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Penn Jillette, Randy Pitchford remaking Desert Bus for VR systems

On the latest episode of his podcast, Penn’s Sunday School, entertainer Penn Jillette let slip that he’s working on a virtual reality remake of Desert Bus with Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford. The remade game would be used for charities to fundraise, Jillette asserted.

“I’m working on a game with Randy Pitchford… and we are going to do – this is a big, big deal – we’re going to do a new Desert Bus,” Jillette said. “And it’s going to be just for charities, so charities can use it to raise money.”

Officially unreleased, the original Desert Bus was a game made in 1995 that tasked players to drive from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada. In real time. With a one-way trip lasting around eight hours — the bus can’t go faster than forty-five miles per hour — all there is to do is to keep the bus on the straight and narrow. Which, in turn, is made more difficult because the bus has a slight list to the right.

In recent years, Desert Bus has been used in the ‘Desert Bus for Hope’ charity fundraising marathon, which Jillette alluded to.

“He’s calling it Desert Bus 2.0; I’m calling it Desert Bus 1.0003. And It’ll be a period piece; it’ll be set in 1992 like the original Desert Bus, just hi-fidelity,” Jillette added.

The entertainer, part of the iconic Penn & Teller, indicated the remake is just one game in a planned collection intended for VR platforms.

“We’re doing a couple other games,” Jillette said. “It’ll be a bundle; we’re talking to a bunch of people. It’ll probably be agnostic in terms of platform, it’ll probably be for the [Oculus] Rift [on Windows PC] and PlayStation VR [using PS4].”

We’ll keep you informed as more is known — and when Oculus and Sony hopefully work with Jillette to get this to happen.

We previously published this story with Mr. Jillette’s surname spelled incorrectly. Apologies!


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Steve Wright

Steve's the owner of this very site and an active games journalist nearing twenty (TWENTY!?!) years. He's a Canadian-Australian gay gaming geek, ice hockey player and fan. Husband to Matt and cat dad to Wally and Quinn.