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
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 |