Desert Bus
| Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors | |
|---|---|
Sega CD cover
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| Developer(s) | Imagineering |
| Publisher(s) | Absolute Entertainment |
| Platform(s) | Sega CD, PC, 3DO |
| Release | Unreleased |
| Genre(s) | Platform game/Simulation |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors is an unreleased video game that was planned for release initially on the Sega CD in April 1995 and to be followed by PC and 3DO versions later that year. The game stars the comedy-magician duo Penn & Teller. The game is composed of several minigames and an adventure/platform game starring Penn & Teller. All the minigames, with one exception, were made for the sole purpose of enabling the owner of the game to fool their friends by many different means, designating the games "scam minigames" and virtual tricks. Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors is unofficially the video game equivalent of Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends video, which has the same purpose, and uses properties of the video medium itself for the tricks.
The game's costar Teller states, "by the time the game was finished, the [Sega CD] format was dead. We were unable to find anybody interested in acquiring the game". The developer Imagineering and the publisher Absolute Entertainment went out of business before they had the chance to release the game. Nevertheless, the game had already been featured and previewed in various gaming publications such as Electronic Gaming Monthly and reviewed by VideoGames magazine.
Skyworks Interactive, Inc. owns the rights to all unreleased Absolute games, except for certain handheld console versions of Super Battletank, A Boy and His Blob, and Turn & Burn, which are owned by Majesco Entertainment. However, since Penn & Teller were owed money when Absolute Entertainment went out of business, any rights pertaining to their intellectual property, likenesses and performance within the title were revoked. The game regained minor notoriety starting when a former 1990s video game reviewer mailed his review copy of Smoke and Mirrors to the editor of the website Lost Levels, which is dedicated to arcane and unreleased video game creations.
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Wikipedia