Easter eggs: The origin stories
From adventuring with Atari to sipping Hot Coffee, Easter eggs have been a part of computing culture since 1964. Take a trip with me into a world of non-chocolate secrets...
The Atari 400, released in 1979, was my very first computer. It came stuffed with a massive 8 kilobytes of RAM, a disgraceful membrane keyboard, and a cartridge slot to allow instant loading of any software.
In my case, the majority of that software was games.
One of the most striking things of official Atari games of that era was the packaging. The boxes and manuals were MASSIVE. The styling definitely evokes the era, and at this point I have to heavily recommend The Art of Atari - a 353 page hardback book packed full of the stuff.
One thing I didn’t notice as a child (and why would I, I just wanted to PLAY!) was that no-one was credited for creating the games. There were no programmers, artists or musicians (most of the time all of these were the same person) mentioned in the games or the manuals. Everything was just, ‘COPYRIGHT ATARI’. This applied to Atari systems in general, including the classic Atari 2600 that was launched in 1977.
This led to disgruntled developers, and was a contributing factor (along with the lack of revenue sharing or bonus payments for successful releases) to several Atari developers leaving to form Activision in 1979.
It also led to the coining of the term ‘Easter egg’ in computing.
1. Let’s go on an Easter Egg Adventure
One of the aforementioned malcontents was Warren Robinett, who created Adventure (One of the great things of the early days of video games is that you could pick very generic titles and they would be original).
In this game, the player (square blob) embarks on an epic quest to find a magical chalice and return it to the golden castle. Dragons (resembling ducks) and bats are out to get you. The graphics are primitive as is expected of the era, so a certain amount of imagination is required.
Following a precise set of instructions will reveal the hidden screen (see above screenshot) which renders Warren’s name in all its glory. He was being paid $22k a year by Atari, who were selling 1 million+ cartridges at $25 a pop, so this cheeky little implementation seems fair enough.
By the time it was discovered, the game had been released, and Warren had left the company. Fixing it would have meant creating a new hardware mask for the cartridges (EXPENSIVE). In the end, Atari decided to take ownership of the situation, and declared that Easter eggs should be included in their future games.
2. Make love, not war

The term ‘Easter egg’ was coined by Steve Wright of Atari at the time of the discovery of Robinett’s hidden message. It wasn’t the first time something had been squirrelled away in computing.
The PDP-6 predated the Atari 400 by 13 years, being released in 1964. It was a mainframe. This meant the base model weighted in at 590 kg: The same as 366 of the latest MacBook Pros. You could own one for a cool $120k - $300k depending on specification. It was a serious bit of kit.
One of the core commands in the TECO text editor was ‘MAKE’ to create a new file. And, lo, comedy genius ensued from one of the engineers involved in creating the system:
> MAKE LOVE
NOT WAR?
William F. Weiher later confirmed he was responsible in a fascinating interview, which showed a mischievous intent on a few different levels:
“There was also an interesting dynamic with DEC. Many of the things I wrote ended up as part of DEC’s release of the TOPS-10 operating system (totally with my permission). It was something of a test to see what would get through DEC without modification like the ability of the Calcomp plotter routines (which they did give me credit for) to plot in Feanorian (the Elvish alphabet from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings).”
3. How do you take your coffee?
Easter eggs don’t have to exist with the intention of being discovered.
In 2005, Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas sold 677k copies in the UK on its first weekend alone.
During development, there was an intention to have sex-based mini games (!). These were created, but ultimately removed in order to secure a ‘Mature’ rating from the Entertainment Software Review Board (ESRB).
However, ‘removed’ is doing a bit of heavy lifting here: The developers just disabled the content. The code, graphics and so on still existed within the game (and had been distributed to anyone buying it) — it just didn’t appear during normal play.
Upon the game’s release for Windows, modder Patrick Wildenborg disabled the controls around the code and released the revised code online in June 2005. The title of the mod? HOT COFFEE.
The unlocked content allowed the player to go back to a girlfriend’s house ‘for some coffee’. Full details, if you so wish, can be found here, but it involves rhythm, the analog sticks and an ‘Excitement meter’.
It was downloaded over 1 million times over a 4 week period.
There was significant fallout as a result. The ESRB re-rated the game as AO (Adults Only), typically issued for games with titles such as ‘All Nude Nikki’ and ‘Erotic Heat Vol. 4’. Major retailers, such as Walmart and Target, announced ceasing of all sales of the game. Australia banned San Andreas outright.
A patch to remove the illicit content entirely was released in August, and the original ratings were restored. Take-Two, publishers of the game, incurred losses of $24.5 million from the game’s recall, and then had to face class action lawsuits and legislator interest in the whole affair.
4. Getting caught with your trousers down
Compared to San Andreas, 1987 Commodore 64 game, International Karate + had a much more wholesome approach to being caught with your trousers down.
In this fun Karate fighting game, hitting the ‘S’ and ‘E’ keys together would result in the karateka all dropping their trousers.
That’s it. That’s the Easter egg.
Continuing the wholesome theme, attempting to type in swear words on the Amiga version of the game would result in it rebuking the player. A second attempt would result in the game resetting itself.
(The game had a smattering of other Easter eggs as well, such as the ability to trigger fish leaping out of the water, periscopes, birds and more).
5. The code to rule all codes
One code to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
I present to you: THE KONAMI CODE.
This incantation was first used in 1986 NES game, Gradius: Pausing the game and entering the code activated a selection of power-ups for the player. It is perhaps most well known for its use in Contra where it gave 30 extra lives when used.
Kazuhisa Hashimoto invented the code, originally to help him complete Gradius when testing it. He meant to remove the code prior to release but…. this never happened, and the rest is history.
The code is now ubiquitous and not just in Konami games. Many developers for many games and many platforms have deployed the code. It’s even spread outside of games: Amazon’s Alexa will respond to an audio version, a previous Marks & Spencer Christmas site would pop up some festive creatures, and entering it on a 404 page on Discord’s web site will unlock a secret game of Snake.
6. Where Konami and Atari collide…
The Atari story of developers not getting credit for their games has a modern equivalent too. Sometimes, the power balance is reversed.
Following a bit of a breakup between Konami and game developer legend Hideo Kojima, Konami did their best to remove any reference to Hideo from all material relating to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.
Hideo didn’t counter this with an Easter egg. Instead, he put full credits before every episode of the game. His name flashes up more than 60 times during an average playthrough.
Sometimes, An Easter egg can hide in plain sight, with the story itself being the thing to discover.
Do YOU have any favourite Easter eggs?