Donate Your Money to Torture Gamers for a Good Cause

This has to be one of the most original fundraising ideas I’ve ever seen. Do you remember the ill-conceived and unpublished classic, Penn and Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors? No? Perhaps you’ll remember the infamous Desert Bus – one of the three mini-games packed into the Penn and Teller game for the Sega CD.

From Wikipedia:

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. 

I played it last year on my Sega CD (after downloading it here) and the description that Wikipedia gave it is absolutely accurate. It is truly the worst, funniest, game that I’ve ever played in my life. After the initial laughs wear off, the tedium sets in and the next 7.8 hours of your life will be among the worst.So, LoadingReadyRun.com is hosting their first annual Desert Bus For Hope marathon for the children’s charity Child’s Play. The Canadian comedy group is self-inflicting the worst kind of torture I’ve ever seen: sponsors pay them to play Desert Bus, hour by torturous hour, until the clock (or the money) runs out. If you’ve got $5 to spare, head on over to the Desert Bus web site and prolong their suffering.