Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Easter Eggs!

Easter eggs!

It’s that time of the year, the infamous chocolate egg laying bunny! Well as far as marketing goes, they would love to have us associate those two things together. This topic however is not about the religious event, or eggs or marketing. It’s about computers and DVD’s and CDROM easter eggs! What are they you ask? Well, they are not actual eggs, but more like hidden secrets, features, treasures and even mistakes in the program or media. Sometimes software developers may intentionally leave these in their programming codes, sometimes they happen out of abnormal program circumstances. More recently, they are included as extra content on DVD’s and movies. They have now come to be expected by the consumer. These are very similar to cheat codes found in many – if not all video games.

In the case of computer easter eggs, they can be uncovered and experimented with using simple commands within programs. A quick example is a way to force a win at solitaire.

Launch solitaire, click on start, then click programs, accessories, and finally games. Play a few hands of solitaire then press Alt + Shift + 2. You win! There are other Windows XP easter eggs which can be found if you google search for them.

In the case of DVD movies, there are countless secrets to be found. These are accessed using your DVD remote control. You must proceed through the codes exactly, otherwise it will not work. This sort makes it a challenge, and therefore a little more rewarding once you find the secret, and actually get it to work.

One example we can use is from Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith. It’s called - Hip Hop Yoda, and shows a video of Yoda rapping. To access this secret, using your DVD remote; Put disk 1 into your DVD player. Wait for the main menu to load, then select Options. Once the options menu loads, press 1, 1, 3, 8.