If you solve the puzzle, the floor becomes a disco and a disco version of the Star Wars theme plays. One of the doors in a hallway on Kamino in Lego Star Wars leads to a room where there is a puzzle to be completed.Leaving it in but buried so that it was inaccessible to anyone who wasn't cheating was evidently the compromise they came up with. Evidently, not everyone at Nintendo was on board with the contest, so the room ended up getting added and removed multiple times as the game went back and forth between decisionmakers who thought Chris ought to get his room, and those who thought the contest was bunk and shouldn't be honored. Because it's contested whether the Chris Houlihan Room is meant to be in the game at all.Many players are still unaware of its existence, due to the difficulty it takes to get there: outside of cheating, it can only be accessed if the game fails to load an area. "The Chris Houlihan Room" is filled with Rupees (the monetary unit of the game) and a small plaque identifying it. Nintendo Power magazine held a contest and the winner, Chris Houlihan, had a secret room named in his honor placed in the game. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past contains one of the most unusual Easter eggs in gaming history.While Atari hired a programmer to find where Robinett's name was in the code, they let it slide Robinett later asked the programmer what he would have done if told to delete the code, and was told that he would have switched it to "Replaced by (programmer's name)". An Atari executive coined the term when he compared finding the hidden room to "hunting for Easter eggs".This was in an era when Atari refused to put the names of game creators on any of its game packaging, and it neatly took up the leftover memory on the 4K ROM comprising the cartridge. By finding an item hidden deep in a maze of the same color and bringing it into the right room, one could move though a previously impenetrable barrier, where the text "Created by Warren Robinett" could be found. Trope Codifier: The most famous early Easter Egg in a video game (to the extent where it's often mistakenly believed to be the first) was Warren Robinett's famous hidden signature room in the Adventure cartridge for the Atari 2600.Both Alien Invasion and Video Whizball (1978) also had a code to display their programmer's last name (Reid-Selth, for Brad Reid-Selth) on the screen. The Fairchild Channel F console (released in 1976) came with a "Demo Cart", in which a key combination could bring the programmer's name, Michael Glass, up on screen.For in-story Easter Egg dates that reference original air/release dates, see Significant Reference Date.Įxamples of Easter Egg include: Video Games Ur Example Compare Bilingual Bonus, Freeze-Frame Bonus and What the Hell, Player?. a reference to the company's founding date or Master Chief making cameos on Xbox consoles) unlike the more elaborate developer credits and minigames the company's employees have included within Windows and Office.Įaster eggs aren't just found in games anymore: the term is also used for a variety of hidden content, such as unadvertised DVD Bonus Content.Īn article on why Easter eggs exist (focusing on Magic: The Gathering, but applicable to all games) is available here.įor time-sensitive Easter eggs, see Holiday Mode. This hasn't completely stopped the company from incorporating them into their products however, although later Microsoft Easter eggs tend to be much simpler in nature (e.g. Congratulations! You found an easter egg on this page! For instance, Microsoft has largely disallowed Easter eggs as part of its Trustworthy Computing Initiative, under the simple rationale that a user should be able to trust that the computer he's using is reliable and reasonably error-free. For security reasons (and concerns about malicious programmers inserting undocumented and destructive code), most companies don't allow Easter eggs to appear in their software anymore, but as individual programmers now receive full credit for their work, it's a moot point. The earliest Easter eggs were mostly credits pages, possibly to allow the programmers themselves to prove authorship to friends. Originally, Easter eggs were inserted by programmers for companies whose policy forbid them from receiving individual credit for their work. Programs far too numerous to mention have included Easter eggs-everything from Microsoft Office to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. They're secrets, intended to tickle the fancy of those who discover them. Y The little bits of stuff programmers left behind in the game.
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