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A Website Dedicated To The Only Two Games Ever Produced By Entertainment Sciences
BOUNCER and TURBOSUB
My Search for Bouncer - PART 1 -  Yes Virginia,  There Was 'Bouncer
[NAME] = Ficticious Name, Either at the request of individual, Privacy Concerns, or On-Going Research]'

Chapter 1 - Entertainment Sciences
Ron Clark (A CAD Sales person) and Joel Heinrich (A broker) decided in 1982 to jump on the video game bandwagon, both
being sales people soon rounded up a group of private investors and Entertainment Sciences was born.  Quick side note….
Entertainment Sciences started off as ‘Amusement Sciences’ was technically part of another company called ‘Creative
Sciences’ which also had a medical device division (Vital Sciences).
Their first relevant hire was the addition of Ulrich Neumann, who was brought on board as vice-president of engineering. Prior
to that Ulrich was working for Gremlin (SEGA) where he was responsible for hardware design.  One of the last things to be
designed before leaving was the hardware for Zaxxon.  Interesting side note.... Even though Zaxxon was successful, SEGA
anticipated it being the second coming and over-produced for it.  This resulted in a warehouse full of PCB's that were no
longer needed.   Eventually a startup video game company acquired all the unused inventory of Zaxxon boards for a game
they were producing (never surfaced.... more on that later, might be something to check in to).
Ulrich was given the task to create a hardware platform for Entertainment Sciences, being in the arcade industry Ulrich
decided he wanted to design a platform that could be used for multiple cycles, instead of the typical 1-2 the industry was
seeing.  Ulrich set-off to design just such as system, the company knew they were taking a risk in building such as expensive
system, but the initial intention was for them to be a design shop and license the games out to bigger company who could
mass produce hardware at a cheaper price.
Somewhere during the design process some additional employees were brought in.   John Mendoza was an electronic
technician hired by Ulrich to assist in wiring wrapping the prototype boards.   Additionally David A. Fox was brought in as a
programmer; David was not a game programmer but was responsible for writing the development system, and utilities that
would be used by the company.   The development system was an HP-UNIX system.
Chapter 2 - Bouncer Is Born
Once the prototype hardware was closed to being finished, Entertainment Sciences started looking for their first video game
programmer.  Enter Rob Patton; Rob was a video game designer with Cinematronics, during his interview he sat down with
Ulrich who demonstrated the technical capabilities to of the RIP System (Real-time Image Processing).  Part of the interview
process was to throw out game videos that could leverage the technologies.  Rob, rattled off about five ideas.   When Rob saw
the scaling ability (larger up close, smaller further away) he rattled off the idea of a 'Bouncer' who ejects rowdy patrons from
a bar, the team loved the idea and Rob was extended an offer and 'Bouncer' would be the initial title.
Rob was one of the first programmers to be represented by a talent agent.  After some negotiation Rob was brought on board
and the design process followed.   One of the first things that Rob did was to hire a local artist.  They designed a 'set'
modeled after a bar and the characters were made as stand-up poster board figures.  This allowed posing them around and
working on the game play.  Eventually Rob hired Lars-Arne Hult as a graphics designer.  Lars-Arne Hult had done work with
Disney as an animator, so he was brought in to do clean-up of the characters.  How here comes another interesting piece of
lore (One of the characters Rob designed was called 'Bambi - A prostitute, Rob recalls a decision was made that Bambi was
not family friendly, and was replaced a character named 'Romeo' a flasher in a trench coat with a heart on his underwear....
Here is where it gets interesting.....  Rob claims Bambi never made it out of the story boards, and therefore was never a
character in the game.  Years before I ever talked with Rob, I was speaking with someone who played the game when it was
on a test location in 1983.  He was also looking for the game he had played years back, and he described the game in great
detail and recalled one of the characters as a rowdy prostitute.   So here starts the 'Bambi' controversy.   Everything this guy
gave me about his experiences with game play was later validated by employees including the arcade where he played it on
test.  His eye witness account was right on par, and I have no reason to doubt it.  But the fact that a 'prostitute' character
was mentioned by both and early eye witness and validated the character was at least in story boards leaves the possibility
open that perhaps and early build did in fact contain 'Bambi' , but was removed early on in testing/development phase.
(While it would be awesome to located the 'Bouncer' EEPROMS, how cool would it be to find 'Bouncer w/Bambi EEPROMS’ that
would be the super grail find. (In recent years, it seems to be likely Bambi was just an initial story board character)
Before I move on... let me drop a few more names of employees. Along the way Joel Heinrich stepped off, but retained his
investment.  Bob Rauch was brought on board as CEO; Ron Clark retained the title of president.  Somewhere in the mix
additional people came on board.  Dick Keenan (an industrial designer) was brought on board to assist with cabinet and
component design, prior to joining Entertainment Sciences; Dick was an industrial designer that worked at Magnavox with
Ralph Baer (Electronics Legend).   Additionally an additional programmer was brought on board to assist Rob with coding, his
name is Mark Mabry.  Entertainment Sciences also hired a musician named Craig Portman; Craig had worked with Dan
O'Bannon (Alien, Total Recall, etc.) on his first film in the 70's called Dark Star.  Anyway Craig was brought in to score the
games and assist with sound design.   Gary Burnett was also brought on-board as an industrial designer.
Lars also had an assistant that worked with Entertainment Sciences as well, Jennifer Yuan (she went on to do art for several
animated films in later years).  [DR. LEE] was brought on as a sales person, Jeff Conly was brought in as an artist (he
designed the brochures that exist), and there is [THE KEYMASTER] (He will become a key point of discussion later).  And
finally the final programmer brought in for 'Bouncer' was Lonnie Ropp (now of Stern Pinball fame).
Bouncer was primarily tested at a few arcades in the Southern California area.  One was at the arcade at the Del Amo Fashion
Mall in Torrance, CA, and other at an arcade in Huntington Beach, CA....  Again this is from memory and is reflected in the
notes.   Also it should be noted that the initial release of Bouncer used high-resolution graphics on a medium resolution
monitor.
The people who played it liked the game; especially the graphics the primary complaints were the game was repetitive and
also became impossibly hard very quickly.  During the initial build out of the first machines, a local company named 'A-Z
Electronics' in Anaheim, CA was awarded a contract through Bob Rauch to populate the RIP PCB's and build out the cabinets
for Bouncer.
There were challenges from the beginning with '[ZULE CORPORATION]' and its owner [GOZER].   Both Entertainment
Sciences and '[ZULE CORPORATION]' scrambled to ready 15-20 cabinets for test and trade shows.   Once they turned over
the PCB's, Entertainment Sciences ended up having to correct assembly issues to get the games up and running.
There was also interest in 'Bouncer' from both 'Atari' and 'Sente'......   Atari strung them along for close to a year, the
employees were shocked when they released 'Paperboy'... Many of technical features were identical to the RIP hardware
including some game play elements.   Sente also expressed interest, Nolan Bushnell flew down and Rob Patton personally
walked him through Bouncer.   Deals with Sente also didn't go anywhere.... but it wasn't too long after that that they
released a system for multi-game use.  At this point decided they had no choice but to get into the video game
manufacturing business (something they were not equipped to do).
‘Bouncer' made its premier at the 1983 AMOA show in New Orleans.  All the keys players attended the show.  While there was
a lot of traffic and interest, in the end there was not a single order placed. Actually there were some orders that were placed
but later cancelled.  The key issues were 1) It wasn't a laser game (operators only wanted laser game at that time) 2) It was
expensive, and Bouncer was the only title available 3)It wasn't ready  to ship in a mass production scenario.


Chapter 3 - BOUNCER is put on the shelf for now
Once they got back from the AMOA trip, a decision was made to not worry about marketing the machine until a second title
was ready.  This was to be Turbo Sub.  Every cabinet that was in house at the time got the 'Bouncer' EEPROMS removed so
that development and testing could commence with Turbo Sub.  While there were hundreds of blank RIPS lying around, A-Z
was not keeping up with their commitments.   [GOZER], of ZULE CORPORATION] was very impressed with the hardware and
advised Entertainment Sciences that they should license the technology outside of the arcade industry.  Entertainment
Sciences has no desire at the time to do anything else except get their first game shipped.  As months went by, it became
obvious to Entertainment Sciences that when they were ready to hit the market again, they would need to lead off with Turbo
Sub, and make 'Bouncer' the second offering.  By this time, ‘Bouncer’ was considered old news. Operators were a very
strange breed back then.  All efforts to improve 'Bouncer' would be put on hold.
Around this time, Rob Patton began to see the writing on the wall and left Entertainment Sciences and went to Sega.   Also
the company was hemorrhaging money, new investors were being sought.

Chapter 4 - You Need A Video Game For Your Movie!!! Sure!!!

After 'Bouncer' was shelved and Turbo Sub was in development, a movie called Ninja III: The Domination was getting ready
to start production.   A plot line in the movie involved the main character being possessed by the spirit of an ancient ninja
through a video game machine (only in the 80's).... The details are sketchy, but Entertainment Sciences had a machine lying
around, and they thought it would be great promotion for the company.... Too bad the movie released after the company was
practically dead.... Oh and also..... Nobody actually watched the movie……

Chapter 5 - Hostile Take Over (The Schemider Era)
An investor from New Orleans, Richard Schemider made a sizable investment in Entertainment Sciences.  Unlike many other
investors, who acted as silent partners, Richard Schemider was very active in the day to day operations.  Be basically flew in
often to let them know what idiots they were and how they were wasting his money.  An exodus starting brewing shortly
afterwards. Game development on Turbo Sub was completed in record time, as soon as it was completed.  Mark Mabry also
left, along with [THE SHADOW], and several others.  One addition to the employees around this time was Emory Williams. 
Emory spent a lot of time on road, taking Turbo Sub to shows, on test, and to distributors around the country.  During this
time, Turbo Sub also made its debut in Europe at a trade show.   Along the way, they looked for ways to make the design a
little cheaper.  The medium resolution monitors were replaced with standard Hantarex monitors that were modified to support
additional refresh rates.   This greatly impacted the graphics output of the RIP system, the graphics in Turbo Sub were not as
crisp and smooth as 'Bouncer'.  Also the sound board was re-designed to utilize only one channel of sound (vs. 2 [stereo]). 
In-house, there were several issues brewing as well.  Ron Clark (president), not wanting to repeat issues with quality (had a
Steve Jobs moment), and kept sending Turbo Sub back for tweaks and re-work.  This infuriated Richard Schemider who was
ready to ship the game.  Around this time,  Ulrich Neumann decided to leave Entertainment Sciences as well,  one of Richard
Schemider other things was he wanted to re-focus the company away from arcade and into the 'home computer' arena which
caused more tension within the company.  It finally came to a head, and Richard Schemider forced Ron Clark out as president
of the company he founded (but not before he got the only set of ROMS for Turbo Sub he considered to be complete - more
on that later as well).    Dick Keenan, the original industrial designer and actually the guy responsible to Turbo Sub concept
was also fired by Richard Schemider.  If things weren't had enough in-house it was about to get a whole lot worse.
Chapter 6 [ZULE CORPORATION] and Honeywell
After Richard Schemider effectively self-appointed himself president, he was ready to recoup some money by putting Turbo
Sub into production.  As usual [ZULE CORPORATION] was not meeting its end of the bargain and what was being produced
was crap.   In order to save additional money, a decision was made to utilize the countless ‘dead’ Star Wars cabinets on the
market.
Instead of having to leverage the OEM for Star Wars controls they were using, they could Star Wars parts and developed a
new set of art for those cabinets.  The available board sets were put into these cabinets and released as Turbo Sub.  (The
original cabinets were Orange UnitedArtist cabinets).   Bob Rauch was sent to [ZULE CORPORATION] to pressure them to get
the RIP manufacturing back on track, while there he discovered something very disturbing.  [GOZER] has been secretly
working a deal to license the RIP system to Honeywell for use in their pilot drone program. It's unclear, but they may have
been purposely sabotaging Entertainment Sciences to fail in order to maybe pick up the RIP technology in a fire sale so they
could complete their deal with Honeywell. 
Chapter 7 - The Lawsuit
Upon discovery of this Entertainment Sciences immediately sued '[ZULE CORPORATION]' for breach of contract, the case was
pretty much open and shut.  Entertainment Sciences was awarded damages, which '[ZULE CORPORATION]' could not afford
to pay.  That Friday, the lawyers, officers of Entertainment Sciences, and [GOZER] met.   An agreement was reached that
'[ZULE CORPORATION]' would more or less surrender all assets 'manufacturing' operations to Entertainment Sciences and
Bob Rauch would lead the operation the following Monday morning.
Chapter 8 - Somebody Just Ripped My Nuts From My Sack!!

Monday morning, Bob Rauch went to '[ZULE CORPORATION]' to try to salvage the operation and get the employees back on
track to fulfill the outstanding items for  Entertainment Sciences.   Bob showed up to a small crowd of employees outside the
building.  Inside, everything was gone!!!!!!!  [GOZER] disappeared over the weekend with EVERYTHING!!!

Chapter 9 - Entertainment Sciences Closes Shop
[GOZER] disappearing with the manufacturing operation overnight was the nail in the coffin.  So let's look at what actually
disappeared as a result of this...  I forgot to mention that shortly after they were awarded the contract, they moved a lot of
material to [ZULE CORPORATION].  The majority of the parts, a spare Bouncer machine, PCB films, engineering notes,
populated PCB's, etc.   When [ZULE CORPORATION] disappeared, it left Entertainment Sciences with a minimal staff and a
handful of completed Turbo Sub machines, and boxes of blank PCB's.  While it is possible for them to restart, the cost and
market immediately terminated those plans.  Within days, Entertainment Sciences shut their doors for good.

Chapter 10 - ‘They say Louisiana is the place ya ought to be, so they loaded up the
truck to Swamp Country (Baton Rouge that is)
While Bob Rauch left with nothing but memories (And T-Shirts!!), Richard Schemider decided he was going to take what was
left over and try to re-coup some of his costs by building out some additional Turbo Sub machines.  The operation was moved
to a warehouse in Baton Rouge, LA, his brother owned a wood working company so it seemed like a good fit.  In the end......
nothing happened.   The stuff from the company (papers, etc... mystery what it was) sat in an office on one side of town, in
the warehouse sat the remaining parts.   Not too be touched by hands for many years to come.

Chapter 11 - Hey Kirby!!  Come Help Me!!! This Company is Throwing Away Star Wars
Cabinets
At this point close to 15 years had gone by.  Richard Schemider moved on to start a computer software/engineering company
called Schmart Engineering in Beaumont, TX. As the story goes, his brother wanted to reclaim space in the warehouse. 
Richard Schemider had no desire to keep anything, so they proceeded to start smashing up cabinets and placing them in the
dumpster.  Todd Bordelon, a collector in Louisiana got a call from a friend who worked near the warehouse.  Todd hurried
over.  After talking with the owner they were welcome to whatever they wanted, what they didn't want would be trashed.  
Todd called his friend Kirby Gowland and they proceeded to save what they could.   Now mind you.... they had never heard of
Turbo Sub, and looked at this operation as a salvage effort to save Star Wars parts.  Todd saved many cabinets and monitors,
and scooped up misc. parts (blanks, track-ball controllers, keypad interfaces, cages, power supplies, EEPROMS, schematics,
artwork, and a few control panels).  There were models (for vehicles from Turbo Sub) that he left behind.  The owner told him
he had other stuff on the other side of town, but Todd never followed up on it (what it was can only be speculation now).  I
still have nightmares about that.... what if.... there were roms or disks in that office (sigh!!!)

Chapter 12 - There were others before you…. Let the rumors begin…..
The owner of the warehouse mentioned that others had been through in the past and left with various items.  It is confirmed
someone did get a 'complete' working Turbo Sub from there, I have the name in my notes... Another complete ‘Turbo Sub’
was also given to the niece of Richard Schemider (also in the Baton Rouge area).  
There is a lot of lore around the rest, nothing confirmed just rumors.......  I've heard there was a complete ‘Bouncer’; I’ve
heard it wasn't a machine but a PCB with 'Bouncer' eeproms.   I've heard it was only parts for 'Bouncer'........   The parts for
‘Bouncer’ are obviously confirmed as many were recovered by Todd Bordelon and I am in possession of several items myself.  

WANTED
THE STORY CONTINUES IN PART 2 - MY SEARCH FOR BOUNCER