History VideoGame / PennAndTellersSmokeAndMirrors

* FilmingForEasyDub: What's your sign has the sign with the star sign cover the entire screen, making it easy to swap in the correct sign. And the switch to the date reveal video.

* LosingYourHead: When Lou Reed kills Penn and Teller with his EyeBeams in ''Smoke and Mirrors''' Impossible difficulty, their bodies explode messily while their heads remain intact, are launched into the air, and then land on the pavement. Despite no longer having a respiratory system, Penn can still talk in this state.

* FullMotionVideo: Being made for multimedia formats, the game features live-action cutscenes with Penn and Teller that play between minigames.

* TheComputerIsALyingBastard: The ''Desert Bus'' score counter has eight digits, but it caps out at 99 points, or "00000099" as shown in-game. Then again, getting to 99999999 points would take literally '''tens of thousands of years''' since you get one point for completing the full ''eight-hour'' drive, and even 99 points takes a little over '''one month''' of non-stop playing.

* ''Desert Bus'': The most well-known among the minigames, where you must drive 360 miles from Tucson, AZ to UsefulNotes/LasVegas, NV on a desolate highway, without being able to go faster than 45 MPH, and with the steering pulling slightly to the right to prevent you from simply putting a weight on the drive button to keep it moving. All in real time. Has been a subject of ''WebVideo/LoadingReadyRun's'' ''WebVideo/DesertBusForHope'' charity drive, and has also been ported to [=iOS=] and Android devices with proceeds going towards Child's Play.

--> "This is the Impossible level, boys. [[ExactWords Impossible doesn't mean very difficult. Very difficult is winning the Nobel Prize; impossible is eating the Sun.]]"

* LeaveTheCameraRunning: In ''Desert Bus'', literally nothing happens for eight hours.

* BladderOfSteel: The pause function is disabled during Desert Bus. Pressing the start button just sounds the horn. This was [[InvokedTrope invoked]] by the developers.
-->"There's no pause feature. No, it's not an oversight. Does ''your'' life have a pause control?" -- ''The instruction manual, on Desert Bus''

--> "This is the Impossible difficulty, boys. [[ExactWords Impossible doesn't mean very difficult. Very difficult is winning the Nobel Prize; impossible is eating the Sun.]]"

* PracticalJoke: The games aside from ''Smoke and Mirrors'' and ''Desert Bus'' are designed so you can play one on player 2.

* UnbuiltTrope: ''Desert Bus'' deconstructs the idea of making video games painstakingly realistic years before trying to make games "realistic" became common.

-->'''Penn:''' Scarf an eye load of these guys, huh? Fu-Ling-Yu, Madame Claire de Voyant. Well, we could've beat them too if, uhh...[[BreakingTheFourthWall Absolute had given us a larger memory configuration, and we'd fit them in the game!]]

* DevelopersForesight: Think you can cheat Desert Bus by clamping down the acceleration button? The bus constantly veers to the right, and, if it hits the sand on the side of the road, the bus gets towed back to Tucson (also done in real time).

* ArtisticLicenseGeography: It's weird that a game that's advertised as a ''verisimulator'' would have any AcceptableBreaksFromReality whatsoever, but Desert Bus does. In reality, the highway from Tucson, AZ to Las Vegas, NV is [[https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Tucson,+AZ/Las+Vegas,+NV/@34.0699704,-114.8157409,7z/data=!4m13!4m12!1m5!1m1!1s0x86d665410b2ced2b:0x73c32d384d16c715!2m2!1d-110.926479!2d32.2217429!1m5!1m1!1s0x80beb782a4f57dd1:0x3accd5e6d5b379a3!2m2!1d-115.1398296!2d36.1699412 more than 360 miles long and is not a straight line.]] Also, it goes through Phoenix.

* GameWithinAGame: ''Sun Scorcher'' and ''Buzz Bombers''. In fact, the game was designed so that you could trick people into thinking ''Buzz Bombers'' is its own standalone game by converting the packaging for ''Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors'' and inputting a button code during the production logo.

* ''What's Your Sign'': Penn & Teller uses the Personometer to determine the player's sign as well as his/her birthday. [[spoiler: Which the owner of the game has simply input into the game beforehand.]]

* PlausibleDeniability: The manual provides instructions on how to skip the normal Penn & Teller intro and skip to the intro for Buzz Bombers. If you fail to do input the instructions to do so, Penn and Teller mention in their intro that the disc contains a demo for the game rather than being the game itself.

-->'''Penn:''' Scarf an eye load of these guys, huh? Fu-Ling-Yu, Madame Claire de Voyant. Well, we could've beaten them too if, uhh...[[BreakingTheFourthWall Absolute had given us a bigger memory configuration, so that we'd fit them in the game!]]

'''Penn:''' Scarf an eye load of these guys, huh? Fu-Ling-Yu, Madame Claire de Voyant. Well, we could've beaten them too if, uhh...[[BreakingTheFourthWall Absolute had given us a bigger memory configuration, so that we'd fit them in the game!]]

** In the wax museum in ''Smoke and Mirrors'', you see wax sculptures of Escapo and Balloono, two bosses. Another room contains sculptures of a Chinese magician named Fu-Ling-Yu and a fortune teller named Madame Claire de Voyant, which Penn claims would have been bosses too [[BreakingTheFourthWall if they had more memory on the game CD]].

* ''Buzz Bombers'': Claims to be a demo for an "upcoming" two-player arcade shooter. [[spoiler: Where the first player has access to a built-in cheat that can be used to adjust the difficulty on the fly so that the second player gets much less powerups and much more targets they're not meant to shoot while the opposite applies to the first player.]]

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: InUniverse, in the wax museum in ''Smoke and Mirrors'', you see wax sculptures of Escapo and Balloono, two bosses. Another room contains sculptures of a Chinese magician named Fu-Ling-Yu and a fortune teller named Madame Claire de Voyant, which Penn claims would have been bosses too [[BreakingTheFourthWall if they had more memory on the game CD]].

* GameWithinAGame: ''Sun Scorcher'' and ''Buzz Bombers''. In fact, the game was designed so that you could trick people into thinking ''Buzz Bombers'' is its own standalone game by converting the packaging for ''Penn & Teller's Smoker and Mirrors'' and inputting a button code during the production logo.

* AllThereInTheManual: The elements of the game are not immediately obvious to those who just catch a glimpse at the game. [[http://archive.org/download/SEGACDManuals/Penn%20%26%20Teller%20-%20Smoke%20&%20Mirrors%20%28USA%29%20%28Disc%201%29.pdf The manual]] is designed so the owner can set up the tricks in order to fool their friends.

* AllThereInTheManual: The elements of the game are not immediately obvious to those who just catch a glimpse at the game. [[http://ia80070.us.archive.org/19/items/SEGACDManuals/Penn%20%26%20Teller%20-%20Smoke%20&%20Mirrors%20%28USA%29%20%28Disc%201%29.pdf The manual]] is designed so the owner can set up the tricks in order to fool their friends.