Recently, clever and immaculately handsome blogsman King Kool gave Jer his least favorite game ever: Tidus the Fox on Game Boy Color. Someone challenged him to play it while playing Desert Bus, and he agreed. The chat found Jer’s original notorious review, and we challenged them to write their own 100 word reviews. There was a lot of good stuff, but this one from Seamus D. resonated with Jer strongly.

wont stop never stops can’t keep going keeps going but never goes anywhere where’s the ladder climb keep climbing stop drop and jump jump jump test what the testers couldn’t it wore them down minds cracking letting loose pixilated waves of chaos and leaving the shell the ruins of a metamorphosis creating nothing level one level two level one and it turns back in on itself again wide eyes the horrors of the infinite swallowing me nothing left now run don’t listen don’t look you can’t save me and it’s all ending in shadow but the backgrounds do look nice

Congrats, you won a Megaman crocheted Met hat!

This one had some really good entries. Here’s a few entries:

My Titus the Fox’s graphics are nothing like the sun;
Superman 64 is far more entertaining then this pox;
If Desert Bus be great, then for the children it shall be done;
If one were to like it, it’d be a great shock.
I have missed platforms so steadily, and hated with haste
But no such platforms will reappear with such miss,
And my nerves for fun do so remain chaste.
My frothy hatred a pixellated kiss.
Yet in this game I find a masochistic love;
For the dirty cartridge’s touch melts my heart,
I wish to sacrifice this piece of bus to the goddess above.
Da gameplay of 0.5 shows the game for truefound art..
And yet a game so bad can be richly played;
For it is for the children, and thus LRR is paid.

And this one from Drew:

I once went into the bathroom to release my bowels. I unleashed hell and stood up to examine my work. Upon the seeing it, I burst into flames from rage. I grabbed the specimen of death from the bowl and threw it into a paper shredder. I then put the paper shredder into an Aperture Science disposal chute. I threw the disposer into a larger shredder, then that into a portal to hell. And put the portal into an even bigger shredder. At the very core of this, was Titus the Fox. The game is shit. Don’t play it. Ever.

And finally, this entry from Bothan_Pilot, who didn’t die to bring us this information.

Every now and then a game comes along that re-defines the way you look at games, gaming and the culture thereof.  Before playing, Titus the Fox for Gameboy Colour, for example, I never would have thought that a mere child’s entertainment could impregnate me with the rage and fury necessary nail handguns to my arms, strap a kerosene tank to my spine, don pink swimming goggles and fly around my local shopping mall gunning down unwary shoppers whilst reciting passages from Edgar Alan Poe backwards and pledging my undying loyalty to Cthulu.  Well done, Titus the Fox, I love you.

Congrats to all the winners!

(Thanks to Ash for this title).

We just broke 60,000 dollars! It seems like every few minutes, I have to run back to the computer and type up another one of these things. And I couldn’t be happier! Here’s a bunch of milestones we missed.

Upon reaching $57,000 for this year, Desert Bus for Hope has raised half a million dollars over its five year lifetime. While we didn’t reach that goal before the end of James’ shift (forcing him to go RIGHT after his shift ended), we reached it before the break of dawn during Jer’s shift, and that is enough to get Matt to see it on his own schedule. Ash sent us a sparkly little pic, as did out friend the_amativeness  and fan Michael.

This is truly momentous. We could never have done this without you. Here’s to the other half million.

Someone offered a dollar for every $56,000 Milestone Pic. And they came. They came in DROVES.

For those of you who can’t count, that’s FORTY. Great job!

A number of wonderful sites have helped us promote the launch of Desert Bus 5 and I’d just like to extend our thanks on behalf of the entire crew. This is a great event, but it can’t be done without the support of the wonderful online community and all those generous gamers and LLR fans out there. On that note, I’d like to tell you about some recent articles that have been posted online.

Escapist magazine is running its own mini game for Desert Bus where you can purchase virtual slime to throw at your favourite LRR member. Once they hit their mystery threshold, the “winning” LRR will get slimed on camera for charity. They will also be donating $10 for every Publisher’s Club Membership that is purchased.

The lovely people at SideQuesting wrote an article encouraging their readers to donate. We know how much SideQuesting loves to give to their readers, and we are pleased to see that they are encouraging their readers to be as generous.

Fangamer is now taking preorders for their cranberry coloured Desert Bus 5 tee. You can preorder any size up to 4XL and the proceeds will go to Desert Bus. In addition, they will also be donating 10% of their proceeds from other sales during Desert Bus for Hope 5. Thank you Fangamer!

Shamus Young (Twenty-Sided, Stolen Pixels, & The Escapist) wrote a blog post about our inability to find an appropriate time for him to call in… but if you missed, it’s posted here.

Game Set Watch posted about our one-of-a-kind auction items, and seemed just as thrilled/surprised as we were about us hitting 10K before we even started bussing.

DammitLiz tells a very personal and touching story about why she supports Child’s Play Charity with such vigor, as she joins us at the Moonbase to bus for the children.

The Great Escape sent a big shout out to Desert Bus for Hope calling us an, “addictive and entertaining event” for a “wonderful cause.”

The Joystiq Show is featuring an interview with Jamie Dillion of Child’s Play, followed by an interview with our own Graham, Paul, & Kathleen.

GamePro has a great article emphasizing our excellent auction items, as well as the level of insanity required to play such a monotonous videogame for 6ish days.

Special thanks to everyone who has helped us promote Desert Bus for Hope 5.

As of this year, Steve Buts is the Editor in Chief of The Escapist.  In this role he is responsible for the oversight of content posted on at EscapistMagazine.com, including reviews, news, articles, and vidoes. Steve will be calling in to share his experiences working with The Escapist at 8PM, so if you have anything you’d like to know about the life of the Editor in Chief of one of the internet’s best Gaming websites, this will be your chance to have them answered!

For geeks and gaming fans, this is a man who needs no introduction, but that’s never stopped us. Jonathan Coulton is a songwriter who combines sincere musical and comedic talent. When he first quit his job to be a musician, he started “Thing a Week,” in which he wrote a new song every week for a year (a difficult pursuit to which LoadingReadyRun is obviously sympathetic).

His most famous song came at the end of the original Portal, “Still Alive.” If you’ve gone this long without hearing “Still Alive,” then you somehow avoided playing Portal for some unfathomable reason.

Coulton returned to pen “Want You Gone” for Portal 2, and has most recently released his eight album Artificial Heart. But there’s nothing artificial about the heart he’s put into the two awesome gift packs full of music and other goodies he’s donated to Desert Bus this year!

You can find Coulton’s totally unoriginally named website at www.jonathancoulton.com or you could find an important video from him and his friends Paul and Storm here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTO5yiN1b-I

At 6:30 PM well be recieving a call from Hugo Award winning author and president of The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, John Scalzi. Best known for his novel Old Man’s War, John has written fiction, non-fiction, short stories and novels alike.  He also maintains his blog Whatever, at Scalzi.com, where he has been writing on a variety of subjects since 1998.

If you have any questions for John, Please post them in the comment section below!

Chances are quite good that if you’re the least bit interested in anything related to Desert Bus, you’ve bought something from ThinkGeek (or at least thought REALLY hard about it). Perhaps the most accurately named business in history, they’re an online business that sells specialty geek items. More than once, products they’ve released as April Fool’s Day jokes have actually been produced, including the Tauntaun sleeping bag. ThinkGeek was nice enough to send us one for the children, along with a ton of other cool stuff.

If you see us give away something you now desperately want, it’s probably still available at www.ThinkGeek.com.

The auction for that magnificent Majora’s Mask bag just put us over $50,000! It was so great, I accidentally posted this update too early! Fifty grand before the first shift ends! That’s almost inconceivable! it’s so great, we got this great art from the irreplaceable Ash Vickers:

We also got this great fanart of the currently VERY tired Kroze:

And a fellow named Adam built this ipmressive sculpture!

And then there’s this!