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History Lesson: The Original Video Game Easter Egg
We know that most of you are probably familiar with this piece of Atari mythos, but we thought it would be a festive way to celebrate this Easter Sunday. While Robinett's egotistical stunt was definitely ballsy, it doesn't approach some of our favorite secrets throughout gaming history -- like the legendary Secret Cow Level in Diablo II, or the bitchin' audio file hidden on the Symphony of the Night disc. We're curious to know -- what easter egg, hidden in the folds of one of your favorite video games, especially tickled your fancy?[Thanks, Matthew.]
The letter of Sully Ballou
The Lady Bird over on WoW Ladies posted about a quest I've heard about but never done before. It's the Sully Ballou's Letter quest-- it starts from a poor deceased dwarf that you can find in the water beneath the Thandol Span (that's the bridge just north of Dun Morogh). In his hand, there's a letter that you can read, and that needs to be delivered to a woman in Ironforge.Lady Bird read the letter and found it suprisingly emotional, and then found out the reason for that is because it's real-- it was written by one Major Sullivan Ballou, directly before the Battle of Bull Run in the Civil war. It was famously read in Ken Burns' Civil War documentary, and the full text of the original letter is also available online. It is pretty darn touching, both as a love letter, and as a meditation on what real life war really costs us, both for those directly involved, and for those waiting at home for them to return.Blizzard has put a lot of hidden gems in this game, of course, but this might be one of the most touching.
The hidden secrets of Outland
Inspired by this forum thread about hidden and mysterious places in Outland, I took to the skies on my windrider to check out some less-traveled places in the expansion. From the empty Horde village above Shattrath, to Challe's Home for Little Tykes, all the way to Skettis, the hidden capital of the Arrakoa, I went on a tour of some of Outland's secrets.Check out the gallery below to see all the places I found. And while I spent a night touring around, Blizzard spent months making this place. If you've found cool stuff that I didn't include in the Gallery, feel free to drop it in the comments below.%Gallery-2117%
Today's sneakiest game video: Frontlines - Fuel of War hidden tour
Sneaky hidden videos will always score high on our list, particularly if they don't involve Britney, Paris, and Lindsay. It's time we reclaimed their 15 minutes because they've run into serious overtime.So, the story behind this video is as follows: 'Games For Windows' Magazine recently filmed a totally unathorized, hidden video tour of Kaos Studios for a piece about Frontlines: Fuel of War. They weren't thrilled about having their HQ filmed Geraldo-style, but THQ (the publisher) didn't want to retaliate against the magazine, for fear that they would give them a bad review in return.So, once all the smoke has cleared, what does that leave us with? Frankly, not too much. Either it's a well planned "fake" secret video, or else it's a new wave of marketing going into effect that really embraces the old adage "there's no such thing as bad publicity." Of course, nothing really groundbreaking or damaging was revealed in this video ... or was it? Does this mean we can start running around developer HQs with a camera, knowing that they won't want us to pan their upcoming games? Hmmmmmm ...
Twilight Easter Eggs
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was in development for approximately, oh, say, forever. That intensely long cycle, besides making a game epic and wonderful and amazing, usually gives rise to an extreme attention to detail. Some savvy forum-goers have compiled a list of little easter eggs for your enjoyment, which can be found after the jump.How many of these did you find, or even notice? Do you feel as though these little details even make a difference in the overall gaming experience? We ourselves find that we're occasionally drawn back to the world of Hyrule for a few minutes, just to feel that epic sense of adventure ... or maybe it was just those bomb arrow fireworks.
The titles you may have missed
Cheap-Ass Gamer made an important observation: the DS just had far too many AAA titles in 2006 for its own good. Amongst the chaos and personal financial destruction of games like New Super Mario Bros, Metroid Prime: Hunters, Final Fantasy III, and Brain Age, it was quite easy to miss some of the gems hidden in the rough. Thus, CAG has made a list of games you might want to go back and visit as the holiday game rush ends (though not really ... Phoenix Wright 2 comes out this month and is certainly your first priority). Check it out, and discover the lost.
Hidden games in Mac OS X
Mac OS X uses emacs as a text editor, which contains a number of hidden games including Snake, Tetris, Pong and a whole slew of others. Follow the simple steps included here, and you could be playing a boatload of games that you didn't even know were on your Mac. Granted, the games pretty much suck (the graphics make the Wii look like Super High Definition 2160iii), but if you're trying to kill 30 minutes while sitting in the library, look no further. We're still exploring these and trying to figure out what the heck some of the games are.
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Hidden secrets of firmware 2.80
PSP Vault has an impresive story detailing some of the potential hidden secrets of recently released firmware 2.80. Using their mad Japanese skillz, they took a look at Sony's PSP manuals for the firmware, which can be found here, here and here. The video standards have finally been revealed, and they show how Sony still refuses to make it easy on the end user.So for H.264 videos, you're looking at support for files ending with a .MP4 or .M4V extension. They must be 768kbps or under, have a framerate of 30fps or under, and be Level 1.3 or under Baseline Profile, or Level 2.1 or under Main Profile (but CABAC only). The audio tracks of these videos must be in the AAC format, be 128kbps or under, be 48kHz or under, and be in stereo.Uh... okay. Can't we just dump random files into our system without thinking about these technical specs? Another interesting discovery of the article shows how the recent firmware upgrade can allow for PSP-specific codes to be written into websites. For example, webpages can be created to offer downloads... but only for users of the most current firmware. Or, it could lead to some really exciting game and internet synergy. It appears that there's a lot hidden in the PSP; too bad Sony hasn't been upfront with all of it quite yet.
