As long as there have been video games, there have been secrets hidden within them. There are some things like secret endings to find, but Easter Eggs are more about the fun of finding them than actually adding something to the game. It is a tradition that began at the beginning of the video game console generation timeline and persists to this day. Fans love scouring the biggest open-world games and looking into the code of the best indies to see if there’s some secret waiting to be found and shared. We can’t wait to see what Easter Eggs are found in all the upcoming video games, but for now, we wanted to look back and round up all the best ones from gaming history.
Adventure – Secret credits
We couldn’t start with any other Easter Egg than the one widely considered to be the first one in gaming history. Adventure is a very basic Atari game where you guide a block of pixels around a sprawling map trying to reach a chalace. This was in a period when games didn’t have credits, so no one knew who was making them besides the publisher. The solo developer of Adventure wanted to tell the world he made the game, but had to do it in a secret way that Atari wouldn’t see and remove. So, Warren Robinett made a secret room in the game that requires players to carry an invisible pixel to a specific place to access where he wrote out “Created by Warren Robinett.” He wasn’t sure anyone would be able to discover it, but a boy named Adam Clayton managed to somehow figure it out and even wrote to Atari to share his discovery. Thankfully, Robinett had already left the company at that time.
Diablo 2 – The cow level
Some Easter Eggs are born out of rumors, such as the cow level. The urban legend went that players in the original Diablo could click on a herd of cows in town enough times to create a secret portal to a cow level. Fans even went so far as to create fake screenshots of this supposed cow level. While there was no truth to this, Blizzard took notice and actually included a cow level in Diablo 2. To find it, players would need to transmute a Tome of Town Portal and Writ’s Leg in the Horadrix Cube while inside the Rogue Encampment. Trying to mix these items anywhere else in the game will fail. Once done, players can go through the portal into the Moo Moo Farm where a mob of deadly bovine will attack wielding halberds until The Cow King appears as the final boss. Since then, other secret themed levels have appeared in most Blizzard titles.
A Link to the Past – The Chris Houlihan room
The Legend of Zelda games are always jam-packed with secrets, even the original on NES. These are usual secret items, heart pieces, or other collectibles. A Link to the Past has one very unique Easter Egg that was given out as a contest prize during a Nintendo Power promotion. Players could send in a photo of themselves fighting a specific boss from Final Fantasy for a chance to win getting their name put into a future Nintendo title. As it turns out, that game was A Link to the Past and Chris Houlihan was the winner, but accessing his special room is incredibly cryptic and feels more like a glitch than a true secret. To reach it, players have to confuse the game’s coordinates to fool it into putting Link into this failsafe room. If you pull it off, you can collect a ton of rupees and read a little message on the wall that reads “My name is Chris Houlihan. This is my top secret room. Keep it between us, OK?”
Dead Space – Chapter name spoilers
Spoiler alert for Dead Space! Sometimes an Easter Egg isn’t something that takes a lot of searching or performing a series of cryptic actions to find. Dead Space has a few of those, to be sure, but it hides its best Easter Egg in plain sight. The concept of the game is that you play as an engineer attempting to repair a ship where his girlfriend Nicole is stationed after it is overrun by zombie-like aliens. The game is broken up into 12 named chapters, starting with New Arrivals, Intensive Care, Course Correction, and so on. What is only apparent once you’ve beaten the game and looked back is that the first letter of each chapter spells out a big reveal from the end of the game. All lined up, the chapters spell out NICOLE IS DEAD.
Batman Arkham Asylum – Arkham City plans
One of the most common Easter Eggs is a tease for an eventual sequel. We didn’t know there was going to be another Arkham game after Asylum until it was revealed, but we could have if anyone had managed to find this Easter Egg before the developers broke down and told us about it. Once Arkham City was already revealed and it looked like no one would find it, Rocksteady told us that there was one specific wall in the game that could be blown up with three explosive charges. There was no other indication that this wall could be broken, which is why no one managed to find it. Once we had the clue, we found a secret room with the blueprints for Arkham City.
Wave Race: Blue Storm – Insulting announcer
Wave Race: Blue Storm was the last entry in this jetski series released in 2001 for the GameCube. Like any great racing game, it featured an announcer who would hype up the players and cheer them on as they raced and pulled off tricks. 9 years after the game came out, one fan discovered a code that would replace all the announcer’s dialogue with sarcastic comments. By inputting a specific button combination on the audio settings screen, you would start to hear lines like “Just because you’re going around in circles, doesn’t make you a big wheel” or “Your wins are like diamonds, kid…very rare.”
Halo: Reach – Community spotlight
As the final Halo title developed by Bungie, the team made it a point to include an entire room of Easter Eggs to thank the passionate community. In the game’s final level, there’s a way to hit a secret button outside the bounds of the level to open a hidden door into what is known as the Tribute Room. Once inside, there are several terminals that can be accessed that detail some of the most popular fan projects and communities related to the series. These include Halo.Bungie.org, Red vs. Blue, Warthog Jump, and the developer’s forum moderation team. It is a fun way to see how much Bungie appreciates its community.
