Last Update: 2/8/07
Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors
"The Bad Boys of Magic" make sure their interactive multimedia debut is everything a video game isn't supposed to be (Including a game that you just can't win)
Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors was a 3D0, PC and Sega CD game that was never officially released. The Sega version is said to have been the only version completed, but even that was in doubt for many years until some back-up copies were given to website editor Frank Cifaldi, who received them from a reviewer of the original product who had kept them salted away for so many years.
Owing to this, over recent years a lot of cult enthusiasm has been generated, most particularly over the hilariously minimalist premise of "Desert Bus", one of the mini-games within the title. As some available links make apparent, the game, or at least parts of it, are being played as a result of file-sharing and emulation.
Essentially the game, as in their video of the time "Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends", is farce and satire, and the minigames themselves are a series of pranks upon other gamers, or even the gamer himself, but all within the brand of "fun cruelty" that is a trademark of the pair.
Developer: Absolute Entertainment
Publisher: Originally intended for an April 1995 release, the game never reached publication. It's original release was planned by Absolute Entertainment and later EA Games.
"It's not that different from the spirit of our live shows," explains Penn Jillette, "except you won't be able to smell us."
Publisher: None/Unknown
Smoke and Mirrors
A one-of-a-kind action/adventure game that pits Penn & Teller against evil Las Vegas magicians Stinkbomb and Rot and their loyal minions. Penn & Teller will interact with a wild assortment of live-action characters as they set out to prove once and for all that real magic doesn't exist!
Smoke and Mirrors Game Highlights and Features:
- Control Penn & Teller, switching back and forth between them to use their unique skills to solve puzzles, and overcome the minions of the fraudulent Stinkbomb and Rot.
- Smoke and Mirrors is a mixture of platform, RPG, and puzzle-solving games.
- Basic weapon is a deck of cards, but also use individual moves and combo moves, or call in the stunt doubles!
- Cameo appearances by Deborah Harry and Lou Reed.
Desert Bus
Get behind the wheel of Desert Bus for a first-person, hands-on view of the endless, interminable desert highway. No zillion dollar sports car with leggy blonde in tow. Not at all. It's a bus. And it's an eight-hour drive. In real time. No pausing. Another stunningly realistic simulator in the great Absolute tradition.
Desert Bus Mini-game Highlights and Features:
- You are the driver of a bus travelling a desert highway from Tuscon, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada. The trip is 360 miles and your top speed is 45 mph.
- The game is in real time so one round will be take at least 8 hours navigating the bus through the desert.
- There is no scenery, no other traffic, no roadkill or pedestrians, and if you make your scheduled stops, there are no passengers! (but also no penalty for not stopping!).
- In fact, you'll be staring at the same view for 8 hours or more, unless you count a handful of bugsplats (reportedly 5 in the course of your trip).
- The bus pulls just a little to the right so you have to press the controller every now and then, so simply taping the controls down won't work!
- Get to Las Vegas safely and you can score a whopping 1 point! Following each trip completion though, you are offered a double shift, only to drive back in darkness if you accept, using your headlights and the center lines to navigate safely home!
Trivia! A contest had been planned that would award fabulous prizes for those individuals or groups that achieved the highest score in Desert Bus, but was cancelled along with the release. Rumor holds however that a high score of 12 points was achieved by a pair of friends.
Mojo the Psychic Gorilla
Watch while this cunning simian guesses which card your friend has selected!
Mojo the Psychic Gorilla Mini-game Highlights and Features:
- A "party trick" game played with a deck of cards in which you make Mojo use his psychic powers to predict the card your friend has drawn.
- Using Mojo's skill requires the use of odd button combinations (that reportedly are undocumented in existing circulated copies of this peculiar game)!
- The player is taught beforehand how to dupe his friend by entering a code that tips off Mojo as to the card.
Buzz Bombers
The coolest, meanest competitive two-player action space alien game yet created. You'll want to play it again and again, because you'll never lose!
Buzz Bombers Mini-game Highlights and Features:
- The most complex of the minigames, Buzz Bombers is a 2-player arcade shooter with a twist similar to the other games: Player one always wins!
- According to the intro movie, alien insects have destroyed Earth, but a few earth creatures survive and use their ship to battle the alien threat.
- Player one has access to a number of predetermined CHEATS which ensure victory, and in the case that Player two demands to "switch", there's even a code that allows you to switch control of the cheats.
- An end-game movie can be enabled, in which Penn and Teller let the duped friend in on the joke.
What's Your Sign?
Your friend will marvel as he interacts with Penn & Teller and their patented Personometer(TM) device, which the guys will use to deduce -- with mind-blowing accuracy -- your friend's sign of the zodiac.
What's Your Sign? Mini-game Highlights and Features:
- Another parlor trick/prank, in which Penn and Teller promise to tell the players astrological sign and birthday by asking seemingly silly questions, supposedly utilizing their patented "Personometer".
- The host is in on the prank, and uses a special menu to enter the players birthday in advance.
- As with the other minigames, "What's Your Sign" is introduced by a Penn and Teller movie, this time sharing their view that the only thing astronomical signs are good for is to make a living for astrologists work.
Sun Scorcher
The thrill-a-minute outer space shoot-'em-up that features Thermo-Graphics(TM), Penn & Teller's revolutionary imaging technology that makes the TV screen dangerous to touch!
Sun Scorcher Mini-game Highlights and Features:
- Basically a "Space Invaders" clone, Sun Scorcher is a mock game in which the player must "blast the mothership".
- Penn and Teller claim that the mothership releases "thermographics", and warn the player in a stern "disclaimer" that the effects of this will make the screen dangerous to touch. During gameplay the screen flickers with the "effects of the thermographics" and eventually goes blank, so that the host can pretend the set was broken, meanwhile feigning injury to their hand as well.
- Again Penn and Teller introduce the minigame aforehand to the host in a film that explains how to get the most mileage out of the gag.
