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Watch people play 'Desert Bus' for days in the name of charity
Penn & Teller's Desert Bus mini game is legendary for its tongue-in-cheek monotony (you drive 8 hours to score a single point), but it's also a force for good: the Desert Bus for Hope campaign has raised $2.4 million for the Child's Play hospital charity over the years. Well, the volunteer group is at it again with the just-launched Desert Bus 9... and this may be one of its most ambitious fundraising efforts yet. The team is planning to stream live gameplay from the notorious Sega Genesis title for as long as donations allow, which could be quite a while when last year's effort lasted for 158 hours -- that's nearly a full week. If you like the idea of an epic video game endurance test helping a noble cause, tune in below and consider sending some cash to Desert Bus for Hope at the source link. [Image credit: Andrew Ferguson]
Desert Bus classic gets an iOS port, for charity's sake; AaAaAA!!! coming too
Penn and Teller's Smoke and Mirrors is one of the weirdest cult titles in all of video gaming -- it's an old game for Sega CD that was more of a prank than anything else. While it did teach you to do a few tricks, the most famous minigame in the entire package is called Desert Bus, a weird little game that's designed to more or less accurately replicate a bus trip between Tucson and Las Vegas. In other words, you need to drive a bus along a highway at 45 mph for about eight hours, at which time you get a point, and can opt to drive back for another one. It's silly and kind of mean and very strange -- all the things you expect from Penn and Teller. Every year around this time, a group of folks actually plays this game, streaming it live on the Internet for charity, and this year they're going one step further: the title's actually been released as a port for iOS, and all profits from the game itself will go straight back to Child's Play, a group that helps put video games in hospitals for sick and recovering children to play. I don't actually recommend buying the title for anything but charity: the bus lists to one side as you play, so you literally have to "drive" for eight hours if you want to beat the game. But it's only a buck for a universal version, and since all of the proceeds go to a good cause, I recommend it anyway. In other, more traditional port news, the really excellent but strangely titled AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity is also getting an iOS port -- and yes, that is its name. The game has you falling through space, trying to hit various objects and miss others, and it was a whole lot of fun when it came out on the PC a couple of years ago. There will be new features and content, but the developer hasn't announced a release date yet, so stay tuned. AaAaAA!!!, as it's called in shorthand, has a weird title but is a lot of fun, so we'll keep an eye out for it on iOS.
Penn & Teller SegaCD game unearthed
Last September Frank Cifaldi, the founder of Lost Levels, posted a review of magic/comedy duo Penn and Teller's never-released SegaCD game, Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors. Now Waxy is hosting a torrent of the game, so you can download it, burn it, and just load it up in the old SegaCD... what's that? You don't have a SegaCD? Well, for those couple of you without one on hand, there's instructions for getting it to run with an emulator also. The game's most notable element is undoubtedly the "Desert Bus" minigame. From Frank's review: "you drive a bus in the desert. Your goal is to go from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas. Your bus never goes more than 45 miles per hour, so the trip takes approximately eight hours (in real time) to make. There is no scenery or even other cars on the road, just plain desert, for 8 hours. Oh, and your bus veers to the right just slightly, so it's impossible to just tape down a button and go do something else. Rumor has it that if you make it to Vegas, you score one point."Waxy is also hosting an MP3 of Penn talking about the game on his radio show! He confirms the Desert Bus minigame's scoring, and says they had plans to reward high scorers with outrageous prizes. Frank transcribed some of Penn's comments over at GameSetWatch, here's what he had to say about Desert Bus: "...you couldn't take your hands off the controller, and if you did... it didn't have a spectacular crash, it just slowly went into the sand, and then overheated and stopped, and then the game was you being towed backwards all the way back to Tucson." Sounds like... uh, fun? Anyone gonna try and score a point?[Via Boing Boing]
