Here are the coolest easter eggs in Gaming!
7 - Gears Of War 3: Beard Mode
Gears of War 3 features MEN.
MANLY MEN.
WITH MANLY BEARDS.
Or at least they should be.
In fact, despite the INCREDIBLE MANLINESS on display, there isn’t much facial hair
to be seen.
But fortunately, Gearbox Studios included a method to fix this terrible oversight.
By sticking close to Dom during the prologue, the player can trigger a special event in
which, for the remainder of the game, EVERYONE will have a Dom beard.
Fenix has a MANLY Dom beard.
Jayson has a MANLY Dom beard.
Even Anya has a manly Dom beard!
And if we’re entirely honest, it really does bring out her eyes.
This is a good start…
But they didn’t stop there.
Oh no.
In the multiplayer map Clocktower, there are four statues of men with books.
Shoot the books, and their stony visages will briefly erupt into fire and forever be gifted
with magnificent stony beards…
At least until the end of the round.
Oh, and if you get all four, THE SUN ITSELF will grow a beard in honour of your incredible
achievement.
There’s probably something to be said about the potential lesson that Gearbox are attempting
to impart, which can be interpreted as ‘destroy books and you’ll become manly’...
But it’s very, very difficult to argue with with the results.
Now that’s MANLY global warming.
6 - Mortal Kombat: Free Arcade Options
From manly to miserly now: Did you know that the Mortal Kombat arcade machines could be
played for free?
No, neither did we.
But apparently it was always an option thanks to the inclusion of a hidden diagnostics mode
that has come to be known as the Ed Boon Menus, after the creator of the game.
Locked behind a fingertip-crushing button combo that requires pinpoint timing and accuracy,
this menu allows sneaky players to mess around with things like coin counters, enter their
initials onto the high-score board and to see all the endings to the game’s story-mode.
These menus existed in every version of the Mortal Kombat arcade machines, from the original
Mortal Kombat, all the way up to Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3…
If only we’d known about them sooner.
There’s a chance that we might have even managed to hold onto some of our pocket money.
Ahhhhh…..what could have been!
5 - Grand Theft Auto V - Thelma and Louise
The GTA series has always had it’s fair share of playful moments and hidden secrets.
The gigantic and grotesque ‘heart of the city’ easter egg from Grand Theft Auto 4
springs to memory almost immediately.
For a series that has mixed the gritty effects of street crime and low-level drug deals with
UFOs, jetpacks, and monster trucks, there really shouldn’t be much left that could
surprise gamers.
But should the player choose to approach a certain cliff-face in the Chilliad region
at between 7 and 8 at night, they’ll find themselves greeted by a whole lot of armed
(And presumably rather upset) police officers with weapons locked and loaded.
The cause for this disturbance is a dusty old convertible containing precisely two women,
two guitars and a relatively large mexican sombrero in the backseat.
Sound familiar?
These characters and their car are a fairly obvious shoutout to the 1991 film ‘Thelma
and Louise’.
Or more specifically, the ending to that particular film.
Should the player not interfere, the convertible will begin rolling closer and closer to the
edge of the cliff, until it flies off the Chilliad rock face and tumbles into the valley
below, exploding on the sharp desert boulders.
A sad end to a sad story, perhaps, but don’t get down.
There’s a good chance that they’ll respawn outside of Los Santos hospital with a little
less money in a few hours.
The police will have confiscated their guitars though...
And THAT’S the true tragedy!
4 - Doom 2 - Mr. Romero
Generally speaking, developers aren’t too shy about calling each other out in their
spare time.
Some of the most brutal smackdowns in development history can still be found lingering on in
the old timelines of Twitter, and there are more than a few feuds still going around today….but
one of the earliest examples of an Easter Egg actually involved a developer calling
himself out.
John Romero was one of the major names of id Software at the time of Doom 2’s release,
having written a significant number of their creation tools, and performing a fair bit
of level design too.
So it was perhaps fitting that he himself would prove to be the final boss of Doom 2.
Well, that’s not exactly true.
The final boss was technically a wall decorated with a massive horned skull that spawned a
bunch of missiles aimed at the player’s general location.
This final boss, known as the Icon of Sin, was beaten by firing rockets into a small
area exposing the brain of this boss.
But, by utilizing a noclip console command (essentially a cheat code), the player could
fly directly through the wall and what’s behind the wall.
They’d discover that behind the wall was John Romero’s decapitated head impaled on
a stick.
This was apparently the object that needed to take damage in order for the boss to be
defeated, and the game to be completed.
So this, combined with the Icon of Sin’s haunting screech being a heavily modified
soundbite of Romero saying “To win the game, you must kill me, John Romero!”, really
did make him the final boss.
Sort of.
This wasn’t, despite what you might imagine, a product of ego.
Several artists decided that it would be funny to sneak the decapitated head of one of their
bosses into the game, and one of the programmers had seized the opportunity and programmed
it into the game.
Upon discovering this, Romero just decided to go with the flow and recorded the distorted
line that was inserted into the game.
It just goes to show, a sense of humor can make the world of difference.
That and it’s a lot easier to fantasise about killing your boss when he goes along
with the idea.
If only everything were that easy.
3 - Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out - Head Ducking
Over the years, thousands of easter eggs have been created and implemented into games.
All it really takes is one bored developer with a little bit of creative leeway to insert
their own private little joke into a game, and an easter egg is born… so perhaps unsurprisingly,
quite a few slip by unnoticed, only to be discovered years or even decades later.
And, as it turns out, one of them was recently discovered in the now-ancient but still extremely
memorable game, Mike Tyson’s Punch Out.
For those of you who don’t know, the game is sort of a reprisal of the Rocky movie,
with the underdog and insurmountable odds.
Mac, the main character, is an underdog boxer that has to fight opponents from all over
the world.
For each opponent, there’s a specific way to beat him and sometimes there will be a
move that’ll render him immediately unconscious.
It could be a bash to the face as they move forward, or a sidestep jab at precisely the
right time…basically, each opponent has their own set of weaknesses to exploit.
Now the general timing and maneuvers involved in these TKOs are all known and well-documented
these days (Or so they assume), but it recently came to light that on one of the levels, when
up against the cheerfully-named Piston Honda, there’s a consistant tell present within
the audience.
Each and every time Honda’s weakness is exposed and a TKO is possible, one of the
bearded spectators will duck his head in the background.
A small, but vital clue, likely intended to make things a little easier for those players
having trouble dealing with Honda’s powerful yet reliable features and rugged design, all
for the low, low price of-
*ahem*, sorry.
I’m not sure what came over me.
Anyways, this is almost certainly not the last easter egg present within the old classic
games, and its discovery has sparked a fresh wave of digital prospectors, delving into
the code and mechanics of old games, in search of the next elusive timing clue or overlooked
graphical hint.
2 - NBA Jam Tournament Edition – Hidden Roster
Now occasionally, you may find yourself thinking “Gee, I sure do love playing as these NBA
stars, but I really wish that I could dunk on all these professional fools with a character
dressed up in a bright red mascot costume, partnered up with Hillary Clinton for the
rebound.”
Well, it turns out that you could do so all the way back in 1995.
NBA Jam: Tournament Edition was a two on two basketball game in which the player took control
of 2 of the best players on any NBA team in their quest to achieve the ultimate dunk.
Or three-pointer.
Or layup.
Basically, you were supposed to score more points than the opposing players.
Reportedly a solid game, NBA Jam’s Tournament Edition is primarily remembered today as having
featured a hilariously diverse cast of bonus and secret characters, ranging from the Fresh
Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff (A powerful combo, no doubt) to the frankly absurd inclusion
of Prince Charles.
Yes, the one with the big ears and the bigger mouth, that one.
Oh, and all three of the Beastie Boys are present in the game’s code too.
No one knows why…
Could it be Sabotage?!
1 - Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Many in the public won’t agree with this, but apparently there’s a simple, dark truth
in gaming that most acknowledge without ever truly considering it.
Animal abuse in video games is funny.
I know, it’s a bit disturbing, but the truth is that players have been enjoying smacking
around helpless little creatures for years.
From the fantastical dog-fighting rings of Pokemon to the simple joy of kicking a cow
to death in Runescape, the cruelty of gamers has been both facilitated and documented over
the past few decades….but things don’t always go in the gamer’s favour.
Sometimes, as in the case of this Zelda game, the animals get to have a little revenge.
Enter the Cucco.
The Cucco, for the uninitiated, is a domesticated white bird that exists within the various
magical realms of Zelda.
It’s supposedly flightless but also strong enough to almost lift an adolescent child
(Or teenager, depending on which entry in the series we’re talking about), allowing
them to glide to previously unreachable locations.
Strange creatures, to be certain, yet they’ve become a staple of the series, all from one
little easter egg.
First appearing in the 1992 entry to the series, Cuccos could be found in the otherwise unremarkable
Kakariko Village.
Effectively harmless, they seemed at first to serve no purpose beyond acting as wandering
scenery to spice up the town….right up until a player decided to get violent.
Upon a few consecutive sword strikes, the offended (And apparently unharmed) Cucco would
cry for its allies, and an unstoppable pack of screeching white cuccos would fly from
all angles across the screen and peck poor Link to death unless the player managed to
reach an exit in time.
Needless to say, after that horrifying experience, more than a few players thought twice about
kicking around livestock for no reason in this game…...at least until they had found
a save point first.
This particular easter egg has been reused and referenced quite a bit since its release,
both within the Legend of Zelda series, and in other games too.
The giant gold chicken bursting out of Gears of War 3’s vents certainly comes to mind
as one of the more vivid examples.
Here’s what’s next!