Desert Bus for Hope Enters Year Ten

If you're not familiar with Desert Bus, it's a minigame from an old Mega CD game called Penn and Teller: Smoke and Mirrors. This game was finished but never actually released, however a review copy was leaked and largely due to the internet, it's now been played by millions on emulators and old devices. Not bad for a game that never got released.

The Desert Bus minigame itself sees you driving a bus from Tucson to Nevada in real time. The road is perfectly straight, there is no traffic and the bus is speed limited to 45mph, meaning that to complete the journey takes eight hours in real time. The game cannot be paused and the van has a dodgy wheel which makes it veer slightly to the left at all times, meaning that you can't just Sellotape down an accelerate button and walk away either. When you complete the eight hour journey, you get a point, and you can then take the return journey to earn another. This can continue until you reach the cap of 99 points, a feat that would take 33 days to achieve!

Every year, the fine people of loadingreadyrun play Desert Bus for charity. The event, which is livestreamed, is a test of their endurance and helps to raise money for Child's Play, an organisation dedicated to providing toys and games to children's hospitals worldwide. The first event, held in 2007, raised $22,805, and that figure has increased year on year, with the 2015 event raising $680,119.00.

The organisers are hoping to break their previous total raised by playing this monotonous game. Showing their wills of steel and determination to raise as much money as possible, they are attempting to play the game for an even longer period of time than before, bearing in mind that last time, they played for 159 hours non-stop!

The event is going on now and you can watch the stream over at their official website, desertbus.org. As well as seeing the game being played, there are a smattering of special guests joining them, including Mikey Neumann, Jerry Holkins and Jimmy Wong. They're also giving away various pieces of loot to donors, including posters, t-shirts and some rare uncut Magic: The Gathering card sheets. You can also donate to this great cause on the same site if you're feeling generous, and we know that you are.

The more money they see donated, the longer the three drivers will put themselves through this tedium for. Hour one starts at $1 and the cost increases incrementally at a rate of 7%, meaning that hour 2 is $1.07, hour 3 is $1.17 and so on. At the time of writing, the drivers have been bussing for 68 hours and they've raised over $220,000; enough to continue for another 74. It's going to be a long week for these dedicated streamers.