The 5 most epic computer Easter eggs

David M Williams
Monday, 13 April 2009 19:53

Business IT - Technology

Hot Coffee
The Grand Theft Auto (GTA) video gaming franchise has had its share of controversy. It’s been blamed for inspiring hoodlums to steal cars, shoot prostitutes and probably even for making radio stations play the same tunes over and over.

It almost seems fated that when GTA: San Andreas contained an Easter egg that this too would become the subject of litigation and government intervention.

It was revealed the game included a minigame where the main character and his various in-game girlfriends can engage in a wee bit of intercourse, the “game” aspect being your ability to change positions.

Now, the game’s authors claimed this minigame was inaccessible; although its code did ship with the release product there was no way – through playing the game normally – that you could see it.

Depending on your definition, perhaps this is not truly an Easter egg because a special modification was required to unlock the minigame. There was no series of obscure key presses here. The mod became known as Hot Coffee, playing on the fact the girlfriend invites your character in for “coffee” (nudge, nudge wink, wink.)

After being unlocked on the PC, gamers discovered how to enable it on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox ports too.

By mid July 2005 the game was re-rated as an adult game due to this very item, and was pulled from some shelves and even prevented from sale in certain markets.

Rockstar Games consequently re-released the title with the minigame totally removed and thus regained their original classification. No doubt this came at some considerable expense, but in this instance I’m willing to wager the free publicity more than made up for it and Rockstar, unlike their more staid software counterparts, had no qualms.

The face of Doom
No matter how serious any discussion of computer history may be, it can never overlook Doom. This game, following the already ground-breaking Castle Wolfenstein, is possibly the “Star Wars” of computer games.

Whether you personally enjoyed it or not isn’t important; it was a defining product. It shaped a generation, it shaped a genre.

Doom was such an unrestrained classic that there was no doubt it would spawn a sequel – named, aptly enough, Doom II.

Doom II’s final level pitches the player against an onslaught of horrible beasts and monsters. The key to success is to inflict enough damage to a large demon head against the wall.

Yet, the Easter egg here is that the demon head was purely a facade. The real boss of the level and the game was hidden inside a sealed container. To the honest player there was no peeking. Enter the magic keystrokes idclip – turning on “no clipping” mode – and you can walk through walls.

Walking through this particular wall reveals game designer John Romero’s head on a stick. To add to the effect it’s Romero’s voice uttered by the demon, although reversed and distorted, but actually saying “To win this game you must kill me, John Romero.”

Now, that’s definitely an extreme case of injecting yourself into the action!


What do you think? Each of these five Easter eggs is, I believe, important in their own ways along the history of computing. Can you think of anything significant that you feel was unjustly overlooked? Or, perhaps some of these evoked fond memories for you. Leave a note below and tell us about it.

Happy Easter!