Introduction

Desert Bus is a "minigame" from an unreleased Sega CD title called Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors. It's described as a "Verisimulator", a new sort of game that's trying to get a little more real. Does it succeed? Well...it's time to see for yourself.

In Desert Bus, you play a bus driver heading from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada. You do this in real-time, and it takes eight hours. There is no traffic on the road to Vegas, there's nothing on the side of the road, you never need to stop for passengers, and the only event of significance that occurs on the way is that a bug will hit your windshield once around six hours in.

Oh, and also, the bus isn't aligned properly, so it's constantly drifting off to the right. If you don't pay attention during the entire eight-hour ordeal, you'll go off the road. If you go off the road for too long, the bus stalls, and you are towed back to Tucson (also in real-time).

Should you make this grueling journey, you earn one point and the chance to do it again going back to Tucson. When Smoke and Mirrors was set to be released, a contest was going to be run in which the player or group with the highest score would get a chance to hang with Penn & Teller. Thank god that never happened, it probably would have caused the suicide rate to skyrocket.

Clearly, this is the best game ever created. It's time to experience the Bus vicariously. Have a seat, buckle up, relax.

It's going to be awhile.

Videos

Diablo II Videos

Sindai Rides the Desert Bus	Backup
Funmanguy Rides the Desert Bus	Backup
Some Cool Guy Rides the Desert Bus	Backup
Enigma74 Rides the Desert Bus	Backup

Desert Bus 1

Intro: 1h30min (With Cheeseball IV, Frankomatic, Gravitypenguin, Hover, Kotae, Mr. Lobe, Madamluna, noobhedron, and Queenie Z)	Backup
Part Two: 1h30min to 2h30min (With Bathroomrage, Cheeseball IV, Cherrydoom, Hover, Kotae, and noobhedron)	Backup
Part Three: 2h30min to 5h30min (with Anger Panda, Cheeseball IV, Cherrydoom, dshban, Keyboard Fox, Kotae, Kunster, noobhedron, Proton Jon, and Prime92)	Backup
The bus crashes! (for the first time)	Backup

Desert Bus 2 (with Angeline, Anger Panda, Cherrydoom, Kotae, Kulex, Hover, Maxwell Adams, Melaneus (very briefly), noobhedron, Oyster, Proton Jon, Psychedelic Eyeball, raocow, Slowbeef, Syvalion, and Sugojin)

Intro to 30min	Backup
30min to 1h30min	Backup
1h30min to 3h30min	Backup
3h30min to 4h30min	Backup

Desert Bus 3 (a very special episode featuring Angeline, Anger Panda, Kotae, Hover, noobhedron, Oyster, Psychedelic Eyeball, raocow, red_boot, Syvalion, and Sugojin)

Intro to 6min	Backup
6min to 24min	Backup
24min to 31min	Backup
31min to 2h26min	Backup
2h26min to 3h20min	Backup

Desert Bus 4 (with Angeline, b00n, Broken Loose, gwar3k1, noobhedron, Ottoman, Oyster, raocow, Syvalion, and very special guest Peter Chimaera!)

4h30min to 5h30min	Backup
5h30min to 7h	Backup