By Jim Rossignol on July 22nd, 2011 at 11:30 am.

There’s a Bus Driver 30-minute limited demo out. SCS explain why Bus Driver is so exciting: “In Bus Driver, your job is to transport passengers around an attractive and realistic city. You must drive to a timetable on a planned route, whilst obeying traffic rules, and taking care not to upset or injure your passengers. This makes Bus Driver unlike any other driving game – the experience of driving a bus is very different from blazing through a racing circuit as in most driving games.”
You can imagine how excited I am by the implications of this. It’s not pretty. You can download the demo here.


i think i’ll wait for Traffic Cop
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It turns out policing traffic is more exciting than you’d think: http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/08/28/crap-shoot-traffic-department-2192/
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I’m… I’m, uh
I’m busting to try this.
*sobs quietly*
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Good to see a puns thread up and running within 10 minutes of the post going live.
We don’t put up with slow-coaches around here.
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I’d express how angry the puns make me, but I don’t think that would be fare.
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Come on guys, let’s Stop here. That’s the ticket.
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“I’m busting to try this.”
I’m excited, too, I’ve been looking for a top-deck bus simulator for ages. I’m wary, though: previous bus sims have been a bit tyred. That’s why it’s so nice to have the opportunity to conductor trial.
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You are so out of line here, you better switch your attitude.
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Way to steer this discussion off the cliff, man…
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I’d have to free up room on my bus-y schedule to be able to take this demo for a spin.
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I’ve clearly won this pun thread.
Like a bus.
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DING. . . . DING . . . DING DING DING.
What do you mean this isn’t the “stop the puns I want to get off” button.
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I love you guys. Seriously.
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Ok Ok bust it up, and move on to the next thread
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I’m gonna schedule some time to give this sim a spin
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You must all live such sheltered lives to be writing these puns. You wouldn’t catch me doing it, nope I’m steering well clear…
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I’d like to be able to join in with the bus related puns but I don’t think I could manage it without some heavy coaching.
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I would like to give it a go, but I think I’m going to need some training.
…oh bollocks.
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This thread is really bus-link with puns.
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I know it’s late, but I’d really like to sneak another bus pun in through the back doors.
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Man, sometimes you go ages without a pun being posted and then suddenly loads show up at once.
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Woah! The pun-generator is running like a greyhound.
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We have obviously a-bus-ed of the power of the puns.
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This game is driving me insame!!! I might have an accident
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I reckon this might turn out to be a wheely good game
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With all the excitement surrounding the game, I reckon the creator’s bus-iness is going to thrive!
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I honestly don´t know where you guys get off on this, It´s like I´ve been public transported to the world of bus puns.
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2008/07/31/greyhound-transcanada.html
They should include a level based around this event.
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I like to think that these guys really wanted to make a Speed game but couldn’t secure the rights. So they made a damn good bus simulator, with the hope the the Mod community would fulfill their dream.
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I was thinking that too.
That and DESERT BUS HD.
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They could have just changed a few skins around and called it ‘The Bus That Couldn’t Slow Down’.
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Get to it, mod community.
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If you can drive using Kinect, it’ll sell millions.
not.
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It strikes me that games of this ilk would benefit greatly from reusing assets from the other twelve thousand quasi-realistic urban environments that’ve been created from scratch at this point. Sure GTA IV’s Liberty City is probably a little out of reach…
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What would be far superior is playing a bus driver in Panau – you’d get the odd random encounter of finding a man on the roof of your bus attaching cars to your ride causing mischief by grappling hook and then having to dodge the odd crashed aeroplane and ruined helicopter on the road.
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what would be fun is if you could make this competitive and take away the speed limits and traffic light penalties and then make the game multiplayer and have different bus companies competing on the same route for fares. You’d have to stop at the stops and wait for people to get on all the while keeping an eye out for another player ramming you up the arse and injuring your passengers. You’d also have the dilema of “do I snap up the few punters that are there even though the bus isn’t scheduled for another 5 minutes (10 seconds real time) or do I wait and get the big group of people who turn up on time and run the risk of other players hitting me. A multiplayer arcade bus em up deathmatch game, so to speak.
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The games of pretend I like to play are worthy and good because I enjoy them. The games of pretend others like to play are terrible and sad because they don’t appeal to me.
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I disagree with your opinion because it is different then mine.
Also, I question your choice of operating system.
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I take the off-topic tangent and run with it, spouting wild hyperbole about your choice of operating system. God! At least my choice of OS has some random desirable feature! Yours doesn’t even have that. And all of the good ideas in your operating system were stolen from mine anyway.
And additionally, ad hominem insult with no real bearing on anything.
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Some blatantly untrue facts I compiled from various obscure locations on the internet and my own mind that are of minimal relevance to the above discussion, interspersed with badly spelled angry words in capital letters.
A final sentence that manages to contradict everything I’ve just said, including this sentence itself.
Meme-based ‘so-there’ statement.
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How can you even compare [game] to an RPG? Just because you’re role-playing a bus driver and the bus has stats DOESN’T make it a pure RPG. If you’re using your keyboard to control the direction and speed of the bus then it can hardly fit into the rigidly defined genre or RPG. ROLE-PLAYING games, that is.
@above_poster: I’m not turning this thread into another argument about RPGs, I’m just addressing other people’s posts head-on in the most relevant way possible.
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Will you get bonus points for passing dangerously close to cyclists?
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Are there actually any passengers in this sim? Because, you know, a bus without people in it is just a silly bus.
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oh yes, I picked up some static meshes of squealing school kids. or rather ‘beamed up’. I just had to trust my bus drivers’ instinct that they were actually inside. nice game.
also, the trees were blinking.
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Isn’t this a bit old news? 2007 old…?
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I was thinking the same thing. I’ve played BD, it’s actually alright if you like that sort of thing, but some of the schedules are rock – I think I only ever managed to keep a 100% timely bus once. Still, that sorts me out nicely for a job with Stagecoach.
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That’s odd, this game’s been out for at least a couple of years. And it’s awesome. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but I bought it on a lark and enjoyed myself to an unexpected degree. The theme song is pretty good, too.
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Holy shit, that’s actually awesome.
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You know what? That’s actually pretty good.
I was getting a litte bit of a Beastie Boys vibe from the second half, maybe because I’ve been listening to The Mix-Up recently.
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So it’s not set in London, then?
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I think il wait for the speed DLC.
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I think it is called “The bus that couldn’t slow down”.
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well, it could slow down.. Eventually..
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On a bus related side note a few weeks ago I saw a bus claiming to be run by “the no 1. bus company in Basingstoke.” Nice to see they were aiming high!
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We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at… well, a little bit further up the side of the gutter.
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On a second bus related side note, anyone remember the Singing Kettle and the wonderful “You Cannae Shove Yer Granny Aff a Bus.”
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I’d love to try this. With the same intent as in Farming Simulator – how far can you go? Anyway, good there’s a new Bus sim – hasn’t been a desent one around since Penn & Tellers Bus Driver ..
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i’ve actually played this game before and it is way more fun than you would think
DRIVE THE OLYMPIC SPORTS TEAM FROM THE AIRPORT TO THE HOTEL IN THE MOUNTAINS ON ICY ROADS WITH 0 VISIBILITY
also i like the way that there is nothing actually making you do all the missions and stuff; at any given time you can drive off into other parts of the city and run over things
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i TRULLY love this kind of simulation since I was a console boy ( PS1 esp. although it’s quite easier and simpler than the PC sim). Anyone remember Jet de GO or Train de Go ? Both of them were japanese import.
Jet de GO brought us as a commercial plane pilot work for Japanese Airlines (JAL). Meanwhile, Train de GO was…. I think you all understand though,it’s even have its own controller shaped like a train dashboard. The tutorial was quite easy to followed, although I was totally did not understand kanji at all !
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Oh no, Im not letting you get me worked up over another one of these, after you left us in suspense on that Street Cleaner cliffhanger.
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Reminds me of my misspent youth playing an imported Tokyo Bus Guide simulator on the Dreamcast.
A monstrously difficult game!
Tokyo Bus Guide Gameplay
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Wow, I was getting worried no one was going to mention Tokyo Bus Guide! Excellent game and extremely difficult as you say (especially if you’re not necessarily familiar with Japanese road rules…)
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I swear they should have car simulators for people learning to drive.
Or perhaps that would be silly. I dunno.
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A few days ago I saw a truck with the license plat,e “Buses”.
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What this needs is DLC that includes driving a bus full of children all singing “Row row row your boat” while I stand on an overpass with a 44 magnum.
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I remember this game…I bought it some years ago and had a blast, really. I was pretty good at it (except never actually keeping to the schedule, it’s too strict) with my analogue QuickShot SuperWarrior joystick…Now that my new computer doesn’t have a game port anymore it’s not the same. BUT it’s still manageable with analogue sticks (preferably one stick for gas/brake and the second one for steering). I think an analogue controller is a must, it’s not the same without it.
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Acheivement progress: Realistic
1. Shut the door in a running passenger’s face and drive off.
2. 1, but in the pouring rain.
3. Drive past a stop where a passenger is waiting.
4. Drive past a stop when a passenger has rung the bell in good time
5. 3 and 4 together
6. Accelerate suddenly into a corner while a little old lady is climbing the stairs (double decker only)
etc etc etc
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I played Garden Simulator the other day and was disappointed to find their marketing tagline wasn’t “Watch grass grow!”
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Tokyo Bus Guide was vastly superior to Bus Driver.
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I don’t know if this is an improvificated version of the Bus Driver sim from SCS I tried a couple of years ago, but that had to be the most boring sim I’d ever tried, and I am a raging fanboi of boring vehicle simulators (Ship Sim 2006, 2008, and Extreme; Farm and Agri Sims 2011; Train Simulator, Trains through Trainz 2010; Railworks 1/2, and Star Wars Podracer).
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Hells yeah! Time to live out my dream! Insta-bought! Going to be gone for months to come at least if not years! See you in a few months/years.
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