The Desert Bus For Hope Keeps On Rolling

Andy Chalk

One Flag, One Fleet, One Cat
Nov 12, 2002
45,698
1
0
The Desert Bus For Hope Keeps On Rolling


The Child's Play [http://desertbus.org/] charity, you can pony up a few bucks to help keep them on the road awhile longer.

Some background on Desert Bus, taken from Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Bus#Desert_Bus]:

"The objective of the game is to drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada in real time at a maximum speed of 45mph, a feat that would take the player 8 hours of continuous play to complete, as the game cannot be paused. The bus contains no passengers, and there is no scenery or other cars on the road. The bus veers to the right slightly; as a result, it is impossible to tape down a button to go do something else and have the game end properly. If the bus veers off the road it will stall and be towed back to Tucson, also in real time. If the player makes it to Las Vegas, they will score exactly one point. The player then gets the option to make the return trip to Tucson-for another point (a decision they must make in a few seconds or the game ends). Players may continue to make trips and score points as long as their endurance holds out. Some players who have completed the trip have also noted that, although the scenery never changes, a bug splats on the windscreen about five hours through the first trip, and on the return trip the light does fade, with differences at dusk, and later a pitch black road where the player is guided only with headlights."

In Desert Bus For Hope, four intrepid lads take turns driving the bus in four hour shifts while soliciting donations to support the Penny Arcade [http://www.penny-arcade.com] Child's Play charity for children's hospitals. The rules are simple: They drive the bus, if they happen to run the bus off the road the game will be reset and restarted, and drivers cannot leave their post at any time. Webcams monitor the drivers in action, and for the terminally masochistic, the on-screen Desert Bus action.

Keeping the four on the road are donations; each hour, the donations required to keep them driving increases geometrically, increasing by seven percent each hour; currently they've raised over $55,000, but after 122 hours on the virtual road, the trip appears to be approaching the end. The total needed to keep them on the road for another hour: $3309.

Donations are being taken by the desertbus.org [http://www.chipin.com/].


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Kross

World Breaker
Sep 27, 2004
854
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The people running this project are also the ones who submitted one of our Film Festival winners, Unskippable [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-escapist-film-festival/394-First-Place-Unskippable-01-Lost-Planet].
 

Lvl 64 Klutz

Crowsplosion!
Apr 8, 2008
2,338
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Was this game made for this purpose, or was it originally some bad joke? I'm confused.
 

Kross

World Breaker
Sep 27, 2004
854
0
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Lvl 64 Klutz said:
or was it originally some bad joke?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Bus#Desert_Bus

It was written as a joke mini game for a Penn and Teller themed Sega CD game.

Penn Jillette commented in his radio show that the overly realistic nature of the game was in response to Janet Reno and the controversy surrounding violent video games at the time.