Today we have easter eggs, and things buried within game worlds for us to find, but in the 80s and 90s quirky little messages were buried even deeper than you could possibly imagine. Wired has put together a great little feature looking at the best examples of all these messages. Some are truly amazing.
My personal favourite comes from the Erika and Satoru’s Dream Adventure, a Famicom game that was only released in Japan.
Part of the translated message is as follows…
First off, Kaoru Ogura, who ran off with some guy in the middle of the project. Yes, you, you bastard. Don’t show up at the office without showering after having sex 6 times the previous night. Next, Tatsuya Ōhashi. Yes, you, you bastard. Don’t give me your flippant shit — coming in late on the day we ship the ROM like nothing’s amiss. You can give me all the porn you want; I’m not forgetting that one. All that fucking weight you put on. No wonder you paid out 18,000 yen and still got nothing but a kiss out of it. Kenji Takano, Namco debugger. You are a part-timer; don’t dick around with the project planner. And finally, Kiyoharu Gotō, the biggest thorn to my side in this project. Yes, you, you bastard. Once I get a time machine, I’m sending you back to the Edo period. Go do your riddles over there.
You may have already heard of some of these stories, but you definitely have to check it out because there is some absolute gold in there. Brilliant article.
The Funny, Occasionally Dirty, Hidden Messages in Your Favorite Games [Wired]
Comments
5 responses to “Wired Has A Great Look At The Best Hidden Messages In Video Games”
Ohhh, that “Dirty” in the tile means it’s NSFW 🙁
dun goof’d, wrong article
Lol, brings back memories of what I used to do at my job. Got caught though, but thankfully cos I’m a spineless kiss ass, I just got a warning. Very immature in retrospect.
The thing I’ve learnt after hearing many stories about this kind of thing is that someone will *always* find the messages you never expect them to. Even if you think there is no way anyone will reach that part of the code, someone will.
We have an in house application with Monty Python quotes all throughout the code. A legacy of one of our developers.