The 'Shroom:Issue L/Special Section I
Hey everyone, and welcome to my special section on this beautifully L issue of the ’Shroom.
This special section is going to be on EASTER EGGS!
No, not those easter eggs…
Then what do you mean by ‘easter egg’?
Ask nicely.
*sigh*, please would you tell me what you meant when you used the term ‘easter eggs’ back there?
That’s more like it… anyway, an easter egg is basically a hidden feature in a piece of software that cannot be found by normal means. The programmers purposely put this secret content in the game, waiting for the really bored lifeless devoted people to stumble across. They can be found in many ways; by tapping certain buttons in a certain order, waiting on a screen, entering a code, going to a certain place in the game, or looking at something pretty closely and having knowledge on the subject (in the case of things that aren’t video games), and that’s just a small few. Lots of software and other things have this: it generally isn’t always programmers who put them in: for example, they can be found in movies, music, art, video games, tv shows, TVTropes, board games, me, the list is almost ENDLESS. Also see Easter Egg, because I was way too incompetent to find that page before this.
So, I guess you still don’t know what they are, right?
…okay, I’ll go prepare my notes. I was half expe— oh, you do get it? Okay. Well, I’m going to go and prepare my notes anyway. I like to prepare my notes. >:(
So, let’s look at some examples:
An easter egg that is widely hidden across many Nintendo games is Kazumi Totaka’s Song. This song is a small 19-note tune hidden in a bunch of Nintendo games. The thing that connects them together is that Totaka composed the music for each of these games, and therefore is the person who put the song in. Currently, the earliest game the song has been found in is X, where you could find it at a “Thank you…” screen after rescuing a fake scientist. Sadly for non-Japanese players, this was only released in Japan, but you never know what the 3DS e-Shop has in store…
Here are the Mario games the song can be found in.
- Luigi’s Mansion – Go to the Training Room and let the screen sit on the controller configuration for 3 1/2 minutes.
- Mario Artist: Talent Studio – I’m not too sure on this one, but it’s definitely in here. I think in some movies there’s scenes with a slow man walking – the song plays in the scenes with this slow man.
- Mario Paint – Easy one – just click on the ‘O’ in the title screen.
- Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins – Wait on the game over screen for 2 1/2 minutes.
- Virtual Boy Wario Land – Wait (becoming a recurring theme here…) on the ‘END’ screen at the end of the game for a minute and a quarter. Especially hard ’cause you have to put up with looking at the Virtual Boy. @_@
- Yoshi’s Story – Wait 2m 10s on the Trial Mode level select screen.
- Yoshi Touch & Go – When you get to an area where winds blow away the clouds you draw, pause the game and (guess what) wait for 3m 45s.
See here for more info. Totaka is also the voice of Yoshi and the namesake for Totakeke, otherwise known as K.K. Slider.
Apart from Totaka’s Song, outside Mario games, there’s some more cool easter eggs out there in video games. I’ll show you two: one pretty well-known one and one more obscure one.
The Chris Houlihan Room is a very secret room full of Rupees in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. There are many obscure ways of getting to this room, and it was left undiscovered for many, many years. This video shows five complex ways of getting to this room, but just who is Chris Houlihan? Chris was the winner of a contest in the gaming magazine Nintendo Power, and, as the winner, got the room named after him. Cool, huh?
Now, we move onto Wave Race: Blue Storm – this egg is very little known everywhere, so this may well be the first time you hear of this, but fiddling around with the sound settings (from what it looks like, cycling through song numbers one and forty-nine, then selecting one) changes the commentator into a bored, mean… uh, commentator. See this video for more info – the commentator makes some pretty funny comments, and it’s very well hidden.
“Your wins are like diamonds, kid. Very rare.”
But now our reach stretches across to the world of MOVIES… andotherstuff.
- In loads of Pixar movies, the number/code A113 can be found:
- In Microsoft Excel ’95, go down to the 95th row on a worksheet. Select the whole row, and then tab over to column ‘B’. Open Help/About next. Finally, hold Ctrl+Alt+Shift and click the tech support button. You are now in the HALL OF TORTURED SOULS!! You can walk around this hall with really creepy colours, flashing lights, narrow pathways, and random names everywhere. Then, do a 180 degree turn at the start and walk through the wall – you see a picture of a few people. These are the tortured souls, and shall remain tortured… FOREVE— nah, just kidding. The truth is much more lighthearted, as these are all the programmers of Excel. Microsoft really loves easter eggs like this.
- Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a great album by The Beatles, has quite a few easter eggs. During the song A Day in the Life, in the crescendo at the end, continuing till the very end, there is a dog whistle being blown. Who added the dog whistle? Why, none other than the late George Harrison. The reason? He thought it’d be funny “if a bloke was sitting there listening and his dog was going crazy.”
Well, there you have lots of easter eggs. The internet is a great way to find out more, and, who knows, if you look hard, you could even discover a new one.
tl;dr version: OMG I’VE BEEN SELECTED TO WRITE A SPECIAL SECTION FOR THE FIFTIETH ISSUE!!!!!!!!!!!
Bye, thanks for reading, and enjoy this issue of the ’Shroom – now with extra L!
