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What are your favorite Easter Eggs?

This was inspired by the Anthropic Buddy thing, which was really just hidden code, but it reminded me of an Easter Egg. So I found in a BBC article the very first Easter Egg. It was on Atari in the game "Adventure" and involved you picking up a single pixel and taking it somewhere (single pixels were enormous). When you got there, there was text telling you the name of the person who created the game. The developer did this because Atari refused to give developers credit for games. Here's a picture: (This was my favorite Atari game, btw. My memory may be creating this, but I'm pretty sure a friend of mine and I found the Easter Egg, but only after hearing about it from someone else)

1529569-adventure-atari-2600-the-first-easter-egg-in-a-video-game-create.png


Somewhere, not sure where, was mention of an Easter Egg in Excel 97 which is widely described as a fully functional flight simulator. Instead of an Easter Egg in a game, it was a game that was the Easter Egg. I found a couple of videos of this, but they didn't match the description of what I would consider a "fully....simulator". Both videos were very poorly done. There probably was a full flight simulator there, but they didn't show it.

The last one for me is my favorite because of my love for Resident Evil 4. In RE8, which was similar in a lot of ways to 4, almost an homage, if you went to the vendor over and over, his voice would change and say "Watch ya' buyin?" exactly like the vendor in RE4. Maybe my favorite line in all of gaming came from that vendor. My strategy was to always carry a rocket launcher, which cost 10k. I bought a lot of them, and every time I bought one, he said, "Stranger, stranger! Now that's a weapon!"
 
Somewhere, not sure where, was mention of an Easter Egg in Excel 97 which is widely described as a fully functional flight simulator. Instead of an Easter Egg in a game, it was a game that was the Easter Egg. I found a couple of videos of this, but they didn't match the description of what I would consider a "fully....simulator". Both videos were very poorly done. There probably was a full flight simulator there, but they didn't show it
You might be expecting too much out of an extra part of a spreadsheet program


It appears to just be a credits screen. Previous ones were mazes.


Shame MS stopped doing all these after a while.

I liked them when they were rare. Now almost every game is full of references to other things, and people get confused if its actually original.

I will think about what my favourite one is.
 
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You might be expecting too much out of an extra part of a spreadsheet program
Actually I wasn't. I watched that video before I posted, and it was made by a child and impatiently just whirls around with the speed of the video increased, and I couldn't make anything out of it. It looked like an insane person discovered a "fly" cheat code.

However, here's a far better video, and this is basically exactly what I was expecting. Tron-looking but 3d map with turning like you are in a plane.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsxGWO39gDI&t
 
I liked them when they were rare. Now almost every game is full of references to other things, and people get confused if its actually original.

I don't consider that sort of thing an easter egg if they just reference something.

By the way, you know I'm an old man, right? My dad went to the store and spent what would be almost $1000 today to get the Magnavox Odyssey which had 2 games, Table Tennis (pong) and Shooting Gallery, which included a sort-of-flashlight shaped like a gun and was actually made by Nintendo. I don't care and am mostly just picking on you, but you always explain things like I wasn't there. I had the first console, I had the first computer, etc. I'm so old! 😱

Shooting Gallery was Wii before the Wii. First cheese/cheat in my gaming career was aiming the gun at the overhead light.
 
My comment about them when they are rare isn't talking about the windows ones, I mean in games. They should be something you are surprised to find, not something you expect to find.

Or the ones that took years to find


really, you that old?

😀
🤣 I 100 percent intended to say "home" computer, but I'm in bed using the onscreen keyboard, and I type so slowly my mind just wanders off.....
 
It was terrible. You uploaded (and saved) programs with a standard cassette tape recorder--with the noise.
I was there too. I remember. Load a game and play it once... rewind tape to play again. My 1st one at least had a cartridge port so I could play Asteroids without using a tape.

At least back then you could type a game out from a magazine and not be there all day. You can't do that now.
 
I was there too. I remember. Load a game and play it once... rewind tape to play again. My 1st one at least had a cartridge port so I could play Asteroids without using a tape.

At least back then you could type a game out from a magazine and not be there all day. You can't do that now.
Maybe you could. I couldn't type. We made a few games ourselves, very simple games. One problem was that everything had to be saved in a variable. There was no onboard saving, at least that's what I thought at the time. I might have just missed something.
 
We have threads on what is your first computer so I won't drag us off topic much more
 
See also


 
We have threads on what is your first computer so I won't drag us off topic much more
I'll have to think on this. There have been a lot.

My friend had the Intellivision. They actually had a digital store. You could get something from your cable company that would allow you to download games.
 
It was terrible. You uploaded (and saved) programs with a standard cassette tape recorder--with the noise.
Yeah, but at least with an Atari you could then put in an audio tape and listen to it through the computer. I suppose you could also put it in a proper cassette player next to a computer, but that isn't nearly as cool.

SO, back to the topic...

First, yeah, the Warren Robinett bit was very fun to find! The pixel was transparent AND was inside a room with no entrance inside a maze (you had to use the magic bridge to get in). There were tons of fun things you could do in that game. I could make a decent argument for it being the first immersive simulator game.

One I really loved was in Spore. I was in space and the game started playing a tune I hadn't heard before... except I had... somewhere? Where was this song from?? It took quite a while, but I finally remembered M.U.L.E. from the mid-80's - this was its theme song!! Instant nostalgia rush!
 
Yeah, but at least with an Atari you could then put in an audio tape and listen to it through the computer. I suppose you could also put it in a proper cassette player next to a computer, but that isn't nearly as cool.
Pretty sure the sound came through your TV, but you may be talking about the 2nd Atari Computer. We didn't have that one. We had a computer, but all I know is that it wasn't an Apple because that's where all the good games were at that time.
 

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