The first Easter Egg was inserted into an Atari game in the late 1970s. At the time, Atari games were coded by single individuals because in reality they were pretty simple. Most of the time the aim of the game was to manipulate a small square around other squares. One of the game coders, Warren Robinett (creator of the first interactive console game called “Adventure”) was not happy with the fact that he would receive no credit so he hid a small pixel in a game that unlocked a room which said “Created by Warren Robinett.” Warren told nobody and the game was produced and shipped with the Easter Egg intact. It wasn’t until kids all over the world discovered the hidden room that Atari learned what he did.
I’m not old enough to have played these kinds of games much as a kid, but as I got older I sought out friends with ancient gaming systems to get a feel for what the Colecovision world was like. Easter Eggs in the 80s were either accidentally discovered or learned of by word of mouth which made them a lot more fun. The internet kind of spoils it these days. Easter Eggs would turn up all over the pace as I got more and more into computers and you could find them all over the Windows operating system. It seems that Windows 7 is the end of an era because no “real” Easter Eggs have been discovered on the operating system
Though Microsoft isn’t having fun anymore, Google is. There are quite a few Easter Eggs on Google if you know where to look. Below is a list of my favorites that I’ve accidentally discovered or heard about from friends. As usual, all of these start with a search so go to Google and:
- Search “/”
- Search “anagram”
- Search “define anagram”
- Search “do a barrel roll”
- Search “recursion”
- Search “tilt”
- Search “kerning” (you have to be observant and know what kerning is to see the Easter Egg)
- Search “Bacon number [name]” to see a person’s Bacon number. Hitler’s is 2.
- On the Google homepage click “I’m feeling lucky” with no text in the box. A random “I’m feeling” will be selected which you can then click and go see some interesting stuff.
- Google translate gives you the option to beatbox if you paste the text “pv zk bschk” and select “translate from English.” Hover over the speaker icon and instead of “translate” it will say “beatbox”
Enjoy!
