Desert Bus for Hope 8

If you're not familiar with Desert Bus for Hope, I should probably explain what Desert Bus even is before going any farther.  Looking back, I've talked a bit about Desert Bus for Hope since we started back in 2012, but not a whole lot about the game.  

Desert Bus was a mini-game created as a satire of video game violence accused of being perceived as too realistic for audiences, especially younger audience who apparently cannot tell the difference between 1995 CD games and real life.  Thus comedian magicians Penn and Teller created the concept for Desert Bus which would travel the six hours between Tuscon, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada in real time.  However, the overall game, Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors was never released because the publisher went out of business before the game could be published.

There is a Desert Bus port available on the Google Play Store and the Apple Store with all proceeds form the sale of the game going to Desert Bus for Hope and in turn, the Child's Play charity.  Which brings us back to Desert Bus for Hope 8, which starts today, November 14th at 10am Pacific and will run for (at least) 86+ hours.  It all depends on how much money is brought in during the "drive."

Confession Time:  I've personally never donated to Desert Bus for Hope.  The years that I have been able to donate money, I have done it directly through the Child's Play website where I can either specify a specific hospital that I want to donate to, browse an Amazon gift registry to donate a specific item for a hospital, or just give the charity money.  Don't worry though, I'm not going to try and guilt trip anyone into donating money to any cause, I'm just letting people know about an option if they already were looking to donate.

I'll be tuning in a few times a day during the (at least) three and-a-half days the bus will be driving back and forth from Tuscon to Las Vegas, if anything just to watch the exhaustion in the eyes of the people from LoadingReadyRun.  Oh those Canadians.  They're beautiful people.

How does this game NOT look fun!?

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

They Make Me Feel So Good

P.S.  And Folks, this starts in 8 minutes!

Year in Review ~ 2013: Year of the PC

Well damn.  Only four days left in 2013, which is hard for me to imagine considering that I remember at the beginning of the year thinking about resolutions, none of which I kept.  I had planned to write 10 songs this year and paint "more" miniatures.  None of that happened.  What I did do though, was become more deeply rooted in PC gaming and I read more books (including comic books a la The Walking Dead).

2013 began with my computer in the shop after spilling a beer (again) onto the keyboard.  I gave the first two games in The Elder Scrolls series a go, two posts which seemed to be pseudo-popular with our target audience.

Looking back at what I've written, I noticed that the first half of the year I dedicated a lot of time to 3DS play while the second half of the year, there was very little in the way of 3DS games that I reviewed.  Of course not to forget the PSP, of which I only reviewed a single game the entire year.  And yet, I still like the PSP as a gaming platform, I don't use it as a portable gaming platform as I do with the 3DS.  I've noticed that I predominantly play the PSP whenever I'm home, which then presents the dilemma that since I'm at home, why don't I just play one of the many PC games that are gathering dust on my hard drive?

But really, 2013 was The Year of the PC for me.  My PC games library grew from something manageable to something that I'm surprised hasn't started reproducing on it's own.  And actually, reproduction has occurred with a couple of the games through Steam.  In one of the auto updates, Anna added an "Extended Edtion" without my knowledge.  Left 4 Dead 2 Beta became something that sparked questioning throughout the Steamverse for a week or two.  You're welcome Linux users.  Company of Heroes was released with a "New Steam Version" and since I haven't played any of those games from one of the Humble Bundles (back before they became an every day/week/month sale thing).

It was also the year that I visited both Kickstarter and Indiegogo a few times to back games that I wanted to see made.  Two Out of Three Ain't Bad, but I really would have like to have seen Shadow of the Eternals be made and Precursor Games stay around as a game development company.  I will see Beyond the Sleep and Darkwood come into fruition sometime in the coming year, so I am happy that at least two indie game companies are able to see their vision.

I will sometimes think back about what the mission statement that Dr. Potts and I had for when we created our little space here in the electronic void.  In our pre-production days, the thought of doing predominantly "retro games" was an idea that looked very tasty, and looking back throughout the year, I 've realized that that is something that I have not personally done a lot of.  I blame my lack of components that allow my SNES and N64 to be played on the schnazzy HDLEDC3POTV that sits six and-a-half feet from me.

I also found myself watching more-and-more over at LoadingReadyRun.  I guess I just have a thing for Canadians:  Nathan Fillion, John Candy, Caroline Dhavernas, Dave Foley, Ryan Reynolds, Jewel Staite, Conklederp.

So I'm now going to cut myself off before I continue to ramble on more than I already tend to do (thanks Dad).

Happy New Year everyone.  I don't want to say "Hopefully 2014 will be. . ." because I thought 2013 was a pretty damn good year as far as years go.  It wasn't the all time greatest year of the year, but that would be rather hard to beat.  Now, I don't want to make any promises, but in the coming year, look forward to more reviews that are/will be at least 6 months behind the release date of the game, or if you're lucky, it might be upwards of 20 years late.  But that how we do here.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Hanging Out With No One But Me