Penn and Teller's Long Lost Game

Waxy.org has some good news for Penn and Teller Fans. They have Smoke and Mirrors, a long lost Penn and Teller game. The game is available for download, and features (among other things) a bus drive across the Nevada desert as one of the title's mini-games. From the article: "The most infamous part was 'Desert Bus,' a 'VeriSimulator' in which you drive a bus across the straight Nevada desert for eight hours in real-time. Then you drive it home. Also, I'd read the bus veers to the right, so you can't just leave the joypad propped up. The rumor was that if you won the game, you got one point. I'd assumed for years that the entire thing was a hoax, but last September, Frank Cifaldi (founder of Lost Levels) received a backup CD-ROM made by a fellow videogame writer of a review copy he'd received a decade earlier. He posted extensive screenshots and a review to the Something Awful Forums. He eventually added a torrent, but it's long since dead."

Comments

Nothing to see here, move along.

[mb10ofBATX]

At least, that's what came up the first time I clicked on the link.

Re:Nothing to see here, move along.

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears to be working perfectly now.

Desert Bus Requirements

[6031769]

1. The Kraftwerk back catalogue
2. A hell of a lot of drugs
3. er, ...
4. That's it.

Re:Desert Bus Requirements

[Dr. GeneMachine]

Well, I once flew a 747 from LA to London in Microsoft Flight Simulator without using the autopilot or time compression.... And, yes, I used your recipe for it. Was a great time, however I screwed up the landing because I was too wasted at that point of time.

Re:Desert Bus Requirements

[Loiosh-de-Taltos]

I have done the same with a PMDG-747-400 from Tokyo to KLAX. Real time. It is... an interesting experience.

Re:Desert Bus Requirements

[Dr. GeneMachine]

you have no idea how reassuring it is to see that i am not the only one....

Re:Desert Bus Requirements

[Anonymous Coward]

1. One Gold Farmer in a Chinese internet cafe.

uh huh

[psycho chic]

If nothing else, it sounds like a great game for people who enjoy incredibly repetitive things. Perhaps obsessive compulsives are a great game market?

Re:uh huh

[christopherfinke]

If nothing else, it sounds like a great game for people who enjoy incredibly repetitive things.

Yeah, I would probably like it. I like repetitive things.

Yeah, I would probably like it. I like repetitive things.

Yeah, I would probably like it. I like repetitive things.

Yeah, I would probably like it. I like repetitive things.

Yeah, I would probably like it. I like repetitive things.

Yeah, I would probably like it. I like repetitive things.

Re:uh huh

[Headcase88]

That was only a minigame within the game, and probably (hopefully) not the funnest (though i'm having trouble downloading the tracker so I wouldn't know).

For more mind-numbing fun, try these games by Videlectrix (of H*R fame)

Re:uh huh

[Anonymous Coward]

All /. and no life makes Jack a dull boy.

All /. and no life makes Jack a dull boy.

All /. and no life makes Jack a dull boy.

All /. and no life makes Jack a dull boy.

[Inserted to avoid lameness filter]

Re:uh huh

[Ford Prefect]

What? Nobody modded this redundant? Fools! ;-)

Re:uh huh

[Alsee]

Welcome to Slashdot, where 50% of the readership has Asperger's.

-

Something Awful

[minus_273]

Something Awful would be a good way to describe a game that has2 minute unskippable silent movie sequences of the characters eating pizza every time you pause.

Re: Something Awful

[drinkypoo]

I would prefer to just call it "bullshit".

Re: Something Awful

[Anonymous Coward]

love that show.

Sega CD Only

[jshackles]

It runs on a Sega CD, no wonder it never took off.

Seriously though, I think it's a great social satire on video gaming. And remember folks, this was nearly 10 years ago! Huge P&T fan here, I just have to have this.

Re:Sega CD Only

[BobPaul]

It runs on a Sega CD, no wonder it never took off.

It was never sold, no wonder it never took off.

Re:Sega CD Only

[b1t r0t]

It runs on a Sega CD, no wonder it never took off.

I downloaded this from usenet a few weeks ago, not realizing it was never released. Hadn't even un-RARed it yet. And not only does it run on Sega CD, it takes two disks!

If I ever get a Sega CD hooked up and running (hey, there's only room to set up so many systems, so I play my Genesis games on a Nomad), I plan to burn this and see what it's all about. But the important question is: is it more fun than snakes on a plane?

00000000 00 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff 00 00 02 00 01 |................|
00000010 53 45 47 41 44 49 53 43 53 59 53 54 45 4d 20 20 |SEGADISCSYSTEM__|
00000020 50 26 54 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 31 00 01 00 00 01 |P&T_______1.....|
00000030 53 45 47 41 4f 53 20 20 20 20 20 00 00 01 00 00 |SEGAOS_____.....|

00000060 30 34 2f 32 39 2f 39 35 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 |04/29/95________|
00000110 53 45 47 41 20 47 45 4e 45 53 49 53 20 20 20 20 |SEGA GENESIS____|
00000120 28 43 29 54 2d 38 36 20 31 39 39 35 2e 41 50 52 |(C)T-86 1995.APR|
00000130 50 65 6e 6e 20 26 20 54 65 6c 6c 65 72 27 73 20 |Penn & Teller's_|
00000140 53 6d 6f 6b 65 20 61 6e 64 20 4d 69 72 72 6f 72 |Smoke and Mirror|
00000150 73 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 |s_______________|

Re:Sega CD Only

[Anonymous Coward]

"But the important question is: is it more fun than snakes on a plane?"

Slashdot, where beaten-to-death catchphrases go to rot and decay.

Re:Sega CD Only

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously though, I think it's a great social satire on video gaming.

Anything by Oscar Wilde is a great social satire.
Gulliver's Travels is a great social satire.

This... this is just a sad attempt by a couple of two-bit magicians with egos far beyond their ability to get more publicity by being even bigger tossers than usual. Personally, I'm just surprised they didn't put in a little Cato Institute indoctrination while they were at it.

Re:Sega CD Only

[Zoshnell]

Anything by Oscar Wilde is a great social satire. Gulliver's Travels is a great social satire.

Anything you say? I guess you've never seen Oscar gone Wilde! It's on those late night commercial spots; and apparently is biting wit and social commentary by Oscar Wilde as he drink alot and takes off his and college girls' clothes around the country. Or perhaps you've not seen Gulliver's Travels: Too Hot for TV. It's basically weird videos from around the that are considered "EXTEEEEEEME". I have this one on DVD.

FreeFM

[gaveawaymyname]

He actually just talked about this game yesterday on his radio show on FreeFM.

You drove the bus for 8 hours; there were bus stops, but you didn't have to stop; when you got to the end, the guy asks you if you want to work a double shift and drive 8 hours all the way back. For every 8-hour run, you get a point. Over the course of 8 hours, a bug hits your windshield 5 times.

They even had a contest; anyone who makes it to something like 100 points (800 hours of watching desert road go by), they gave them a pretty extravagent trip to Las Vegas, on a bus filled with dancers and live music, free hotels, etc. I don't think anyone made it.

Re:FreeFM

[gaveawaymyname]

Oh, it mentioned the show in the article. But it's a real broadcast radio show as well, not just a podcast. It streams live as well, comes on at 1pm Central.

Re:FreeFM

[SeeMyNuts!]

I haven't seen much of Penn & Teller, but on TV a while ago they had a trick where one of them would "catch" a bullet fired out of a hand gun, complete with a hole in a sheet of plastic. I was very impressed by it, but, then again, I don't watch many magic shows, so who knows. A much better contest prize would be to be the stand-in for catching the bullet! Or, perhaps not.

Re:FreeFM

[edremy]

This is the "Bullet catch", one of the most famous tricks in stage magic. Several magicians have quite literally died performing it. As you might imagine, it *is* a trick- Mythbusters had a fun episode on this recently.

Re:FreeFM

[EnderGT]

This is one of their most famous tricks - Penn fires, Teller "catches" the bullet with his teeth. I've seen them do this twice, once at the Warner Theater in D.C., and once at the Ferst Center at Georgia Tech. Both times they had audience members come up and draw on the shell and slug before firing and then verify their drawings afterwards, and they also had a pane of glass that was broken by the bullet.

They claim that they are the only act to do this trick.

My guess is Teller has a bullet in his mouth that he "catches" at the right time, and Penn has a blank in the gun. The "bullet" that gets drawn on is rigged to come apart easily, and Penn pulls some sleight-of-hand after the shot to present the audience members with the pieces for validation.

Good trick, though... very impressive.

Re:FreeFM

[jnaujok]

They do this trick now in their Vegas show, but they've upped the ante. They drop a plastic "line" across the stage, and from that moment, no one goes from one side of the line to the other. Then they bring out *two* guns, with *two* bullets, have a different audience member mark each one (never crossing sides) and then they go to opposite sides of the stage, pull back *all* the curtains so you can see the prop cages backstage (and so that clearly no one is running things behind the curtains) and then exchange fire through a sheet of glass on each side (both shatter) and each one catches the other one's bullet in their mouth. Then they show the bullet to the other side's signer (again, without anyone crossing the center line) and "tadah" they're the right bullet.

Great trick. I've seen it twice live in Vegas, and although I thought I caught part of the "trick" the first time, they dropped the back curtain for the second show and ruined the idea I had for the whole "trick".

Definitely worth seeing, as it's the finale of a great show.

Re:FreeFM

[EnderGT]

ok, ok, i got it...

special pen, special bullets that track the pen's motion, send a radio signal to a special bullet that they hold in their mouth which reproduces the design... ok yeah that was stupid...

dammit that's a good trick.

Re:FreeFM

[Golias]

Solution:

Use paid shills for "audience members." They carefully write what will be found on the bullets shown at the end.

Done.

Re:FreeFM

[AlterTick]

Paid shills are too obvious and inevitably the word gets out. Here's a more likely explanation: http://www.foreworks.com/bullet2.html

Re:FreeFM

[Golias]

Penn and Teller are famous for revealing how they do most of their tricks, and the freely admitted to using shills for some of them.

The solution to most magic tricks are "too obvious" once you know them.

Re:FreeFM

[Golias]

I just followed your link. Your version requires the secrecy of backstage staff, which is just has hard to maintain as the secrecy of on-stage staff (shills), and my way is easier to pull off.

Re:FreeFM

[sesshomaru]

The bullet catch is actually a classic trick, and very dangerous.

Re:FreeFM

[AlterTick]

Penn and Teller are famous for revealing how they do most of their tricks, and the freely admitted to using shills for some of them.

Thing is, there are enough people who've been selected for the "bullet catch" trick that have said "I'm no shill", or "I know the guy they picked, and he says he's no shill" that it's unlikely all these people have been paid off and not one of them has admitted complicity. So either P&T have some extremely convincing and ironclad method of keeping people quiet...or they've figured out a way to do the trick without shills.

I guess

[Threni]

the skinny one can eat the fat one if they run out of food. Assuming he can stop doing his `quiet one out of the Marx Brothers` routine, that is...

Re:I guess

[sharkytm]

Being quiet doesn't preclude him from devouring another human being.

But why?

[staticdragon]

If you listen to the podcast linked on the page they explain that the idea was kind of a reaction against the whole Janet Reno violent video game crusade. Hell of a solution, no?

Re:But why?

[Anonymous Coward]

For the record, his podcast is actually his radio show from yesterday. I guess that's why this came up now.

Of course they are

[boldtbanan]

How else can you explain the massive success of the current crop of big-studio MMORPGs.

Re:Of course they are

[voice_of_all_reason]

Because there's an element of growth, even if only slight over the course of an entire login. +1 strength and 2 defense to my sollerets, yay! Kinda like Bonzai trees.

The Anti-Game

[dreemernj]

Its interesting to see their brand of humor applied to a video game. Its almost like they were making an anti-game. 2 minute pointless videos when you pause, an 8 hour trip in a straight line across the desert, Debbie Harry behind every shop counter...

Can't wait to try it out.

Sounds a lot like Takeshi no Chousenjou

[Ex Machina]

Takeshi no Chousenjou -- Yes this is the same Takeshi from "Takeshi's Castle" (aka MXC on SpikeTV).

Re:Sounds a lot like Takeshi no Chousenjou

[Anonymous Coward]

20,000-hit bosses are a piece of cake compared to the

infinite number of bad guys that pour out of a particular level of the GOLDENEYE shooter if you trip the alarm =P

Instant-Failure Stealth Levels. Ack. This brings back horrible memories of a Goldeneye level where if you tripped an alarm, an infinite number of bad guys poured forth. We knew a man who failed that level 37 times, then got the Infinite Health cheat for it and came back. He intentionally tripped the alarm, the guards rushed out. Laughing maniacally, he proceeded to shoot those fuckers for four hours, killing 1,183 of them - 682 with groin shots - before his thumbs cramped up. Your game should not create this kind of bitterness.

Source: item 12 at

http:/// www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/manifesto.html

(deliberately 'broken' to avoid slashdotting)

I have to admit, the 'Desert Bus' game mentioned in the story is a sublime bit of videogame sadomasachism -- eight hours of 'work' for 1 point!?!?

3 if you are Jack Bauer... >:)

Torrent Here

[nuxx]

It appears that there is an active torrent, and it's available here: Penn_and_Teller's_Smoke_and_Mirrors.torrent

Re:Torrent Here

[Anonymous Coward]

if this was released for sega cd, how am I supposed to burn an 800MB image to play it?

Re:Torrent Here

[Anonymous Coward]

The torrent is 800MB because there are two discs.

Contest?

[Thedalek]

"Had" a contest? You mean "planned" a contest. No one outside of a few game reviewers ever actually had access to the game. It was never released. Of course no one made it. No one was given the opportunity.

I guarantee you, if all it took was 800 hours of mindnumbing tedium to get a big prize, someone would have done it. Assuming their SegaCD didn't die from running for 800 hours straight, and you didn't have any power issues. That's more than a month to go without a single issue.

Re:Contest?

[trogdor8667]

33 days straight of playing a game to get an all expense paid Vegas vacation. While its a little over the top, I think splitting the time with a friend would be ok.

Re:Contest?

[gaveawaymyname]

"Had" a contest? You mean "planned" a contest.

Sure. Or "had in the works." Or "had an idea for."

I don't think anyone made it.

Meaning: I didn't catch the end of the story because I was busy doing something else, but it didn't sound like the contest was ever won.

Why is this such a serious issue for you?

Re:Contest?

[Thedalek]

Yep, got so worked up that I went and posted a message to Slashdot. Absolutely brimming over with rage here, I am.

I would have thought that correcting factual issues was at least marginally more on-topic than say, correcting someone's grammar or spelling, and that happens here every day.

Not always

[Anonymous Coward]

The link you point to says that Carl Skenes did the trick with a real .22 rifle. He used a box of some sort in his mouth to catch the bullet though, which is different from those who pretend to catch the bullet with their teeth.

dom

The game I would like to find...

[lhouk281]

...is the old DOS version of Steve Jackson's OGRE. I bet it would run great under DOSEMU in Linux.

Re:The game I would like to find...

[kingsmedley]

Since I can't e-mail you, I'll post a reply here.

I remember O.G.R.E., that was a great game. Had it for the Atari ST myself. I did a little searching after reading your post, and I've found the following links:

Commodore 64 version (is there a C64 emu for Linux?):
http://www.download-full-games.com/c64/games/ogre. html

A "lite" version of the original board game:
http://www.sjgames.com/ogre/resources/
http://www.sjgames.com/ogre/resources/ogrelite.pdf

A possible connection to the Atari ST version - this page has a list of disk images, each file appears to contain several games. I don't know what to do with this file to extract the games within, but the site mentions using the STEEM emulator, so maybe that will do it for you? Anyways, OGRE is almost halfway down the page, in file A_202:
http://steem.atari.st/automation.htm

Or direct to the file:
ftp://ftp.cs.tu-berlin.de/pub/atari/games/Automati on/A_202.ST

For possible help using the file, here's a blog entry from a few months ago - this guy has been running the game from this file under a different emu (SainT), so maybe you can pick his brain for assistance:
http://scottobear.livejournal.com/tag/atari

I'm sorry I couldn't actually find the DOS version, but I know from experience the ST version is great, and the C64 will probably be easy for you to run. Good luck!

Re:The game I would like to find...

[Ford Prefect]

A possible connection to the Atari ST version - this page has a list of disk images, each file appears to contain several games. I don't know what to do with this file to extract the games within, but the site mentions using the STEEM emulator, so maybe that will do it for you?

Ah, that would be a pirate 'CD' - basically a number of games with copy protection removed ('cracked') and compressed ('packed') on to one floppy disk. An '.ST' file is just a floppy disk image - in this case, boot an emulator with it, and it'll load some menu program (complete with picture, scrolling messages from the pirates and music) from which you can choose the game you want to play.

Sometimes it's possible to strip away all the pirate nonsense and have just the game, but the sad thing is that thanks to the copy-protection on the originals, the pirated version of games are often the only ones to survive...

Checklist: An emulator (STeem is pretty good), a TOS ROM image (1.04 is usually fine - my own, real ST has both TOS 1.02 and 2.06 ROMs on it) and the disk image. That's it!

You must be new to /.

[xmedar]

10 PRINT "Yeah, I would probably like it. I like repetitive things."

20 GOTO 10

Now that's how we do it here...

Re:You must be new to /.

[Billy the Mountain]

10 PRINT "Yeah, I would probably like it. I like repetitive things."

20 GOTO 10

Hey Dude! 1978 called. They want their program back.

Re:You must be new to /.

[ultranova]

Hey Dude! 1978 called. They want their program back.

Yeah. Nowadays we do it like this:

class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) {
while(true)
System.out.println("Yeah, I would probably like it. I like repetitive things.");
}
}

This object-oriented version is easier to maintain and to extend, and will be compiled to native binary code by the JIT compiler for blazing execution speed.

Re:You must be new to /.

[xmedar]

Like Duh Dude! The joke is about teen /.ers l33t BASIC coding sk1llz not mine!

For the record I do it like this-

#include

void main(void) { for(;;} printf("Yeah, I would probably like it. I like repetitive things.\n");}

Compressed Torrent Here (435mb)

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a torrent of the disc images compressed with winrar..
http://www.pennfans.net/files/torrents/penn.and.te llers.smoke.and.mirrors.segacd.unreleased.torrent

Pedant alert

[Iffy Bonzoolie]

I just have to say that static methods inside a class is "Procedural Java" and not object-oriented in any way. Applying OO analysis to this particular problem is not the best use of anyone's time, mind you...

-If

Re:Pedant alert

[ultranova]

I just have to say that static methods inside a class is "Procedural Java" and not object-oriented in any way.

"System.out" is an object.

Applying OO analysis to this particular problem is not the best use of anyone's time, mind you...

On the contrary, giving this problem to a mind suspectible for using OO to solve it will keep said mind occupied for a while, preventing many WTFs.

Cyberboard gamebox

[sbszine]

If you want to play old boardgames / wargames PBEM style, check out Cyberboard. It has an OGRE / GEV module, as well as modules for many other games (ASL, 18xx, Columbia block games etc.).

Not entirely obligatory reference

[ralphclark]

I recognize those two! It's Rebo and Zooty!

Re:Not entirely obligatory reference

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice Babylon 5 reference.

Just look at Jeffrey Dahmer!

[cluke]

It's the quiet ones you have to watch...

I'd like to see...

[Anonymous Coward]

a Desert Bus speed run!