The Mystery of Bouncer Arcade - Guest Contributor Article

I have a special treat for us today. My good friend, Brady Hearn wrote up a cool article about a long-running arcade mystery - the fascinating story of the lost arcade game "Bouncer."

Enjoy!

“Bouncer?” A one word tongue-and-cheek response to any mystery pcb picture posted in the die-hard arcade collecting community. Seen as the holy grail of un-dumped, unattainable arcade games; this 1984 lost arcade game is legend. So where is Bouncer? And why is it missing?

Back in 1982, during the peak of the arcade craze, two individuals started a software company called Entertainment Sciences. The first game they would produce would be an original title called ‘Bouncer”.

To bring their vision to life, they brought on a team which included former Sega/Gremlin, Cinementronics, Magnavox, and even Disney employees. One name that will stick out to any pinball fan will be Lonnie Ropp (of Stern Pinball) who came on as a programmer later in Bouncer’s development.

Entertainment Sciences never intended to manufacture arcade cabinets, only design the games. They reached out to Atari and Sente, both of whom showed interest in the game. Bouncer had a lot of cutting edge features for the time, like sprite scaling and high-res graphics that needed a medium resolution monitor. It was even rumored Atari had taken ideas from the Bouncer board they had borrowed for their development of Paperboy.

Ultimately neither Atari nor Sente bought Bouncer from Entertainment Sciences, leaving Entertainment Sciences to fend for themselves in a shrinking business they were ill-equipped to navigate.

In 1983, Entertainment Sciences brought a few Bouncer test cabinets to the 1983 AMOA show in New Orleans. Although there was interest, not many orders were placed. As they strove to be a company capable of producing and assembling arcade cabinets without the outside help of one of the larger manufacturers, they hemorrhaged money and lost employees. Production on their 2nd game ‘Turbo Sub” took over and the more complicated Bouncer took a back seat.

Screenshot of Bouncer gamplay

Ninja III: The Domination

One place you can catch a rare glimpse of a Bouncer cabinet was the film “Ninja III: The Domination”. As part of a promotional deal, the film used the cabinet as a prop on set. In the film, the cabinet would possess the film’s characters. Ultimately this did almost nothing to help Bouncer as Entertainment Sciences had all but given up on Bouncer by the time the movie was released. Here is a clip:

A nasty battle started between Entertainment Sciences and their production partner who may have been trying to purposely sabotage the production and copy their technology. As a result, a legal battle ensued. Entertainment Sciences won, but the production partner ran off with all current inventory; a move that proved to be disastrous to Bouncer’s future.

Entertainment Sciences closed and remaining paperwork and parts were moved around and stored in warehouses owned by Richard Schemider who had taken over as president a few years before Entertainment Sciences closed its doors. Eventually these parts were seen as costing too much to store, and everything was set for the dumpster. A few collectors got word that everything was going to be trashed and were able to salvage a few parts. Turbo Subs were planned as a kit for Star wars cabinets, so the Star Wars cabs were mainly what the collectors were after (Hey! Free Star Wars cabinets!?). They salvaged a few parts luckily, but no Bouncer eproms or full PCBs.

Last Sightings

Some people remember playing the test games at arcade locations in Southern CA back in the 80s and operators like Gene Lewin even remember briefly operating both Bouncer and Turbo Sub. In 1990 a Bouncer cabinet was sold at the garage sale of a former employee in southern California. One cabinet was bought by an uncredited special effects person working on the Ninja III film.

On a side note, someone has even gone to the lengths of trying to recreate the game on the indie game site itch.io. Though their efforts are still very much a work in progress and not very playable yet. https://luis5th.itch.io/bouncer-recreation

Legacy

You can’t talk about the legacy of Bouncer and Entertainment Sciences without talking about the man who has hunted down this game for the past 20 plus years. Chris from turbosub.com has been instrumental in documenting most of the information known about Bouncer and Turbo Sub. On his website he has detailed accounts of interviews with former Entertainment Sciences employees and has even tracked down people who had played the game at tradeshows. He has taken what would have been a forgotten, lost game and made it into a legend of arcade history.

I asked Chris about the current state of the Bouncer search effort. He told me he is still following up leads to this day, including an out-of-state sighting and a new board showing up (though missing the rom board making it the same as a Turbo Sub pcb).

Will Bouncer ever show up? I think if we continue to make people aware of its existence, there’s a chance. Maybe one of the few cabinets which were out there will show up on FB marketplace, having spent the last 40 years in a hoarder's basement behind boxes of old clothes and sandwiched between other forgotten keepsakes. Maybe one day someone will ask “Bouncer?” And the answer will be….