Donkey Kong Easter Egg Discovered 26 Years Later

Finally, the Donkey Kong ARG can get underway.

Time to bust out my Atati 400 right now

@HanSolomente:

+ Watch video

If I knew how to send you directly to a specific time from here, I would... It's at 7:25

That's stupid. If an easter egg takes 26 years to find it should at least be good.

@excaleranth: The easter eggs I want to see would include things like something you could only accomplish by cheating, and if you do it gives you access to another full level, but you're trapped and brutally murdered at the end, the whole time someone telling you "And this is why you shouldn't cheat"

And then balloons.

@Man in the mirror: Check the 13th level of Pac-Man.

xot

weak sauce Easter Egg!

trailingedge

@OW-Holmes:Enemy of R.O.A.C.H.: Yep, that's definitely what I was trying to do, make myself look cooler. Next time I'll try to tone it down and not be as "cool."

Liptons

Achievement unlocked.

The fact that it's a fairly unexciting Easter Egg is interesting in itself. The guy probably just put it in for his own amusement. It's like when you draw a tiny penis four months ahead on a colleague's day-to-page calendar. You forget about it, and it might never be found, but it brings a smile to your face remembering it.

Stompy1

@Liptons: Oooh internet sarcasm. That is real cool.

It actually is. The italics were not used to denote sarcasm but the veracity of that statement.

OW-Holmes:Enemy of R.O.A.C.H.

@Mr. Mew: Hey, internet sarcasm isn't easily achieved.

Liptons

@thecleverfoo1: It was because they were afraid that rival companies would steal their programmers. I don't know if that meant offering better pay or kidnapping, but yeah, it was stupid.

@Cheroro:

A bit too late, but seriously, go on youtube: [www.youtube.com]

the hidden areas are impossible to reach via normal means, and the dormant colossi are literally the colossi before they are activated by the game.
I know what i am talking about.

@Cogito: Dude that game was tits.

underling is an understatement

@svenhoek: Fuck Fireworks. Ghostbusting.: I don't really think brits are patriotic enough to care though.
Americans celebrate a day when Will Smith died for their sins by flying a plane into a spaceship. The only 'fuck you' to Britain I see in there is that Jeff Goldblum didn't call us up after to tell us about it.

I remember the Atari 400...it had what I called "the McDonald's Keyboard" (if you saw the first input-register at McDonalds...).

Three initials. Ah, the good old arcade score days...

SigmundTheSeaMonster

now that is one heck of easter egg. Makes you wounder what other easter eggs might be hidden in some older games. I am sure they will all be picked apart and revealed after this.

Lion_Knight

What's sad, is that this guy actually sat and dissected the code to actually find the easter egg - sure 8 bit game from the early 80s Atari doesn't have a lot of code I'd imagine, but what a boring job - just to find initials.

I dunno, this may be the best Easter Egg ever, just because the guy suddenly manages to be famous for it 26 years after the fact.

EmTeeZ

@Davio: Woo, but good news for me! Cause my name's Landon, too!

landonkun

@2NinjasTapedTogether: Puppy? You make me cry in sadness, my puppy ran away after the Fourth of July ... :'(

@imikedaman: Man, that's tool assisted. Not cool man, not cool. That's like bringing a Vegas Escort (boob job and everything) to a wife swap. It's all LIES.

@svenhoek: ho-ly shit that works.

@Gambit09: Michael Learns to Rock song reference?

I can tell you why he made it so hard to find. It's not so much an easter egg as it is a signature. Many engineers, architects, and even software designers put unique signatures in their work. The point is not for someone else to find it and/or enjoy it, but simply to appease their own sense of satisfaction.

A more discernible example would be a construction worker writing his initials in the concrete foundation of a building. Once the building is constructed human eyes will never see his initials again, but he will always know that they are there, and that is why he did it.

Hypernetic

@denki: Donkey Kong in 1:08.97
[tasvideos.org]

imikedaman

@Liptons: you forgot the ? at the end

@rayne117 - Is Currently Freeing Iran: oops. i replied to thomas... i meant to make it undefined.

rayne117 - BOOM! I hate fireworks.

@Thomas Henry Ward: Davio's ability to comment is not enabled.

*Play Donkey Kong Gameover music here.*

rayne117 - BOOM! I hate fireworks.

@svenhoek: Fuck Fireworks. Ghostbusting.: Wouldn't put it past Atari suing him now for putting his initials in without his approval, after all they need all the money they can get right now ;)

@Thut: Just finished all three, thanks

njd09

@Markarian: Cool button combos, rather. Though Cook button combos would have been awesome too.

@Fernando Jorge: I've noticed that games don't seem to have codes or Easter Eggs anymore like they did back in the day. No more cook button combos, or "Toasty!" or all-level codes. I think that's the one thing about games I miss the most. That and everything not being an FPS.

that reminds me, there are a lots of secrets in LoZ: Ocarina of time and a lots of rumors surrounding those secrets. Like to temple of light that was supposed to be an actual explorable temple that never made it into the game. Also, there are many more tunics in the game too.

cant wait to try it!!!

@svenhoek: Fuck Fireworks. Ghostbusting.: Well...you should've. It looked like you were telling the truth.

Thomas Henry Ward

@svenhoek: Fuck Fireworks. Ghostbusting.: HAHAHAHA. That's incredibely well done. COTW for me!

@Liptons: Best. Sarcasm. Ever.

@Thomas Henry Ward: Really? Too soon for jokes about nazis? It was a fuck you to Britain, thats just facts. And BTW I have been to London, its beautiful and I long to go back. It was a joke. Dont tell me I need to put /sarcasm at the end of every sarcastic post I make.

@mjpm: LOL

@Thomas Henry Ward:

Yeah, that was kinda overboard. I mean, India had more to complain about with England than the NA colonies. I mean, all that malice for taxed tea? Really sven? Did you have to bring up the Nazis? Well, now at least I can dismiss anything you say going forward for being a Nazi sympathizer, just like I do for Tom Cruise.

mjpm

@Gambit09: 26 years who cares...

-[[CHoZO]]-

@Zombeek Dragmire:
I realize it was meant to make him look like a dick, but he did say some pretty dickish things. Also, rejecting the video of one guy but accepting Mitchell's only because that group loved the taste of Billy's balls so much is utter shyte. That was total crap, but it was nice to hear that head guy admit that they treated him like garbage to whole time.

@svenhoek: Fuck Fireworks. Ghostbusting.: Oh...holy shit...holy shit. You just crossed the fucking line, you cocksucking bastard.

Thomas Henry Ward

@akumaserge: Donkey Punch... wait too soon? Sh*t.

Steven Wu

@Accordion: There are lots of unused colossi pictures on the internet, but none of them were in the game. Only the 16 your supposed to fight are in the game.

@NeVeRMoRe666:

You usually hide them in a nice, open, sunny area and kids hunt for them, because it's usually supposed to be a nice spring day.

Unless you live in Canada like me, where parents usually just hide a few chocolates around the house, saving kids from spending hours in the cold.

Also, who actually uses real eggs for a hunt? Jeeze.

WoozyB

This has got me in the mood to fire up the old N64 and play DonkeyKong64 now. I spent so much time in the factory bit just pissing about playing the original arcade game.

@2NinjasTapedTogether: Coming from a family that has never celebrated easter, can you tell me what its all about (the part about the eggs)? Like whats up with it, do you just eat colored hard boiled eggs or what? That's the part that always had me confuzzled.

@denki: DuckTales was some good times.

I love the castlevania glitches. Like damaging ones self to get through walls / higher ledges. Brilliant!

But man those people scare me. Just so damned good its inhuman or really bored. Either way makes for great entertainment!

@Accordion: As far as I know there's only one or two hidden areas? And dormant collossi?!?! You have no idea how hard I've looked online and I've never found anything about that. Especially after Ueda stated there was "one big easter egg" that nobody had found yet... Any linkage?

An undiscovered pioneer? Maybe, be back doors and Easter eggs are nice. Hot coffee, prompted for warm coffee. And a patched dead or alive full nudity on the 360 aint bad either. Just remember not to play this one on Live.

RodericaAstydameia

@Witzbold: Anything that comes from within the game code, unaccessed through cheat codes or third party stuff, is kosher. I have spent literally hours upon...well, about an hour or two, looking through speed runs on that site. And most of it is only impressive when things like that happen (and, well, honestly, most of the other stuff too). But it's one thing to just see some guy run through DuckTales using some insane glitch, and then to see some other guy do the same game later using some much more inane glitch but instead just playing the game thoroughly. Man, that game still has one of the best soundtracks of the NES era.

This is the kind of easter egg that is truly rewarding. A secret little something that nobody knows about except a select few until a long long time after.

The Amazing Exploding-Man

I don't think Atari gave their programmers credit. This was his way of sneaking it in. It doesn't seem like he wanted anyone to find it, at least not for awhile.

doughboyx

@svenhoek:
omi god i read it in his voice, wtf

pneboy

@Gyaruson: that movie was ment to make him look like a douche besides don't even try to tell me that if you were the best at something you wouldn't talk shit

Zombeek Dragmire

@svenhoek:
Yep. I was scrolling down to see if this was mentioned before adding it myself. This is the reason the easter egg is there.

PhoenixDog

This reminds me of GoldenEye- while much less impressive as being only about 4-5 years after the release of the game, the "easter eggs" (in a very loose sense) were the insane button-combination cheat codes that unlocked the cheats that you'd normally have to unlock doing the speedruns on the regular missions.

And then, a little more impressive than that, was when they released the codes for Rogue Squadron, which enabled you to fly the Naboo starfighter, which nobody knew about until after they released the game and after Ep. 1 came out- five months later.

Ah, I once again long for those days, when accomplishing a cheat or unlockable actually meant something, instead of some fucking trophy or achievement that is the online equivalent of waving your dick around. You want to talk achievements? Facility 00Agent in less than 2:05, motherfucker. Until then, your 10 points for completing a game you bought or for some other rather arbitrary and useless bullshit means nothing.

@denki: WTF indeed... so that ladder shit is kosher? I so dont remember that as a kid. Reminds me of that weird wall climbing glitch in Double Dragon.

@2NinjasTapedTogether: Had something similar happen to the family fridge. Man cleaning that out was not a good time. Was one of those smaller cartons so was kinda easy to get "lost".

Even more so since apparently one of them kinda leaked and stained the plastic... Good times...sorta

@turkish101: The controls are rather crappy for SoTC.

Marceux

@Witzbold: That's awesome. I can only imagine the stench though! I left some eggs in our common fridge in college and they got pushed to the back about 2 weeks in...

Yeah cleaning that puppy out was a real joy at the end of the year...

Breaking News: Three letters found in copy of Atari's 1981 Donkey Kong. Wake your children! Divorce your wife! Kick your dog!

Thut

@Davio: oh you'll learn from that, YOU'LL LEARN

Aparanoidandroi

@Witzbold: Have you seen the European DK speedrun? One minute 22 secs. WTF
[speeddemosarchive.com]

@Davio: How about I facepalm you FOR you.

CosmicElement

@Gyaruson: Except the people who watched Chasing Ghosts as well. They saw a much less edited version of Billy.

There is an allusion to a possible extra ending to Castlevania SotN, one that never appeared in the game, where both Richter and Maria were killed by Alucard because they had transformed. However, the only way I know to hear Alucard's monologue about doing it is to use a program that can play the PSX soundfiles on the disc (or using a program to rip the soundfiles to uncompressed .WAV files and searching for it). This is possibly mentioned on a website or something, but I have done it myself.

@Scotland:
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Good news everyone! I have invented a device that lets you read everything in my voice!

svenhoek: Fuck Fireworks. Ghostbusting.

Actually those Atari guys did NOT want the easter eggs to be found. If they were to put names or initials in there they could be fired.

MooglesInMyFace

Well, I have a difficult one that's buggering me for a while as well:

I shall ask Don Hodges to find my keys.
Will it take 26 years too?
:D

Man in the mirror

@skaven: Nah never was too interested in that movie.

Though I am interested in now figuring out wtf was Donkey Kong 2. Since that I dont remember.

Just 1 + 3 + Jr.

@skaven:
But at least everyone who watched King of Kong agrees that Billy Mitchell sucks major donkey (kong) balls. What a little douche on a stick.

That egg is not worth the effort.

Bad work/reward ratio... horrible actually.

--Core--

@Witzbold: Watch King of Kong: Fistful of Quarters.

DK is one of the most brutal of the classic arcade games. That's like the only thing that the people agreed on in that movie.

@Thomas Henry Ward: Well it should. It was set up specifically to celebrate the biggest* fuck you to Britain in history. Its why I've got a red coat burning on a stick in my back yard. We use it to light the fireworks. Its an effigy.

Nazi's get an honorable mention for bombing London. They just couldn't follow through.

svenhoek: Fuck Fireworks. Ghostbusting.

@svenhoek: You could read it with a Scottish accent.

Scotland

@NINJET: you might want to see the other movie, "chasing ghosts", from what i hear (not seen it yet) it paints a more fair picture. i could be wrong here.

I guess it has something to do with leaving his mark... a secret only he knew or something.
It was not really an Easter Egg designed to amuse the players...
Let's say Atari decided not to credit the guy for the game... this would serve as a guarantee?
Another problem I see is that since the game is almost hard coded, making something more elaborate would not only make the code way harder, it'd also make it bigger and take too much time to be made.
But interesting to know game programmers back them were already thinking of inserting easter eggs in games...

Bokusatsu_Tenshi

i hear that theres an easter egg in pong that lets you play arkanoid...

psych!

@2NinjasTapedTogether: Ive actually found an easter egg from 1 years ago once. That was quite "fun". But the more incredible part was the fact that it was perfectly intact. Guess since it was somewhere cool and shady it managed to survive that long.

Insides tho were as black as night. Sure didnt smell pretty either.

@Davio: Banhammer comment?

Bokusatsu_Tenshi

@Cogito:

That reminds me of the X-men Genesis game... when you beat Mojo, if you hit the reset button, etc... you get to play the rest of the game!

Oh wait...

turkish101

@Thomas Henry Ward:

Yup.
And North Korea replies with a "fuck you" to the US, by testing missiles on July 4th.

Firelance

@televizor:

I sure hope you're talking about Colossus and not Donkey Kong...

if so, yes, play it. Ignore the crappy controls and just play it.

turkish101

@Firelance: You're awesome for saying that about us.

Huh, I guess July 4th isn't so bad after all. Even though it does feel like a big "fuck you" towards Britain.

Thomas Henry Ward

@svenhoek:

What you talking about?
The British are awesome, and their accent are even more awesome.

Firelance

@Accordion:

one question, is he using an emulator to run it? oh and another, is it playable? I fell like i'm missing out a great game. should i try running it like that or should i wait for Sony to release it on the PS3 (sometime)?

televizor

This is a pretty obscure easter egg, but it's also pretty cool to know that there's games out there that still don't have all their secrets discovered.

@Cogito: hey! that TMNT game was awesome! If anything, you're a shitty snes title!

TacoGrande

@svenhoek: Yep. This was the only way to get your name on your game in those days at Atari. It was carefully hidden so that Atari wouldn't find it.

xot

@Klemmins:

Pennies on the eyes of a dead mime.

Too Soon!!!

HanSolomente

@Thomas Henry Ward: Britain? Whats that, America-lite? No that's Canada. Hmmm...OH! You mean that American colony across the Atlantic?

I guess, but I dont want to have read those posts in an English accent.

svenhoek: Fuck Fireworks. Ghostbusting.

@NeoStarr: Return of Kaketaku please?

The Atari 8-bit version of Donkey Kong is actually a very good translation, made even better by knowing how little they actually had to work with..! I actually think I may have seen this before (I vaguely remember thinking "WTF is that on the title screen?" but didn't think anything of it-- no, I'm not claiming I discovered it, but I know I played the game to death back in the day. Get off my lawn!)

I've had the blog referenced in my bookmarks for a while, too-- he's a very good writer and has some pretty amazing insights into what it was like working for Atari back in the 80s. Pretty fascinating stuff.

@NeoStarr: Me too. :(

Gorilla Snow is Maximum Risky

@Davio:
try getting your mom to say that about me last night
*koolaid voice* oooooooh yeahhhhh

pneboy

@2NinjasTapedTogether: dohohohohohohohoho

[images.amazon.com]

@Fernando Jorge:

We already know there is nothing up there so its time to give up.

Im assuming you have seen the videos by "PikolUploader" on youtube…

For those that dont know of his discoveries…get searching, very impressive hidden areas/beta zones dormant colossi and other oddities await.

@Thomas Henry Ward: Not any more.. to my knowledge. They hired someone a while back but he seems to have faded away. Get a new Brit please Kotaku.

FunkyMunxy

Donkey Kong sucked at home until the very own 8-bit Nintendo version came out. I'm sure there's easter eggs in some NES games that still haven't been figured out as well. Must've been a slow day at Kotaku. Happy 4th ^_^

Billy Mitchell its a cheater, arrogant fuck!

That's actually kind of awesome that he made an Easter Egg secret for so long. I wonder if it's some kind of record? Nowadays these things don't last a week before someone has ripped them apart and discovered every last little nuance of the code.

I still remember my first Easter Egg (sort of?) the "fake island" in the Goldeneye dam level.

Not the best secret I've ever discovered, though; on a shitty SNES title TMNT: Tournament Fighters my brother and I discovered an awesome glitch. Turn the game on and load the title screen. Shut off the power for three seconds, and then turn it back on. Enter the "Boss Code" and you get the effects of 3 other codes too. ("Boss Code," "Area Select Code," and "Hi-speed 3 Code.")

Ahh, nostalgia.

26 years? That Easter Egg is rotten...

@Gorilla Snow is Maximum Risky: If anything, I'm actually disappointed in Kotaku's lack of cake news lately.

@Davio: If you don't like reading what they have on weekends then I suggest you go do something else. Go outside or something. I have heard there are some cool things you can do out there. I haven't tried it for myself though.

...I was hoping for Donkey kong to be donkey punching Pauline. MY HOPE WAS CRUSHED!

akumaserge

@NeoStarr: I played the NES one a lot. But jesus it got insanely hard in the later levels.

Was like a very demented galaga.

@Paradox me: I think the Hot Coffee mod proved that there are certain things you just can't keep hidden. Namely porn.

@Monsignor: Not to mention that Kotaku isn't even the run of the mill news site. It's a blog. Do these same people shrug off Cake posts as being 'non-news'?

Gorilla Snow is Maximum Risky

@Witzbold: That's Donkey Kong 3. I actually kind of enjoyed it myself.

@Paradox me: The arcade had that other weird one too. The one where you were in some green house and sprayed bugs + donkey kong with bug spray up his crack till it pushed him far enough to get his head stuck in a bee hive. That game made 0 sense. Ranks right up there with Ikari Warriors: Road to Victory

I think I've actually heard about this before... or maybe I am just imagining it. I'm not calling old news, just seeing if anyone might remind me since it's bugging me.

Anyways, you'd think he'd put something else in there. Like, penises. It's always penises.

@Davio: Every weekend, there is an asshat like you busting a blogging site for not having quality news just for you. ITS THE WEEKEND!!!, they are not required to give you a damn thing. You're lucky you are even getting this. Do you really believe that the gaming industry continues to drop news over the weekend? No other big business news comes out over the weekend, why would the gaming industry be any different? It doesn't matter, Ban Monday was designed for people just like you. Enjoy your stay while you can.

Monsignor

@Dante_Ravenkin: Svenhoek seems to have said the same thing up above me. Ignore this. lol

Didn't that have something to do with Atari not giving credit to their programmers? I remember another Atari game, Maybe Adventure, where you could find an area that told you the creator's name. And it was taboo. Maybe this was something similar?

@Davio: Give him a break, it's a holiday, and a weekend. The industry isn't exactly bustling with excitement today. You wanna read about games, dontcha?

@Kermad: Its a videogame website! You guys want hard hitting, in-depth coverage?!

svenhoek: Fuck Fireworks. Ghostbusting.

I remember reading somewhere that any individualism in programming was a bad thing. In adventure for the Atari 2600 when you get that almost impossible to see key for a door that is very far away, you would unlock the room with the programmer's name in it. For months no one found it, until a boy called about it after discovering it. I recall that the programmer was then punished or something. I could be completely off base here, but I remember reading something like that once.

@Davio: Must have been for him to program a code like that..."HEHEHEHEHE SOON THE WORLD WILL KNOW OF MY INITIALS!"

@svenhoek:
Banhammer news?

SsLordMagus

@svenhoek: Well let someone from Britain do it then. We don't get a day off. Surely someone from Britain writes for Kotaku, right? Obviously yes.

Thomas Henry Ward

@Davio: Filler news indeed

Kermad

@Witzbold: I don't remember which, but playing one of the DK games in an arcade when I was little I don't think I ever got very far. I doubt I even saw the second level.

All I remember about Donkey Kong was that it was a pretty brutal game. In difficulty that was.

@Klemmins: you should be a programmer

excaleranth

Back then his initials were cool, but we all know how gamers are today. In another 26 years we'll uncover Easter Eggs in our favorite games showing penises rocketing across the title screens.

@Davio: Its the 4th of July. Wait until Bash wakes up to give you your news. America is on break.

svenhoek: Fuck Fireworks. Ghostbusting.

His INITIALS? Seriously? Try something maybe slightly more epic. . . Like the phrase "The Corn Flakes blistered my Hornbuckle." Now that's an easter egg.

Did he get credit for it? I remember an article from the past detailing why programmers used to do this, something about Atari not giving anyone personal credit for the games they made, so they would add these Easter Eggs, like the Adventure Easter Egg. Might have been his way of showing off his elite status to his friends.

svenhoek: Fuck Fireworks. Ghostbusting.

@Davio:

News is news.

Gerard Cabarse

@Fernando Jorge: I hope for that in less than 26 years

excaleranth

@Davio: I thought it was mildly interesting. It's almost but not quite filler news. ;P

Liptons

@Liptons: LOL I kinda feel sorry for the guy half revealing it himself.

Bergerac

WTF?!

That's all i have to say.

porkster

Slow day?

Davio

Best. Easter egg. Ever.

Liptons

My hope is that 26 years from now, someone figures out how to access the blocked areas of Shadow of Colossus without using any cheats.

Fernando Jorge

26 years too late...

wow thats.... really boring.

sirmarcelot

@TheRuiner: I bought a PS3 for this game. Im currently trying to find a copy of ICO on the cheap.

@Accordion: I will buy a PS2 one day mainly just for this game, I have a pro-mo flat for it at home and think about how awesome it must be all the time when I look at it, and I've never even played it. It just looks so freakin awesome.

TheRuiner

So the original coder, dadhacker, had a 9600 baud modem back in... 1982? How did he managed that? I had a 300 baud modem at the end of the eighties! And he only had 12 bytes to spare or so and made DK symmetrical, but he forced in an Easter Egg still? My hero!

AdelaideLucas

A big reason for early easter eggs is if someone stole the code and tried to pass it off as their own, without paying the original author. "Hard to find" is good, here.

JonathanElatus