Every now and again we get wind of a gaming marathon for charity. You know the kind I’m talking about: a bunch of friends get together and play Halo for 24 hours straight or something like that. It’s always for a good cause, but come on: it’s Halo. How much are these people really suffering by playing a Triple-A title? Enter: Desert Bus.
What is Desert Bus you might be asking yourself right about now?It’s part of an unreleased Sega CD game from 1995 called Penn & Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors, starring the comedic magicians we all know and love. The game is a series of mini-games designed to fool your friends, such as entering in a code to suddenly make an impossible game really easy when it is your turn to play.
Back to Desert Bus, probably the most infamous aspect of this game. The objective is to drive from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Neveda, in one straight shot, which takes 8 hours. And you can’t save. Or Pause the game. It’s one, long drive with nothing to do. Truly, a test of stamina.
This one group has been doing this for a few years and last year they managed to raise over $140,000 for Child’s Play, in order to help sick children. The latest edition just ended last week and they topped their record by raising over $200,000 this time, which is pretty impressive. I’ve embedded a video of Desert Bus after the jump to give you a sense of how much dedication playing this game for even 10 minutes would take, let alone for a full day.
[youtube width=”500″ height=”310″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBr7EhL6Jpg&feature=related[/youtube]
Pretty rough, huh? What other games do you think would make for proper torture to play in order to get people to donate money for a good cause? Begin!
Source: Desert Bus
I have NEVER seen a game like that.
One I can think of is that old Formula One car game on all old PCs. It says “prepare to qualify” in the beginning.
Lord, the bus game is NUTS
Whoa not even any traffic to drive around that game is crazy.
Hmm maybe playing through that old E.T. game on the Atari would be considered torture or more recently Superman 64, oh the endless flying
Omg, I have to get this game now so I can troll some fools.
Anyway, if I had to pick a torturous game so I could troll sponsor money out of myself to give to sick children, I’d go with playing MW2 multiplayer. TROLOLO SEA WUT I DID THAR!?!?!?
Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t think I could play an exhaustingly annoying game for several hours on end and not go insane. Plus, I don’t really have an annoying game to choose to play, so…Epic props to these guys for their effort.
Hahaha Penn and Teller WOULD do something like this. That’s just awesome. I’d love to see Portrait Sitter go 3D.
I would say making someone play Jurassic Park on SNES without any instruction manuals or guidance… Just walk around and try to figure out wtf to do. And then go into buildings to have a 4 frames-per-second first person shooter. What a terrible adventure (I just bought it again about 4 months ago, lol)