Monday, April 10, 2006
Easter Eggs
I think it was Atari's "Adventure" that had the world's first Easter Egg in a videogame. I have YET to see it. But I have heard it was there. Atari's policy at the time was not to give individual developers any kind of public credit for their games, so the developer (Warren Robinett) snuck his name in a secret area.
For a while, Easter Eggs were in games were a way for game developers to "put their mark" in a game, a personal touch which rewarded players who really explored the game. Even when these easter eggs weren't there, rumors abounded of their existance. For some reason, we kids somehow believed that the game makers hid the coolest stuff in the game so that the average player wouldn't find it. So there were stories of players being able to drive to the volcano in Battlezone, finding a castle within. Or that there was a secret room in Pac-Man that you could get to if you moved up at exactly the right moment as Pac-Man transitioned through the tunnel.
Of course, nobody would REALLY hide that much of the game like that. I mean, you want the cool stuff to be front-and-center for the player to gush over, right? Until Shigeru Miyamoto did exactly that in Super Mario Brothers for the NES. Half the fun of the game, according to players, was finding all the secrets in the game. It was amazing.
Unfortunately, I think that publishers learned the lessons from that experience. So they started demanding to know every secret 'easter egg' inside the game. That way, they could "leak" the easter eggs to the public, renewing interest in the game to generate more marketing. That's not too bad, but easter eggs became more about publicity and marketing and part of a planned, committee-designed initiative rather than touches of individualism.
I noticed at Singletrac that we had a LOT of Easter Eggs in our first two games - possibly products of demented minds working FAR too late into the night. But especially as Sony came down on us to make sure that every single Easter Egg was fully documented to be leaked to the press (rather than discovered by the players), they became less fun and interesting to us. So our later games didn't have nearly as many. Of course, in a day and age where developers hide "adult"-rated content in games, I can understand the publisher wanting to know ALL those details.
Some easter eggs that I actually remember from our first two games:
* In multiplayer Twisted Metal, there were two secret spots where you could park your car in every level that would restore you to full health.
* In Warhawk, if you picked up one of the cannisters in each level (a specific one, but there was always one), with the plasma weapon selected and guns overheated, you'd get a message "Singletrac Rules!" and you'd get a weapon upgrade (one of the testers stumbled across this one accidentally in one level, and for the life of him couldn't figure out how to reproduce it). That one was mine :)
* In Warhawk, if you took out the second canyon boss and had 0 rockets remaining but a full load-out of swarmers (in other words, you played like I did), you'd get a message "'Ey, Jay Mon!" and you'd get all the rockets restored, and a double loadout of swarmers and guided missiles. Or something like that. Naturally, that one was also me :)
* In Twisted Metal, the rooftops level, if you looked down at one point (or fell off the roof and crashed in a particular spot), you could see the Singletrac office building (165 South Main, Salt Lake City).
* We had a bunch of people in our games named after people in the office or people at Sony. "Mike and Dave" (drivers of the Monster Truck) were named after Mike Giam and Dave Jaffe, who were producers over those games. The skydiver in Jet Moto, Polly Harris, was named after one of the programmers. And so forth.
One of my favorite Easter Eggs I ever discovered completely on my own was in Falcon 3.0. If you flew up the canyon outside of Las Vegas far enough, following the river, you'd eventually come to the source of the river - a giant water faucet.
I also loved the secret "Wolfenstein" level in Doom 2 (and the hanging Commander Keens). As a guy who had played those old games before there was a "Doom," I really appreciated those references to their older titles.
More recently, a got a kick out of the "Trogdor" flamethrower in Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines - and the "Burninator Brand" fuel. Not a huge secret, but more of a joke for those familiar with Strongbad Emails.
So - what are your favorite game Easter Eggs? Post it in a reply!
Labels: Mainstream Games, programming, retro
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:57 PM (Permalink)
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Man, I can think of endless cheat codes we put in games, but not a whole lot of easter eggs. There's a reference to Clyde and one to Void War in the Xbox 360 version of OKX, but those aren't very deeply hidden.
OK, this is sort of a combination cheat/easter egg I made. If you were already in the right code-entering mode in the N64 version of Rampage World Tour, and you had a 4th controller plugged in, and you broke open one of those crates falling from airplanes, and you didn't eat the chicken/cow/sheep, you could press a button on the 4th controller to switch the direction the chicken was running. So, it was, at the barest minimum level possible, temporarily a 4-player game. :)
Insanely obscure, I know. I don't think I ever told anyone about that, except people at Saffire and my producer at Midway.
In the same game, Del added a mini-game that happened if you ate enough people in a level - a mini level where you just snarf up tons of people. We put in an inordinate number of aliens, if I recall correctly.
OK, this is sort of a combination cheat/easter egg I made. If you were already in the right code-entering mode in the N64 version of Rampage World Tour, and you had a 4th controller plugged in, and you broke open one of those crates falling from airplanes, and you didn't eat the chicken/cow/sheep, you could press a button on the 4th controller to switch the direction the chicken was running. So, it was, at the barest minimum level possible, temporarily a 4-player game. :)
Insanely obscure, I know. I don't think I ever told anyone about that, except people at Saffire and my producer at Midway.
In the same game, Del added a mini-game that happened if you ate enough people in a level - a mini level where you just snarf up tons of people. We put in an inordinate number of aliens, if I recall correctly.
It's probably only an easter egg to me, but the hidden passage on one of the mansion levels in Sleuth (old DOS game I loved as a child) is one of my favorites.
The game had no sound (that I know of) but when you find the passageway the PC-speaker plays a creepy "zone in" tune.
It's now one of the first areas I check as the murder weapon or some other useful clue is often stashed in there.
The game had no sound (that I know of) but when you find the passageway the PC-speaker plays a creepy "zone in" tune.
It's now one of the first areas I check as the murder weapon or some other useful clue is often stashed in there.
Super Mario RPG had this pillar that you could walk behind. Mario would turn into the sprite from the original Super Mario Bros temporarily.
In Quake 3 Arena's bouncy map, if you fell from it and looked up, you could see User Friendly's Dust Puppy.
I vaguely remember Starfox for the SNES having a blue lizard sprite fly at you if you did something special in a space level.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past had a secret room that was named after a winner of some contest that Nintendo held. I think there was a similar contest for one of the Turok games.
I think a Final Fantasy game had a hidden menu entry at a store. I didn't find this one, but I read about it. Apparently your cursor could end up between two entries, and most people would probably think it was a bug, but there was some item there that you could purchase. I don't remember if it was mundane or rare.
In Quake 3 Arena's bouncy map, if you fell from it and looked up, you could see User Friendly's Dust Puppy.
I vaguely remember Starfox for the SNES having a blue lizard sprite fly at you if you did something special in a space level.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past had a secret room that was named after a winner of some contest that Nintendo held. I think there was a similar contest for one of the Turok games.
I think a Final Fantasy game had a hidden menu entry at a store. I didn't find this one, but I read about it. Apparently your cursor could end up between two entries, and most people would probably think it was a bug, but there was some item there that you could purchase. I don't remember if it was mundane or rare.
Man, kudos to Stay for having one of the most obscure easter eggs I've ever heard of!
I love the Final Fantasy hidden store entry. I've got to remember that! (Though my current RPG doesn't have shops or purchasing... how's that for weird?).
I remember hearing of an easter-egg in one of the Ultimas where you could type "flipflop" or something and the graphics would flip upside down. I guess they pulled a joke during development on Richard Garriott where they put in that code to make his game screen go upside down while he was away from the computer, and when he came back, he panicked because he had no idea what had caused that bug!
There were a bunch of easter eggs in adventure games which MIGHT have pre-dated Atari's Adventure. I don't remember which came first, or if XYZZY or PLUGH would be considered easter eggs (I know you at least had a hint about XYZZY being written on a wall...)
I love the Final Fantasy hidden store entry. I've got to remember that! (Though my current RPG doesn't have shops or purchasing... how's that for weird?).
I remember hearing of an easter-egg in one of the Ultimas where you could type "flipflop" or something and the graphics would flip upside down. I guess they pulled a joke during development on Richard Garriott where they put in that code to make his game screen go upside down while he was away from the computer, and when he came back, he panicked because he had no idea what had caused that bug!
There were a bunch of easter eggs in adventure games which MIGHT have pre-dated Atari's Adventure. I don't remember which came first, or if XYZZY or PLUGH would be considered easter eggs (I know you at least had a hint about XYZZY being written on a wall...)
Not strictly an easter egg, but I worked for a company that produced online games during the mid '90s, and managed to sneak an extra line into the credits for one or two of their titles:
Mark Twain is played by Samuel Clemens.
Twain has followed me around over the years. In a promotional video for our second Windows title, we included a clip from an imagined space-shooter called Mark Twain's Galactic Avenger.
Someday, I'm going to write that game.
Mark Twain is played by Samuel Clemens.
Twain has followed me around over the years. In a promotional video for our second Windows title, we included a clip from an imagined space-shooter called Mark Twain's Galactic Avenger.
Someday, I'm going to write that game.
It’s not quite an Easter Egg, but the favorite thing I encountered in my days (years!) testing was in Heretic 2 by Raven Software. There was a chicken gun in multiplayer, which was really fun and silly. It turned your enemy into a chicken that you could easily pop with one hit if you could catch up with the bugger. As you might imagine it was a popular weapon, especially for a stressed out QA team in need of laughs. We tested it a lot, probably more than necessary to be perfectly honest. So we thought we knew all there was to know about this chicken gun.
Until one day we’re heavily testing deathmatch on a new build and pandemonium breaks out in the multiplayer test bay. About five machines’ speakers start putting out this big, loud thumping sound. Two testers, one of them me, bust into hysterical laughter and can simply not speak. One tester asks if we’re all experiencing the same sound bug. Another just wondering what the hell is happening. The sound stops and the two of us gasping for air choke out two fateful words, “Super Chicken”
Turns out the chicken gun had a very rare chance of turning you into a giant super chicken! The thumping sound was the sound of its giant feet that you could hear halfway across the map and all the way across the QA department. At first everyone thought we were nuts and needed a day off and some sleep, which was certainly true, but we did see the super chicken. Eventually through more testing we encountered super chicken more. Turned out Raven gave the super chicken one hit point, so it made you very vulnerable, like the ordinary chicken. But that’s not all, Super Chicken had an attack value of 999, so it could one hit kill any one, regardless of armor or power up. So now, on the rare moment being super chicken made you kamikaze run into people to try to peck their faces off.
It was awesome. I believe when we reported it to Raven, Rick Johnson just chuckled and said he couldn’t believe we had not found it sooner. Still some of the most fun I’ve ever had in a multiplayer game and not just because of Super Chicken.
It was also one of the best test teams. Almost everyone was eventually promoted and as far as I know are still working in the industry. Go Cougars!
Until one day we’re heavily testing deathmatch on a new build and pandemonium breaks out in the multiplayer test bay. About five machines’ speakers start putting out this big, loud thumping sound. Two testers, one of them me, bust into hysterical laughter and can simply not speak. One tester asks if we’re all experiencing the same sound bug. Another just wondering what the hell is happening. The sound stops and the two of us gasping for air choke out two fateful words, “Super Chicken”
Turns out the chicken gun had a very rare chance of turning you into a giant super chicken! The thumping sound was the sound of its giant feet that you could hear halfway across the map and all the way across the QA department. At first everyone thought we were nuts and needed a day off and some sleep, which was certainly true, but we did see the super chicken. Eventually through more testing we encountered super chicken more. Turned out Raven gave the super chicken one hit point, so it made you very vulnerable, like the ordinary chicken. But that’s not all, Super Chicken had an attack value of 999, so it could one hit kill any one, regardless of armor or power up. So now, on the rare moment being super chicken made you kamikaze run into people to try to peck their faces off.
It was awesome. I believe when we reported it to Raven, Rick Johnson just chuckled and said he couldn’t believe we had not found it sooner. Still some of the most fun I’ve ever had in a multiplayer game and not just because of Super Chicken.
It was also one of the best test teams. Almost everyone was eventually promoted and as far as I know are still working in the industry. Go Cougars!
Mark Twain's Galactic Avenger? Man, sounds like a sequel to Apocalypse Cow...
I remember the chicken thing in Heretic. That game got played a bit around the offices of SingleTrac. I didn't play it so much myself - I think I was hooked on some flight sim or another at the time. But I remember getting turned into a chicken.
I remember the chicken thing in Heretic. That game got played a bit around the offices of SingleTrac. I didn't play it so much myself - I think I was hooked on some flight sim or another at the time. But I remember getting turned into a chicken.
I loved the one in Flood on the Amiga where if you repeatedly fired the flamethrower in quick succession, it would turn into a useless chicken. Utter brilliance.
The flamethrower turned into a chicken?
I never played that one. I only played a few games on the Amiga, as I never had one myself. I wanted it for the GAMES!!!! There was a flight sim called F-18 Interceptor or something like that which was AWESOME for its time.
I never played that one. I only played a few games on the Amiga, as I never had one myself. I wanted it for the GAMES!!!! There was a flight sim called F-18 Interceptor or something like that which was AWESOME for its time.
I think my favorite easter egg was sonic the hedgehog 2, you could listen to a special sequence of sound effects in the games options and it enabled you to enter the debug mode. While playing the game, if you pressed B on the controller, you could create anything in the level...killzones, rings, enemies, moving parts of the environment, even create your own "sonic" track. Equally as imppressive, was if you collected 50 rings and jumped, sonic would turn white and become super sonic...anything that touched him died, and he didn't run, just hovered across the ground.
I found that egg when I was like 8 years old and I still remember the correct sequence of sound effects!
I found that egg when I was like 8 years old and I still remember the correct sequence of sound effects!
You know, that might be something that's been lost in the Internet age - the thrill of finding these easter eggs for yourself (or via word-of-mouth). Nowadays, once one person finds it, the entire world knows about it within 24 hours. Or at least the subset of the world that cares.
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