Long Live Software Easter Eggs

I once purchased a Pascal compiler for the Atari ST.

Can't recall its name, but it was written in Assembler, ran very fast (much faster than e.g. ST Pascal) and did everything in RAM, and thus felt a bit like TurboPascal.

Accidentally, I discovered a certain key combination activated a microscopic BASIC interpreter that was integrated (undocumented); I wrote to the developers to learn that I was the first to find it.

Microsoft used to have them in everything, but I believe, and perhaps somebody can correct me on this if I am wrong, that to contract with national governments, hidden or extraneous functionality had to be removed.

I loved the flight simulator and a doom game in excel. Also a few programs had hidden functionality in the about menus.

I suppose my favorite of all time was a hidden menu in an oscilloscope that caused it to play I believe it was pong or some other simple arcade game.

One that if I ever have the time is I want to reverse the very antiquated Apple II or IIgs Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego game, by chance I hit a key combo and the game went beserk.

I like hardware easter eggs too. We had a HP scanner that could play "Ode to joy" from Beethoven's 9th using the motor.

>Not doing Easter eggs proves loyalty to power and order

Power and loyalty is everything these days. Surrender to corporate or perish. All whimsy is to be management-approved.

The Basic Editor Monitor on the Sperry Univac OS/3, when it had an error, would put an ASCII image of a vague insect on the screen and state something like that "BEM, the Bug-Eyed Monster, strikes again".

Easter Eggs were, to me; part of the early charm of the weird aesthetic to 90’s software and web things.

It’s definitely a bit sad to see Easter Eggs be less common these days, but I do understand how it’s not always the best practice.

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31929897

(87 points | 20 days ago | 25 comments)

Fond memories of that time I got fired because I did an easter egg in a Fortune 50 site and posted about it here.

(Easter eggs rule)

List is missing my favorite one: Cookies are delicious delicacies.