his secret (and sexy) contact, Leann Cladwell, and she told him there was a train going to Mikado. So they run off to the train station, spot that crazy black panther thing, and then suddenly, ninjas! About a dozen of them! This happens so many times in the game that I'll honestly only mention it when it's particularly interesting, like if the ninjas are on fire.


I honestly could not find any other image for this.

Stuff happens. You may or may not blow up a train filled with rocket fuel. Anyway, you get to Mikado... which looks like some enormous mall tower with hovercraft patrols.
Yes. They have hovercrafts. Just big enough for fights to happen on. Conviiiiiiinient~

Then you crash the hovercraft because fucking hell, none of the bouncers know how to pilot a hovercraft. You crash in the woods, which are filled with cyborg dobermans with glowing red death eyes. Why? Bionoid technology. Also, there's more ninjas. Including this guy.


He has grabby hands. Wonder what he wants to grab.

This is Mugetsu. I love this crazy son of a bitch. He is probably my favorite character in the game because he is just so damn crazy. He's crazy because of Bionoid technology that lets him teleport and set himself on fire. Why? Because Bionoid technology makes you crazy, but crazy is only bundled with ninja, I guess. It's a package deal.

The forest they're fighting in is on top of the mall tower thing, by the way. Then they go to this big glass dome in the middle of the forest where a lady is playing a piano and then she turns into that shiny panther. Besides the shiny panther, there is the main villain of the game, Dauragon C. Mikado.


In retrospect, he reminds me of Liquid Snake. Probably because he's so damn British.

Dauragon (god that's awkard to type) is with Sion's old kung fu master. He then kills him. I'm really not sure why. Sion flips out, gets stopped by the panther and then Dauragon is like "Haha I am going to beat you with one arm chained behind my back." Then you fight him. And the panther. Then Dauragon loses, "It seems I have underestimated you" and then punches Sion so hard he falls over gasping for air. Oh, also. Dominique was unconcious on a bed in this room the whole time. Forgot about that. Then Daurahon snaps his fingers and BOOM! Trap door. The tiles fall out and they all fall what must be hundreds of feet. Then the tiles FLOAT BACK UP and fit back into place. Yeah.

Then, you have to choose who to pick. Sion, Volt or Kou. Flat out, Kou's is EASILY the most entertaining. Because he dresses up as a ninja and pretends to be one. Apparently, all of these ninjas speak in sign language. For the hell of it. They can talk, they just choose not to.

But whatever. Part three coming later.