For those of you not familiar with the term "Easter Eggs" as it pertains to video games click here and read the first sentence. Now that you are all caught up I just recently heard about an Easter egg I never knew existed in the old game Doom. You remember the game that took all the blame (yeah I just made it rhyme wuuuut!?) in the aftermath of the Columbine school shooting letting the parents of the psychopath shooters off the "parental responsibility" hook? Well apparently in that game, at some point one of the Easter eggs was you could fight a boss who was modeled after one of the game's main developers, a man named John Carmack.
Now this is probably more of an indictment of all the pop culture/movie
trivia and useless information that has overtaken my brain, rather than
my extensive video game Easter egg knowledge, but when the words "Doom"
and
"Carmack" were uttered all the stars aligned in my small personal
universe and an ah-ha moment only I and few others like me could
appreciate happened. (Wow, after a proof-read that seemed like a rather
pompous statement but I'm leaving it in)
You see, if you have seen the movie 'Doom',
staring The Rock (who was able to make an all-around not so good movie
watchable), and Karl Urban (Lord of the Rings fans? He played Eomer or
more recently Dr. 'Bones' McCoy in the new Star Trek reboot, don't worry I'm NOT
a Trekkie although, they did give us this cinematic gem) the doctor who is conducting the experiments on human
subjects who subsequently turn into the doom monsters is named...drum
roll please...Dr. Carmack!
Now I can completely understand if that tip of the cap to the game developers by the writers of the movie
doesn't give any of you any personal satisfaction however, look at it from my perspective. I saw Doom
in the theater so I have $10.50 already invested in a movie that kinda
sucked so even though that $10.50 is long gone being able to make this
small futile connection and be able to deposit this piece of knowledge
in my trivia bank for future use brings me joy and almost makes up for
that $10.50...almost. I did though discover my own
personal Easter egg!
So full disclosure, I don't visit a lot of
video game forums because of all the debauchery that takes place on said
forums behind the veil of anonymity so this may be more common
knowledge than I realize but there is something to be said that Easter eggs were so
much harder to find "back in the day". Today every tiny nuance of each new game is online within hours of its release, in the good ol' days it took months perhaps years to find hidden game content.
Twisted Metal is one of my favorite game franchises of all-time. When I was a sophomore in high school I had Twisted Metal 3
on the PS1, if any of you remember that game, many songs by Rob
Zombie were prominently featured on numerous maps of the game. DID YOU KNOW? If you put the game disc (yes I said game disc) of Twisted Metal 3
into a CD player you could listen to all the songs used in the game
like a music CD? I discovered this simply by trial
and error and at that age very few things to that point had given me
such a feeling of accomplishment that I still remember the rush I got. Now don't ask me what in God's name possessed me to
ever think to try putting a game disc into a CD player I honestly
could not tell you, but in that moment when it worked...it blew my
mind!
Share some of your personal Easter egg stories in the comments below!
Oh I have a few fun ones:
ReplyDeleteIn Fallout New Vegas:
-The securitrons (robots) will say "your move creep" a line from Robocop (this one made me laugh when i first found it out haha)
-While investigating the Ultralux casino you find an investigator named Crusoe, a reference to David Crusoe from CSI:Miami
- There is a perk in the game called the "adamantium skeleton" which is a refernce to Wolverine :p
Oh and I was pumped about this one in Silent Hill Homecoming:
- All the street names in the game are named after Horror icons like Carpenter street ( John Carpenter), Friedkim street (named after exorcist 's Director William Friedkin), Lyne street (named after Jacobs Ladder 's producer Adrian Lyne), Barker street (Clive Barker), Scott street (named after Ridley Scott)
yeah there are are more but those are the ones that are sticking out the most in my memory haha I too felt accomplished after finding these lol Great Article!! Loved it!