Easter egg (virtual)
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- For the decorated eggs given out to celebrate the Easter holiday, see Easter egg.
In computer programming, the underlying motivation is probably to put an individual, almost artistic touch on an intellectual product which is by its nature standardised and functional, although Warren Robinett's motivation was more likely to gain recognition, since video game programmers were routinely uncredited then. It is analogous to signature motifs such as Diego Rivera including himself in his murals or Alfred Hitchcock including himself in the opening scenes of his movies (the latter known as a cameo).
Computer-related Easter eggs
In computing, Easter eggs are messages, graphics, sound effects, or an unusual change in program behavior, that occur in a program in response to some undocumented set of commands, mouse clicks, keystrokes or other stimuli intended as a joke or to display program credits. An early use of the term Easter egg was to describe a message hidden in the object code of a program as a joke, intended to be found by persons disassembling or browsing the code.
One well-known early Easter egg found in some Unix operating systems caused them to respond to the command "make love" with "not war?". This same behavior occurred on the RSTS/E operating system where the command "make" was used to invoke the TECO text editor, and TECO would also provide this response. Many personal computers have much more elaborate eggs hidden in ROM, including lists of the developers' names, political exhortations, snatches of music, and (in one case) images of the entire development team. The 1997 version of Microsoft Excel contained a hidden flight simulator ; the 1997 version of Word, a pinball game . The Palm operating system has elaborately hidden animations and other surprises. The Debian GNU/Linux package tool apt-get has an Easter egg involving an ASCII cow when variants on "apt-get moo" are typed into the shell. Another notable easter egg is from The MathWorks MATLAB: the why' command provides succinct random answers to almost any question:
% why % because the not very smart system engineer insisted on it
Non-software
While computer-related Easter eggs are often found in software, occasionally they exist in hardware or firmware of certain devices. On some PCs, the BIOS ROM contains Easter eggs. Notable examples include several early Apple Macintosh models which had pictures of the development team in the ROM (accessible by pressing the programmer's switch and jumping to a specific memory address, or other equally obscure means), and some errant 1993 AMI BIOS that on 13 November proceeded to play "Happy Birthday" via the PC speaker over and over again instead of booting. Perhaps the most famous example of a hardware Easter egg is in the HP ScanJet 5P, where the device will play the Ode to Joy or Für Elise by varying the stepper motor speed if users power the device up with the scan button depressed. Another fun Easter egg is found in the Kurzweil K2x musical keyboard series (K2500, K2600 and others): if users type "Pong" while in search mode they can play the game Pong.Chip-based Easter eggs
Many integrated circuit designers have included hidden artwork, including assorted images, phrases, developer initials, logos, and so on. This artwork, like the rest of the chip, is reproduced in each copy by lithography and etching. These are visible only when the chip package is opened and examined under magnification, so they are, in a sense, more of an "inside joke" than most of the Easter eggs included in software.
Originally, the Easter Eggs served a useful purpose as well. Not unlike cartographers who may insert trap streets or nonexistent landscape features as a copyright infringement detection aid, IC designers may also build non-functional circuits on their chips to help them catch infringers. Easter eggs, however benign, if directly copied by the defendant, could be used in mask work infringement litigation. Changes to the copyright laws (in the USA, the Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984, and similar laws in other countries) now grant automatic exclusive rights to mask works, and the Easter egg no longer serves any practical use.
Video game Easter eggs
Easter eggs in computer and video games are distinguished from cheat codes which allow players to cheat — see Minesweeper for an example.
The tradition of including Easter eggs in video games has created small sections of gaming fandom that are as devoted to finding Easter eggs as they are to playing games as they are intended. In Taito's 1986 arcade game Land-Sea-Air Squad, some of the destructible buildings yielded a winged angel and 20,000 points if hit the right number of times. One of the most famous Easter eggs was an actual chocolate Easter egg hidden in a secret room in '. This was referenced in the sequel ' by a sign on top of a tower of a Golden Gate Bridge-clone that reads "There are no Easter eggs up here. Go away."
Another very famous Easter egg is the "Megg" from the video game Halo. It is an elaborate sequence that allows players to see a heart with an M in the middle, made with blood splatters. It is called the Megg after Megan, the girlfriend of one of the programmers. The Megg was never supposed to be seen by any one except him and his girlfriend.
Another example, though less famous, would be the ones that can be found in the popular Valve game, Counter Strike. For example, in the level "Estate", when dead (in Free-View mode), players can slide under the house (using the mouse to direct, and the keyboard to go forward and backwards), to see a cube-shaped Easter egg containing the author's names and one of the programmers' pictures.
In the Nintendo 64 classic, Perfect Dark, pieces of cheese that had no purpose or explanation could be found in every level.
Some computer-era pinball games also included Easter eggs, triggered by pressing the flipper and start buttons in certain sequences. For example, The Addams Family pinball game included two Easter eggs showing extended credits and chainsaw-wielding cows.
Based on information from the Jargon File.
Compact disc and DVD Easter eggs
Some compact discs include hidden features which may be called Easter eggs, such as screensavers for a computer which can only be accessed if the CD is played in a CD-ROM drive, or hidden tracks. An example of the latter is the album Nevermind by Nirvana: at the end of the final track there is a period of silence, after which the unlisted song 'Endless, Nameless" appears. Another example of this is the The Black Eyed Peas CD, Elephunk, wherein the last track, "Where Is the Love?", has approximately 15 seconds of silence followed by a full song. This is also the case with U2's The Best of 1980-1990 album. After the final song, about a minute of silence is followed by the song October. The 1994 Live CD Throwing Copper also has a hidden song at the end, unlisted on both the track listing and the lyric sheet. Same as Good Charlotte's CD "The Chronicles Of Life And Death", after the last track there's a long silence then the song "Wounded" starts.
Possibly, however, the first ever Easter Egg on record was on The Beatles' 1969 LP Abbey Road. Original sleeve pressings list The End as being the last track on the album. However, after a break of about 12 seconds, a short piece called Her Majesty appears. The surprise was spoilt however for CD buyers as this track is included in the sleeve listings.
Using a more unusual method of hiding tracks, the album Factory Showroom by They Might Be Giants contains a short song before the beginning of track one; the CD has to be "rewound" approximately a minute and a half. This feat is accomplished by placing the audio data in the "pregap" between Index 0 and 1 of the disc. Other examples of this include the Rammstein album Reise, Reise, where if the album is rewound 38 seconds before the first track, a segment from a flight recorder recording is heard; the British Sea Power album Open Season where, rewound 2:31, an organ version of the song "How Will I Ever Find My Way Home" known to the fans as "How Will I Ever Find My Organ" or "Wilde Is a Wanker" is played; and the 2 Many DJ's album "As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2", where a remix of Kylie Minogue's "Can't Get You Out of My Head" appears before the first track. On Muse's album Hullabaloo you can hear the intro of the concert, the poem What's He Building by Tom Waits, in the pregap.
Some CD authoring software, such as K3b, allows users to create Audio CDs with the first track hidden.
Even more prevalent are Easter eggs in DVD releases of movies; these are often in the form of hidden trailers, documentaries, or deleted scenes, and are accessed by manipulation of the disc's interactive menus. An example is the 2000 DVD release of James Cameron's 1989 feature film The Abyss, which has at least nine Easter eggs, including at least three different trailers for Aliens and two for True Lies, two other James Cameron films. More elaborate eggs include that in the 2002 release of Christopher Nolan's 2000 reverse-time thriller Memento, which plays the scenes of the movie in conventional chronological order. The 2-disc version of The Incredibles has many easter eggs, most of which can be accessed on different screens by clicking the omnidroid that appears (after a little while) in the upper right hand corner. Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate features several hidden trailers for the film.
The deluxe editions of The Lord of the Rings feature the following Easter eggs:
- Jack Black's parody of the "Council of Elrond" scene
- Gollum's "award acceptance" speech
- A comic interview with Elijah Wood
- A trailer for ''
- A comic interview with director Peter Jackson
Most DVD releases of George Lucas' films include blooper reels or hidden videos that can only be accessed by entering "1138" on the DVD remote when the "THX" logo has been highlighted. This is an in-joke referring to his first film, THX 1138.
In the movie Dumb and Dumber, an Easter egg in the form of an actor's commentary on a scene is accessed in the special features menu, and moving the cursor to an invisible icon that looks like an Easter egg when highlighted.
DVD releases of television series can also feature Easter eggs, particularly The Simpsons. Moving the cursor to a T-shirt Bart is wearing, for example, gives viewers a news broadcast about the underground manufacture of illegal Simpsons shirts.
In order to distinguish between different editions of the same film, some distributors have taken to listing Easter eggs in lists of "extra features" on the packaging and promotional material; some do not consider Easter eggs advertised in this way to be true Easter eggs.
Security Concerns
Because of the increase in malware, many companies and government offices forbid the use of software containing Easter eggs for security reasons. With the rise of cybercrime and the prevalence of the Easter egg's cousin, the logic bomb, there is now concern that if the programmer could slip in undocumented code, then the software cannot be trusted. This is of particular concern in offices where personal or confidential information is stored, making it sensitive to theft and ransom. For this reason, many developers have stopped the practice of adding Easter eggs to their software. Microsoft, who has in the past created some of the largest and most elaborate Easter eggs such as the ones in Microsoft Office, no longer allows Easter eggs. This is in large part due to its status as a founding member of the Trusted Computing Group.Notes
See also
External links
- [Policy Larry Osterman's WebLog] – Microsoft software design engineer Larry Osterman explains Microsoft's the Easter Policy
- [Easter eggs and the Trusted Computing Base] – Networld World article outlining the concern over Easter eggs
- [Easter Egg Archive] – Up-to-date lists and discussions of Easter eggs, both digital and found in art, books, etc.
- [Egg Heaven 2000] – Computer Easter Eggs Database
- [Chip Fun: Microchip-based Easter eggs] – From the National Museum of American History; photos by Integrated Circuit Engineering Corp.
- [DVD Easter Eggs] – Lists many Easter eggs in DVDs
- [List of hidden features on DVDs] – At the "DVD Review" website
- [Digital Press' classic video games Easter egg compendium]
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