************************************************************** * * * CYBERSPACE * * A biweekly column on net culture appearing * * in the Toronto Sunday Sun * * * * Copyright 1999 Karl Mamer * * Free for online distribution * * All Rights Reserved * * Direct comments and questions to: * * * * * ************************************************************** Hunting Easter Eggs in July Today games are made by teams of programmers, artists, muscians, and game designers. Back in the early '80s, when the 4 K Atari 2600 was the rage, usually only one person was need to create a game. Unfortunately, not everyone is blessed with artistic and musical talent, a knack for game design and a working knowledge of Assembly language. Talented game programmers were a rare breed. Companies making game cartridges zealously guarded the names of their programmers lest another company hired these prized wage slaves away for double the salary. One of the problems with the multi-talented is they do like some form of recognition. Game authors, most not long out of their mischevous youth, began to "sign" their work with what is known as an "easter egg." An easter egg is usually a small, hidden bit of code that reveals the author's name. You can only find it if you know a cryptic series of keystrokes or mouse/joystick movements. Some authors don't stop at credits, however. Some bury political messages or even additional features. For example on the Atari 2600 version of Space Invaders, if you started the game while holding down one of the panel buttons, your ship was armed with a rapid-fire cannon. Although good program authors today get more recognition or at least stock options, the tradition of burying cool stuff in code continues. With the net, users no longer have to hunt for these eggs on their own. There's a lot of sharing of easter eggs through net.news and over the web. I'm quite certain many game authors themselves use the net to sureptiously leak their egg locations. Microsoft is probably the best known egg layer. I think I mean that as a compliment. Most Windows products have some form of hidden credit screen. Not too long after the release of Windows 95, the secret of its credit screen was posted to the net. Incase you haven't heard about the Windows 95 credits screen, here's the how to find it: Create a new folder on the desktop and name it "and now, the moment you've all been waiting for". Immediately rename the folder to "we proudly present for your viewing pleasure". Again rename it, "The Microsoft Windows 95 Product Team!" After that open the folder, and the credits will roll (float actually). If that's whet your appetite, there's an interesting clutch of known easter eggs at weber.u.washington.edu/~davidnf/eggnorm.html. If you jump to the page using Netscape, keep in mind most versions of Netscape also contain their fair share of yoke. For example, entering the URL "about:mozilla" takes you to a rather interesting page. Ctrl+Alt+F (or Ctrl+Option+F in Mac) takes you to something called the Amazing Fish Cam. Mac users, long denied many pleasures, will be happy to learn only their version of Netscape supports a ctrl+Option+W combo that takes you to the Whitehouse web page. If you want to get inside the mind of an actual egg layer, check out www.blah.blah.blah. The page's author claims to have help develop the Mac's System 7 and a number of easter eggs hidden in the system code. In researching this article, I discovered a number of web authors themselves "hide" pages normally unavailable to the general public. Do a search on Lycos or AltaVista with the text "easter egg" and you'll tease out hidden pages that refer to themselves as easter eggs. One of my favorites is the hidden, watery terror waiting for users of the _eye_ Movie Listings maps (www.eye.net/Movies/Maps). Go ahead. Click on Lake Ontario. I dare ya. I double dare ya.