Do you know why Easter Eggs are called this way? / Who invented them?

[Nicola]

Let's see if the infos I have are correct!

[ubersaurus]

I'm pretty sure the term came from the concept of the "easter egg hunt"; digging around for hidden treasure, or secrets.

Gamewise I think the first one with an easter egg was the Channel F democart.

[tom]

Electronic Games magazine coined the saying. Kunkel or Katz

[Kid Ice]

I always thought it was because the dot that let you pass through the wall in Adventure was referred to as an "Easter Egg".

[jajaja]

I'm pretty sure the term came from the concept of the "easter egg hunt"; digging around for hidden treasure, or secrets.

Same here, but seeing how Nicola wrote the thread im sure its something else hehe.

[Nicola]

Well, I'll just copy/paste a part of the interview that Greg Easter (Atari VCS Snow White) gave to me for my book:

"...The only other programmer who was turning out games quickly was Howard Warshaw, but he had produced the greatest losses for the company ever in 2600 sales. His games had bugs and problems with the quirky designs that left most players bewildered as to what they were even supposed to be doing to play it. One of his games flashed his initials on the screen in gigantic letters when a certain sequence of commands was carried out - which ironically I was the first person to invent. This is called an "Easter Egg" in the business, and was named after me by Mike Lipschutz, who was my boss back in 1978. I had done the same thing to programs that I wrote then so that I would have proof that I was the programmer for use in future job interviews. Only I made sure that the commands issued to bring up my name were completely impossible to do accidentally... "

That's my version.

Man, I need to finish that book...page 372 reached.

[Sweater Fish Deluxe]

Mr. Easter's story may be true, but that doesn't mean that everyone else called them easter eggs for the same reason. Katz and/or Kunkel may have come up with the term independently and it was definitely Electronic Games that popularized it.


...word is bondage...

[ubersaurus]

Well, I'll just copy/paste a part of the interview that Greg Easter (Atari VCS Snow White) gave to me for my book:

"...The only other programmer who was turning out games quickly was Howard Warshaw, but he had produced the greatest losses for the company ever in 2600 sales. His games had bugs and problems with the quirky designs that left most players bewildered as to what they were even supposed to be doing to play it. One of his games flashed his initials on the screen in gigantic letters when a certain sequence of commands was carried out - which ironically I was the first person to invent. This is called an "Easter Egg" in the business, and was named after me by Mike Lipschutz, who was my boss back in 1978. I had done the same thing to programs that I wrote then so that I would have proof that I was the programmer for use in future job interviews. Only I made sure that the commands issued to bring up my name were completely impossible to do accidentally... "

That's my version.

Man, I need to finish that book...page 372 reached.

He claims to have invented easter eggs?

As far as I know the democart in 1976 was the first one.

[Haoie]

I recall it was in the VCS title, Adventure.

The programmer of this [name I forget] included a secret room with his name in bright colours. To access this room was exceptionally difficult. This apparently was completely unknown to even Atari management until some kid from Utah discovered it several years later.

[Nicola]

And to say that HSW produced the biggest losses for Atari?! All 3 of his games sold over a million copies each (even accounting for returns). Speaking of irony, the only games Greg worked on that I know of (VCS - Snow White, Galaga, and Mark of the Mole) never even got released.

Well, the problem is not what HSW produced, but how these went to the market. And Greg explained it very well, sadly.

As for the games at which he has woked, here is the list:

-Snow White-100%complete
-Mark of the Mole-75% but everything has been lost
-Real Time Chess-40%
-Submarine Simulator-25%

He has worked for Atari from 1982 to 1983, then he left like many others.

As for the eggs, I have nothing more than his words. Is it possible that Wright brought the term to the masses and that it was used years before (1978) about Greg.

[diskoboy]

I recall it was in the VCS title, Adventure.

The programmer of this [name I forget] included a secret room with his name in bright colours. To access this room was exceptionally difficult. This apparently was completely unknown to even Atari management until some kid from Utah discovered it several years later.

Warren Robinette was who you were thinking of.

He was supposedly the first. Atari wasn't giving any of the programmers credit for the games they designed. This was Warren's 'revenge', so to speak.

[Nicola]

It's pretty clear from that quote he's blaming HSW when it was clearly the fault of upper-management. Is it HSW's fault Atari gave Spielberg too much money for the E.T. license, or for giving HSW only 5 weeks to program it, or for producing far too many carts (like 4 million!)? Hardly.



There's only 2 known prototype versions that are out there (although Greg stated there were more), and neither one is complete. In fact, the version that was released at CGE2K2 (11-9-82) is more complete than the later version (2-9-83) that was found last year.



I wouldn't say everything...
http://www.atarimania.com/detail_sof...RSION_ID=19053



What company/system were these for?



It could very well have been a term that was used in the labs among other programmers, but there's no way to prove that w/o some form of documentation and the earliest known example is the article in the first issue of Electronic Games

The carts produced were much more than 4 million.

Greg told me he finished, but there are 2 completely different Snow Whites too.

As for the other 2 projects, these were projects that he was doing by himself but marketing refused to publish.

I didn't know about the Mark of the Mole proto! And him too! I'll tell him, he will be really happy!

[Griking]

Well, I'll just copy/paste a part of the interview that Greg Easter (Atari VCS Snow White) gave to me for my book:

"...The only other programmer who was turning out games quickly was Howard Warshaw, but he had produced the greatest losses for the company ever in 2600 sales. His games had bugs and problems with the quirky designs that left most players bewildered as to what they were even supposed to be doing to play it. One of his games flashed his initials on the screen in gigantic letters when a certain sequence of commands was carried out - which ironically I was the first person to invent. This is called an "Easter Egg" in the business, and was named after me by Mike Lipschutz, who was my boss back in 1978. I had done the same thing to programs that I wrote then so that I would have proof that I was the programmer for use in future job interviews. Only I made sure that the commands issued to bring up my name were completely impossible to do accidentally... "

That's my version.

Man, I need to finish that book...page 372 reached.

Is this from a book that you're writing? Any details on when it will be released. Also if Mr Easter claims that he put his initials into games first did he ever disclose which games they were and how to get to them?

[Nicola]

First stonic

Greg told me how many carts were PRODUCED, not sold.

Just a quick string of the interview:

"By the end of 1983 I heard that Atari had more that 150 warehouses
filled with manufactured and packaged game carts that could never be sold,
including something like 12 million copies of Pac Man. "

He hasn't copies of any work he did. But he has many paperwork and artwork for both Mark of the Mole and Snow White. I've bought all these items, and I'm waiting for them to arrive. I told him to scan them, just in case these get lost.

Greg worked only at projects for the 2600.

I'll give you a small part of the description of Mark of the Mole:

"Anyway, the game Mark of the Mole has the following fundamental theme...
First a line of music plays (one of the songs from the Residents' Mark of the
Mole record) - you are a mole with a hammer who travels down into a cave and taps on walls with a hammer. Different parts of the cave make different
musical notes, and when you find the next note you need to complete the line of music which was just played. You are building a song note by note, and you have to remember the tone of the next note you need in order to get it right. Each time you play the caves are different, so you can't just remember where to go. The game actually teaches you what is called "perfect pitch" in music - the ability to hear notes and know where they are on the staff."

Now to Griking

I'll add in the book as much of this interview as I can, but Greg has gone very far. There are things I can't publish.

Greg used Easter Eggs in programs, not games:

"I had done the same thing to programs that I wrote then so that I would have proof that I was the programmer for use in future job
interviews. Only I made sure that the commands issued to bring up my name were completely impossible to do accidentally. "

As for the book, 2 years + some months ago, I began writing my thesis for my university degree. I told the teacher (marketing) that I would do a small timeline before the analysis. The timeline is now 372 pages thick. I thought about publishing my thesis after the degree, but the teacher doesn't want to add this timeline to the analysis because, if I use it this way, the work will be available publically and everyone will be able to copy it.
She wants me to publish it. I think she wants to publish it with me (easier for me...but this way she gets credited for something that I did).
So, after the degree, I'll add some more pages, and some pictures, reaching easely 500 pages of facts. Just facts about the videogames'market. Don't know if there are many timelines that talks about the Hudson All-Japan Caravan Festival and about the Hartung Game Master. No big description. Just when, where, prices and main features-innovations.

[Nicola]

Well, Greg looks very informed about what was going on there. He wrote a booknote, like a diary. But he told me he can't find it anymore.
He told me so much backstage you can't imagine.
He entered Atari just in time to see the decline...
And furthermore he has eard first person who ordered all the copies, part of which entered production.

Now I may choose to reveal who, why and when regarding the choice of ordering 18 millions copies (you are reading it right) of the same game, but this would ruin an interesting surprise (and I've paid for it).
A bad marketing mistake from the wrong person........

Regarding the Eggs, I'll ask him more about it!

[stonic]

I see Nicola never followed up on this (publicly). Well, as it turned out, Greg Easter's "behind the scenes" comments to Nicola were about 75% bullshit, as confirmed by a few former Atari folks. Actually, about the only truth was the list of Atari games he worked on. So yeah, Greg Easter = not a nice guy.

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

Either that or a faulty memory.

For whatever it's worth, I believe the writer who began using the term "Easter Egg" at Electronic Games was, in fact, Joyce Worley; whether she used it independent of anyone else coming up with the same term, I have no idea.

[RASK1904]

Man I don't even want to step in this, cuz I don't know shit. But I thought the first one was in the Atari 2600 game adventure.? And the guy put it in there becuase Atari wasn't giving the designers credit for there games.?

Now as far as who made coined the name "Easter Egg". I don't know I was....maybe 5. Good luck with this.

[slapdash]

The first WELL-KNOWN easter egg was in Adventure, but that doesn't make it the first. It seems like Fairchild might have beat Warren Robinett to the punch, but I don't think Warren knew about it (or any others) when he put his name in the game.

Oh, and looking back at an old post, the "dot" was never referred to as an "easter egg" (as the name of the object) that I've ever seen -- it's always been referred to as "the dot", "the magic dot", or something similar.