Easter egg (virtual)
From Free net encyclopedia
- For the decorated eggs given out to celebrate the Easter holiday, see Easter egg.
A virtual Easter egg is a hidden message or feature in an object such as a movie, book, CD, DVD, or computer program. The term draws a parallel with the custom of the Easter egg hunt observed in many western nations. The term may falsely be believed to originate in the movie Return of the Living Dead, where a military officer uses it as a code word for lost U.S. government containers of zombies created by a chemical spill, or from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, in which actual Easter eggs are visible in certain shots (under Frank N. Furter's throne, for example). Return of the Living Dead was not released until 1985, and Atari's Adventure, released in 1980, contained what is thought to be the first video game easter egg (the programmer, Warren Robinett's name).
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).
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Computer-related Easter eggs
In computing, Easter eggs are messages, graphics, sound effects, or an unusual change in program behaviour, 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?". 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's MATLAB: the why command provides succinct random answers to almost any question:
% why % because the not very smart system engineer insisted on it
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 13th 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.
Chip-based Easter eggs
Image:Chpsonic.jpg 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
Image:YarsRevengeEasterEGG.JPG
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. One of the most famous Easter eggs was an actual chocolate Easter egg hidden in a secret room in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. This was referenced in the sequel San Andreas 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."
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
Image:HipHopYoda.jpg 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 an unlisted song appears. A further example (which is somewhat more unusual) is the album Factory Showroom by They Might Be Giants, which contains a short song before the beginning of track one; the CD has to be "rewound" approximately a minute and a half. This track 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 and 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.
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.
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 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.
See also
External links
- 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" websitecs:Velikonoční vajíčko (virtuální)
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