One thing that pops-up with arcade gaming are cases of prototypes that never “see the light of day” on the wide market. This has happened various times over the years, even in recent times with games like Robo Restle, Block People, or K.O. Drive. Often these show up on some location tests and maybe some trade shows and then they disappear, never to be seen again. Given that arcade collectors tend to enjoy games from “The Golden Age” (1976-1986, depending upon who you ask), unreleased prototypes from that era have an air of mystery about them that creates a desire to find them. I find the subject to be an interesting one and have ran some articles here on Arcade Heroes in regards to unreleased Atari prototypes or unreleased Midway prototypes.
Perhaps the most difficult prototypes to track down are those created by small no-name companies, who might not have even managed to get their games out the door at the time. Such is the case of a game called Bouncer, created by a company called Entertainment Sciences back in 1983. This video by 720 Zone lays out some of the history about the game and the few times it was seen back in 1983. I think it would be pretty cool to have this one found as the game does look like fun. Here is a link to the website mentioned in the video, TurboSub.com.
I am pretty sure that the Atari Exec referred to in the video was Don Osbourne, who died not long after this interview on Atari and Star Wars was filmed.
Any of you intrepid arcaders out there know where one of these might happen to be? 😉
wow this really bugs me now! i want to check this out. reminds me a lot of tapper.
Lol, that is the crappy thing, isn’t it? I imagine doing a “remake” of it would be more plausible at this point than trying to track one down. Looks like it would still be a lot of fun