Penn & Teller's Smoke And Mirrors (Sega CD, 1995)

A video game based on an obscure comedy/illusionist duo? Sure, why not? It's unclear what Absolute Entertainment's strategy was for a Penn & Teller video game, and we'll probably never know since the company went out of business before it could release Smoke and Mirrors. It's too bad, because Absolute showed some guts creating such an outrageous, unique and puzzling title.

Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors presents a twisted adventure game filled with mini-game puzzles, pranks and inside jokes. The central part of the game focused on Penn & Teller's quest to expose two of their competitors, magicians named Stinkbomb and Rot (the two characters were a thinly-disguised parody of the Las Vegas entertainers Siegfried and Roy). Penn & Teller must use a variety of gags and tricks to take down Stinkbomb and Rot and prove that their rivals' magic isn't real. Along the way, Penn & Teller run into rock stars Debbie Harry and Loud Reed. You couldn't make this stuff up.

There's more. Some of the mini-games featured include "Mofo the Psychic Gorilla" about a supposedly clairvoyant ape and "Buzz Bombers," which is an arcade-like shooter with a secret gag. But perhaps the most famous part of Smoke and Mirrors is the bizarre "Desert Bus" mini-game. The game is simple: you have to drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas. There are no obstacles, no passengers, no scenery and no other cars on the road. Your only adversary is intense and relentless boredom, since the game takes place in real time and the trip is 400 miles long and takes eight hours to complete. Since the steering on the bus is a little dodgy, the bus veers to the right, and you can't tape the controller button down and get eight hours of sleep and wake up to find the game completed. If a player completes the long, uneventful journey, he or she gets a single point and can drive the bus back to Tucson for another point, and then drive it back to Vegas for another, and so on and so forth.

Desert Bus

According to a Podcast from Penn Jillette earlier this year, the objective of "Desert Bus" was to create a game where nothing happened and dedicate it to former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, who had been criticizing violent video games back in the mid-1990s. Jillette also said that he, Teller, and Absolute plan on offering a lavish prize to the person with the highest score or the first person to reach 100 points (which would mean 800 hours of game play). The winning prize, he said, would be a trip from Tucson to Las Vegas on a real desert bus filled with showgirls, a live band and all kinds of partying. Again, you can't make this stuff up.

Not too long ago a bootleg version of Smoke and Mirrors surfaced (the Sega CD version had been completed before Absolute closed down) and soon gamers were downloading the game and testing their will against "Desert Bus." The game can be found at a number of sites, though there's no word on whether or not the grand prize is still available.

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