A joke's a joke, right?
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00:00Who doesn't love a good video game easter egg from time to time, right?
00:04After slogging your way through endless dungeons or exploring vast open worlds, isn't it
00:08nice to stumble across a secret or reference to the wider video game industry, or something
00:13to lighten the mood, or even just offer a little pat on the back for an area well explored?
00:17Well sometimes you might regret looking under every pixelated pebble, as the devs, or just
00:21one dev in particular maybe, might have taken it upon themselves to place a little nugget
00:26that is less shiny and more absolutely stinky.
00:29Insults, complaints about co-workers, or rants about their bosses, all of these examples
00:33prove above all else that while the end result of a video game is meant to be entertainment,
00:37the process behind the curtains are anything but.
00:40So let's have a look at them, shall we?
00:41As I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com, and these are 8 Video Game Easter Eggs Made Out
00:45of Spite.
00:468.
00:47Read Between the Lines – Cannon Fodder
00:49When you look at the titles under sensible software's belt, you might actually start
00:54to realise, shock horror, that they don't actually make titles as sensible as their
00:58name would suggest.
00:59Far from it, in fact, as the likes of Sensible Soccer and Cannon Fodder ended up being the
01:03most ridiculous of spectacles for all the right reasons.
01:06Cannon Fodder especially took the world by storm, thanks to its rather worryingly cute
01:11approach to war, which would see players escort a group of commandos through levels jam-packed
01:15with explosives and enemies with the sole goal of, try not to get everyone killed.
01:19And it seemed like this tongue-in-cheek approach to dark comedy infiltrated every aspect of
01:23the development process, as the team hid a number of rather rude and taunting messages
01:27to both the player and their publisher Virgin Interactive.
01:30The latter was mocked by having text written all over their logo advertising free sex,
01:35which you could only find if you took the Splash logo and inverted the colours and contrast,
01:38and the former coming in the form of the player being utterly ridiculed by the game's end
01:42screen.
01:43Take a look at it.
01:44Can you see it?
01:45No?
01:46Well, why don't you just read the first letters of Far Out, Unreal, Crazy Dude, Cool Babe,
01:49Yippee and Outrageous and Ur, and you'll see that it spells… well, yeah.
01:557.
01:56BUDGET LEVEL MELTDOWN – GEX
01:58While a lot of other examples on this list are of developers expressing their frustration
02:02at the player or their bosses, very few of them actually led to anything more than content
02:06for vultures like ourselves to pick clean in such lists.
02:10However, in the case of Justin Noor, it cost him his job.
02:13To better explain, we need to look at the rather tumultuous development that Gex went
02:16through.
02:17With the budget running low, staff shortages, and looming deadlines, it seemed the team
02:21was always under the hammer 24-7.
02:23The game received substantial cuts, and entire sections such as a sci-fi theme were dropped
02:27entirely despite assets for them already existing.
02:30Therefore, unbeknownst to much of the team, a secret team was formed which used the cut
02:35assets to make secret levels and areas that the player could access through cheat codes
02:39and hints.
02:40So far it sounds pretty acceptable, right?
02:42Well apparently one day Noor came in to find that one of his levels was edited without
02:46his permission, and took such personal affront to this that he decided to reinstate the cut
02:50level as a secret, but also include a ream of dialogue that told the player that this
02:54section was cut because the publisher didn't value the player.
02:57He even went one step further, including a phone number for a rep at the company, and
03:01told the player to phone them and give them a peace of their mind for cutting such excellent
03:05content.
03:06Things didn't end well for him as the secret was soon found during playtesting, and the
03:09company fired him for endangering relationships that the company had with Panasonic, for which
03:14this game was going to feature heavily on their 3DO console.
03:186.
03:19GIVE ME A BONUS!
03:20ARGH!
03:21Patchycom
03:22While the Famicom might have come along and quite literally changed the game and saved
03:25the entire video game market in the process, it wasn't all gold and glory for the devs
03:29working on titles for the system, as anyone who found the give me a bonus rant in Patchycom
03:34could tell you.
03:35While it's unclear which developer left the message, one thing is for certain, and
03:39that's that they were not very happy in the slightest.
03:42In this mammoth-sized text file, which took up nearly 5% of the game's entire storage
03:46space, the developer rages about their employers and how they've changed things at a moment's
03:50notice, and also how they wanted a completely different audio track for the game.
03:53They conclude this tirade, which also includes some rather blue-coloured masturbation jokes,
03:58with a call for a pay bump, before screaming to themselves, and now those lucky enough
04:01to have found this message via a hex editor.
04:04It's pretty clear that the devs never wanted these messages to be found originally, but
04:08hilariously enough, when the MSX version of the game was released, another, albeit shorter
04:12message was also included in the game's files.
04:155. Destroying Billboards – Mercenaries 2
04:19While this might, on the surface, not appear to be much of an easter egg, seeing as the
04:22game literally instructs you to do so, much like The Onion, and a very specific ogre,
04:27this entry has layers, all of which spoke of real-life tears behind the scenes.
04:31Did I just make a Shrek joke in 2022?
04:33Apparently so.
04:34Good times.
04:35You see, for some greasy reason or another, Pandemic Studios were tasked by EA to include
04:40billboards within the otherwise outstanding sequel that were used to promote real-world
04:44items, thus turning this carnival of carnage and chaos into the wheel of capitalism.
04:49As you can imagine, this move likely left a lot of devs feeling hard done by, that their
04:53game was now being seen as little more than a glorified advert in the eyes of their publisher,
04:57and so went about making things right the only way they knew how, by letting you destroy
05:01each and every one of these billboards, and rewarding you for doing so.
05:04As part of the Digital Man trophy, players were challenged to, alongside unlocking every
05:08secret component and all shop items, the complete and utter destruction of the 40 in-game billboards.
05:14Thanks to them adding in this requirement alongside so many other pieces, it was impossible
05:18for EA to notice the dig, but a dig it was nonetheless.
05:214.
05:22Timmy Vermigelli – Driver 3
05:25It wasn't exactly a secret that Atari had quite a lot of contempt for the likes of Grand
05:30Theft Auto, who in their eyes were the ones to beat when it came to pumping out their
05:34sequel to the beloved Driver series of games.
05:36Yet while much more attention should have been spent on, you know, making sure the game
05:39bloody worked, the devs decided to knuckle down and make their intentions known by routinely
05:44mocking the current crown holder GTA however they could.
05:47Their most blatant and altogether petty dig came in the form of Timmy Vermigelli, a parody
05:52of Tommy Vercetti from GTA Vice City so thinly veiled you'd think it was made of pure ghost.
05:57Here Timmy was a hidden pedestrian that could be found in all three cities, and would reward
06:01the player with special perks if he could be cleared out of said areas.
06:05Still it was not.
06:07Get rewarded for killing GTA, and because perks such as not damaging your own vehicle
06:11when crashing into others were so good, it was clear that the devs wanted you to seek
06:15out this large handed loser.
06:17As a final jab, Timmy is shown to be wearing inflatable water wings, a reference to the
06:21fact that Tommy can't swim in the GTA games.
06:24It's a shame then that it was GTA that was the one left floating after the tidal wave
06:28of disaster that was Driver 3 launched and promptly sank.
06:323.
06:33It's the square root of a fish, Skullgirls Encore
06:36Now this easter egg falls into a rather strange place on the old spite-o-meter, as on the
06:41one hand this secret was included only on cracked versions of the almighty Skullgirls
06:45video game, meaning that you'd have to be pretty spiteful to the devs Lab Zero Games
06:49in order to find it, however it also turned out that this easter egg of sorts was actually
06:53put there by the devs themselves as an anti-piracy measure to stick one to those looking to play
06:57for free.
06:58Just a few days after the game was released, Lab Zero were flooded with strange images
07:02and questions based around a text message that popped up after beating the game.
07:06The message read, what is the square root of a fish, now I'm sad, and seemed to have
07:10no answer that could be found within the game itself and players, as one would expect, wanted
07:14to know more.
07:15But the answer was a bit of a shock when Lab Zero responded on Twitter stating, oh that,
07:20it means you should probably buy the game instead of pirating it, leading to much ridicule
07:24of the players in question.
07:26A fair play to Lab Zero for dealing with it in a relaxed manner, but the real meaning
07:29and the ire that must have been felt by the devs is no joke at all.
07:332.
07:34Ha Ha Ha Room, Dirty Harry
07:36Do I feel lucky, well, do ya, punk?
07:40We all know these famous words, spit out with the utmost spite by rock-jawed Clint Eastwood
07:45in the all-timer of a film, Dirty Harry, but it seems that this oft-quoted cinematic milestone
07:50takes on a totally different meaning when it came to the Dirty Harry video game that
07:53came out for the NES, or NAY-ers.
07:56For here, it seems that your luck has truly run out should you end up in the now infamous
08:00Ha Ha Ha Easter Egg Room, which one can accidentally stumble into while exploring one of the many,
08:05many apartment blocks in the game.
08:07In this room, the door to leave has been replaced with a bare wall with Ha Ha Ha written on
08:12it, meaning that escape is quite literally impossible, and will force anyone looking
08:16to leave this prison to reset the game entirely.
08:18It's one thing to include a joke room or secret that pokes fun at the player, but to
08:22bar all progress entirely and force a complete restart is a pretty vicious move no matter
08:27how you cut it.
08:28Thankfully, the room only appears near the start of the game, but still, absolute boo
08:32all over this.
08:331.
08:34CREATED BY WARREN ROBINETTE
08:35ADVENTURE
08:36So, how could an Easter Egg comprising solely of the words CREATED BY WARREN ROBINETTE ever
08:42be construed as a secret made out of spite?
08:45Well, my friend, this is an example of a developer hitting back at his bosses in a manner they
08:49specifically told him not to.
08:51You see, at this point in time, publishers Atari were, well how best to put this, err,
08:56the actual worst?
08:57Not only were they spending ludicrous amounts of money like it was going out of style, but
09:01precisely zero of these record-setting profits were being given to the developers.
09:05In fact, it seemed as if the higher-ups truly wanted to keep their power and control on
09:09top of the mountain, as they demanded that no developer ever be credited in their games.
09:13As you can imagine, this didn't go down well with some of the devs, especially Warren
09:17Robinette, who took it upon himself to include an Easter Egg in the Atari 2600 title, ADVENTURE,
09:23as a digital middle finger to his employers, declaring that he made the game in question.
09:28What makes this even more impressive is that it was also one of the first examples of a
09:31video game Easter Egg in general, making it a spiteful moment in history done to highlight
09:36the injustices of those at the top of the industry at the time.
09:39And there we go, my friends, those were 8 video game Easter Eggs made out of spite.
09:42I hope that you enjoyed that, and please let me know what you thought about it down in
09:45the comments section below.
09:47As always, I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Twitter at RetroJ with 0, or you
09:50can swing by Liv and Let's Dice, where I do all of my streaming outside of work, and
09:54it'd be great to see you over there, my friends.
09:55But before I go, I just want to say one thing.
09:58I hope you're treating yourself with love and respect, because you deserve all the best
10:01things in life, and do not let anything or anyone else tell you otherwise, alright?
10:04You're a massive ledge, and I want you to go out there and utterly smash it today.
10:07As always, I've been Jules, you have been awesome, never forget that, and I'll speak
10:11to you soon.
10:12Bye.