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#49

In the most dangerous part of town, in a neighborhood dwarfed by the Mikado Group's massive headquarters, there sits a bar called Fate. In this seedy district, every place of business needs protection, and Fate has it three times over with a trio of bouncers, each with distinct styles and personalities, and each with a mysterious past. There is the massive Volt, strong and silent type with a pierced face and horn implants jutting out of his forehead; Kao, the multi-tattooed wise-cracker who's as handy with a joke as he is with a fist to the face; and Sion, a young fighter who brims over with a quiet sorrow. Together, they keep Fate clean of the riff-raff, while Sion takes care of a once homeless girl named Dominique Cross, who has become sort of the mascot of the bar itself. But on one long night, Dominique is kidnapped by Mikado Group Special Forces on the eve of their new solar power satellite project entering its final stage. The three bouncers must take to the streets by any means necessary to discover why Dominique has been taken. Along the way they will meet all manner of strange and powerful foes, but they must press on. They must stop Mikado and it's sinister, bitter leader from unleashing a plot for global domination. The Bouncer was developed by Square with the help of Dream Factory, who developed the Tobal series and had a hand in the 1998 free-range battle game EHRGEIZ. With The Bouncer, Square has attempted to blend the traditional aspects of side-scrolling beat-'em ups with their patented genre, the role-playing game. To that effect, they've created a game that is heavy on plot and cut-scenes, featuring multiple playable characters who gain experience points to power themselves up through the course of the adventure. While the game is single-player, you can take on the role of all three characters during the course of The Bouncer's story mode. The game switches back and forth from cut-scenes and battle scenes. Before each battle scene, you're given a choice of which of the three characters you would like to play. Sion, Kao, and Volt all have their own move sets and independent fighting styles. At the end of each battle scene, you can take the Battle Points that you've earned during the course of the last battle and buy more life, more power or more defense, as well as a number of different special attacks. Picking different characters during different situations will change the flow of the plot slightly, and there will be occasions on which the three will split up completely. During battles in which the three characters are all present, the computer controls the other two characters. After you've been through the Story Mode once, you can choose to go through it again, and again pick a different character at the beginning of each battle segment. This is so you may build up your characters to use in the other modes that The Bouncer features. The first is the Versus Mode, where you can play your powered-up characters as well as nine other characters from the game that are unlockable as you make your way through the Story Mode multiple times. Although the Story Mode is single-player, the Versus Mode features play for up to four people at once, as well as a Team mode where two players can take control of three-character teams. Along with the Versus Mode there is a single-player Survival Mode, where one person can pick a character and see how long they lasts against wave after wave of opponents.