Easter eggs in games: hidden pearls for connoisseurs

Easter eggs, or hidden jokes and messages from developers, is a long-standing art and tradition in software development. It is believed that the first Easter egg appeared in the Starship 1 game , released in 1977. And since then, for 40 years, developers have hidden their news in a myriad of programs and even computer equipment. And what a great way to have fun or perpetuate your name in history (well, at least for a few years)! And today we decided to recall some funny easter eggs hidden in games.

Quite often, Easter eggs in games are not particularly original. For example, veterans could find in Doom 2 (1994) just such an installation dedicated to the “father of shooters” John Romero. To kill the final boss, you had to charge from the rocket launcher right in the face of John.

Or here's the inconspicuous door to Fallout 3 (2008) - simply, plainly, like a man:

And in a completely fresh Ghost Recon: Wildlands (2017), when you click on the button with the provocative inscription “Do not press me”, the player receives rockets that explode with innocuous multi-colored maple leaves.

But the authors of Diablo 2 (2000) approached the question of Easter eggs with fiction: if Wirth's Foot and the City Portal Book were placed in the Horadric Cube, a teleport would appear leading to a secret level filled with crowds of hind-legged cows and armed with spears and axes. All this madness was accompanied by the rare dull sounds of “mu-mu” made by some peasant.

The developers of Diablo 3 (2012) picked up the banner of their colleagues. The player needed to mingle with the ghost of the Cow King, after which you could get to the magical land to kill the giant unicorns from the My Little Pony universe.

The authors of Red Faction: Armageddon (2011) went even further. Here, the main character can get himself a very effective weapon: a little unicorn from My Little Pony, who kills enemies with a rainbow from his ass. As they say, now Phuknu is quiet, but deadly.

In the console game Dark Souls (2011), a player from the location “Undead Asylum” took a giant raven. But it was possible to go back there to fight with more powerful enemies and find the ring, which gives a bonus in battles in the water, swamps and mud swamps. To do this, after the battle with the boss, get to the crow's nest and pretend hose an egg. After a while, a bird flew in and took you to new battles.

Starting from 8:45:

In 2001, for the Xbox and Dreamcast gaming consoles, the Shenmue 2 role-playing game was released. In it, the developers hid a very funny Easter egg: it was necessary to search the game card, meet three “nicknames”, find a bronze medal and win in a street fight, and then you can had access to illegal duck races. If it was not enough for you to just bet on the winner, then you could perform a number of other absurd tasks, and then you were allowed to participate .

We paid tribute to the feathered and authors of Gears of War 3 (2011). If you lift the elevator, go to each of the four pipes and press X, then a cock appears. And when a player happily shot him, he turned into a hefty golden (?) Golem-rooster.

In Easter Eggs Hitman: Absolution (2012) are also involved birds, but this time the necks. If you shoot all the birds in a deserted location, then a lame peasant is knocked down by an ice-maker's minibus that appeared out of nowhere.

In the older Hitman: Blood money (2006) it was possible to arrange a strange flash mob: if at a village wedding near the house to shoot a “lucky coin”, then a crowd of men in shorts, who began to applaud in silence, resorted. It is difficult to say what the authors wanted to say.

This Easter eggs in Halo 3 (2007) is not insane, but rather frightening. On the Sierra 117 map in an inconspicuous cave you can find just such a “monkey” family:

If in GTA: San Andreas (2004) to climb to the top of the Gant Bridget bridge, it will immediately become obvious that there are no easter eggs here:

There is such a common stamp - "the heart of something." For example, the heart of darkness, the heart of the country, the heart of the car. In GTA IV, developers took it literally and made the heart of the city. And they placed it not anyhow where, but inside the Statue of Liberty.

GTA series is generally rich in Easter eggs. Buyers of the special and collectible editions of GTA V (2014) received a paper card with the game. If you illuminate it with ultraviolet light, you could find some funny messages and hidden tags, where you can see a UFO in the game.

And in the mission of the prologue under the railway bridge you can find an alien frozen in the ice:

“The one who understood life is not in a hurry”: in Metal Gear Solid 3 (2004), you could kill the final boss with the chasers The End in two ways: actually kill, or save, wait two weeks, and then boot up and find that the enemy died from old age.

In the next game of the series, Metal Gear Solid 4 (2008), the developers also paid tribute to the subject of aliens, depicting a characteristic circle of wrinkled grass.

In Mirror's Edge (2008), one could contemplate a giant rat. To do this, in the “part D” of the level, Kate needed to shoot first at the driver of the police van, and then at the center of the red and white mark.

In the action game Saints Row 2 (2008), the giant purple rabbit rising from the depths of the sea became an easter egg. To find it, you had to visit a chain of islands not indicated on the map.

The developers of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 (2012) were no strangers to nostalgia for the warm tube arcades in the style of the 1980s: on the Nuke Town map, where the player needs to shoot all human mannequins, there is a stand where you can play an 8-bit arcade game.

Also paid tribute to the classic game authors of the medieval mochilova For Honor (2017). In the background of the Sanctury map, almost on the verge of visibility, you can see a tribute album of the legendary Mortal Kombat - two fighters on the bridge, ready for a fight.

Since we touched on the topic of tributes / nostalgia, here is another Easter egg from the same opera: in Fallout: New Vegas, in a rocky desert there is a rusty refrigerator in which lies the skeleton of Indiana Jones. It can be recognized by the felt hat. Well, even old Jones could not survive a nuclear war.

In a funny way, the developers of Serious Sam 3 (2012) perpetuated themselves. At the level of Drak Bride, it was possible to contrive and get into a secret location, where huge dudes with brains outward and heart-shaped heads roam.

And finally, the easter egg on the Nintendo Switch Pro controller is thnx2 / allgamefans!