Penn & Teller created "Desert Bus" for their unreleased 1995 Sega CD game "Smoke and Mirrors" as a satirical response to critics of violent video games. The game requires you to drive a bus from Tucson to Las Vegas in real time—8 hours of nothing but straight desert highway—earning just 1 point upon completion.
Desert Bus: The Intentionally Worst Video Game Ever Made
In the mid-1990s, video game violence was a hot-button issue. Critics argued that games were corrupting youth, desensitizing them to violence, and generally ruining civilization. Penn & Teller had a different take: they thought the criticism was overblown nonsense.
Their response? Create the most boring, non-violent video game imaginable.
Welcome to Desert Bus
The concept is brutally simple. You drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada. The trip takes eight hours in real time. There are no passengers to pick up. No enemies to fight. No power-ups to collect. Just you, the road, and the endless Mojave Desert.
And you can't just tape down the accelerator and walk away. The bus pulls slightly to the right, requiring constant minor steering corrections. Fall asleep at the wheel and you'll drift off the road. The bus breaks down. A tow truck hauls you back to Tucson—also in real time.
The Reward for Your Suffering
Complete the eight-hour journey and you earn exactly one point. Want another point? Drive back to Tucson. That's another eight hours. The maximum possible score is 99 points, requiring 792 hours of continuous play—roughly 33 days.
There's no save function.
A Game That Was Never Released
Desert Bus was designed for "Smoke and Mirrors," a Sega CD compilation of Penn & Teller mini-games. The project was cancelled when the game's publisher went bankrupt in 1995. For years, the game existed only as a legend among gaming enthusiasts.
Then in 2007, comedy group LoadingReadyRun discovered a prototype copy and had an idea: what if people actually played this nightmare for charity?
Desert Bus for Hope
What started as a joke became something remarkable. Every November, LoadingReadyRun hosts "Desert Bus for Hope," a charity marathon where participants play Desert Bus continuously while viewers donate money. The longer they play, the more money goes to Child's Play, a charity providing games and toys to children's hospitals.
The numbers are staggering:
- The 2023 marathon raised over $1.1 million
- Lifetime donations have exceeded $8 million
- Some marathons have lasted over 160 hours
Penn Jillette has called it "the best thing to ever come out of our video game."
The Ultimate Anti-Game
Desert Bus proved Penn & Teller's point in the most absurd way possible. Their critics wanted games without violence or excitement. Fine—here's eight hours of staring at sand. The game that was designed to be unplayable became beloved precisely because it was so perfectly, intentionally terrible.
It's a reminder that sometimes the best response to absurd criticism isn't argument—it's an even more absurd demonstration of what critics claim to want.