The Infamous Desert Bus
So for whatever reason, a mini-game in a never-released Sega CD game has gained some measure of popularity recently.
Desert Bus is part of Penn & Teller’s Smoke & Mirrors, a game which had mini-games you could use to play practical jokes on your friends, like in their book Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends
My first job was working at Sega with one of the guilty involved parties, programmer Mike Fernie, who worked on Desert Bus (the bug on the windshield was his idea) as well as lip-syncing Mofo the Psychic Gorilla. Now that’s a resume item.
Apparently, it was finished but never published because the developer went under. However, he told me that it was actually approved by Sega, which is remarkable. Remarkable because one of Sega’s own testing requirements was to play through every level of the game. So, that’s right, the test department actually had to drive that bus through the desert for eight hours, not letting go of the controls. Apparently they did it in shifts. You think you’ve had pointless days at work! Try babysitting a purposely boring game (that won’t ever be published) for eight hours straight. And people think game testing is fun. I wonder what they would have done if the game crashed when they got to the end.
P.S.: Also at Lost Levels, you can read a history of Sonic X-Treme, the cancelled Sonic game for the Sega Saturn, involving Luxo’s own Chris Senn.