Bouncer Preview

Dream Factory's The Bouncer is arguably one of the strongest visual demonstrations of the PlayStation2 hardware thus far. Designed to appear as though you're controlling characters in a movie, Bouncer's camera movements and special effects truly appear as though they're straight out of a Hollywood creation. One of the scenes in the game takes place in a train station, and as you'll see, we've captured some screens from the happenings at this station, including an awe-inspiring explosion sequence.

Being Square's first PlayStation2 game, The Bouncer (formerly thought to be Ehrgeiz 2), was on display at the Tokyo Game Show in playable form - that is, if you consider controlling the camera and lighting of a real-time game demonstration "playable." Nevertheless, the game looked absolutely mind-blowing and was easily one of the highlights of the event.

The Bouncer is a fighting game at heart, but it seems more like an interactive action movie, as mentioned. Think Power Stone on steroids. You've got huge, open environments, a much more cinematic feel (Square's calling it a "Playing Action Movie") and crazy interactivity. If it's there, you can use it in battle (tables, chairs, garbage cans, debris from an exploding train...whatever), and fighters seemingly can do just about anything.

In the demo, there were people jumping over turnstiles and tables while fighting; people knocking each other through walls and fences; people diving off moving, flaming trains, etc. It was intense, to say the least. And all the while there were several characters on-screen at once, without a single hitch in speed or frame rate. Also of note is that The Bouncer's characters were done by none other than Tetsuya Nomura, famed character designer of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, Parasite Eve, and Brave Fencer Musashi. Suffice it to say, his creations in The Bouncer look to be his best yet (and you've got to see the chick from the train scene in motion... hubba hubba!).

There's no US release date scheduled as of yet, but we'll tell you plenty more about this title probably long before you'll even know when you can buy it.