Reader Bahamut sends the above Easter Egg, which is Spore creator Will Wright's head floating over the galaxy in the main menu screen. How'd he do it? By tinkering around. "Before I quit out of the entire game I try just randomly clicking around the main menu ..." Bahamut explains. Methinks he would have been among the first fishies crawling out of the ocean to breathe gas and not water. ("Before spawning and dying, I decided to randomly swim up this rock to see how far it was to the water's surface ...")

Bahamut shows how he did it after the jump. Since this precedes the official demo release, can we call this a zero-day Easter Egg?

Okay, so I was screwing around with the (leaked) Spore Creature Creator demo late this evening, and right before I quit out of the entire game I try just randomly clicking around the main menu (the galaxy). If you click the center of the galaxy, the menu buttons for "Load Creature", etc. disappear, which allows you to view the galaxy unhindered. While in this view, if you hold down the left mouse button move left or right you can give the galaxy a "spin". If you spin the galaxy fast enough, this pops up in the center of your screen.

Alright everybody, go give it a try!

Adventure - Atari 2600
In the beginning...
In the early days of Atari, programmers weren't given credit for the games they designed for fear of other companies trying to steal them away, but Adventure designer Warren Robinett felt that credit was due. He included a hidden object in the game that lead to a secret room that displayed the words, ""Created by Warren Robinett," which was the first known video game Easter egg. Not exactly the most exciting example, but the first deserves credit.

Final Fantasy VII - PlayStation
The Debug Room
While completing Final Fantasy VII for the PlayStation was a joy, once the credits rolled I felt a certain sadness, knowing that the game was at an end. Then I discovered the debug room, a place generally open only to programmers to allow them to test certain areas of the game. While it required a Game Shark to access, what was found within the room was worth the shame of being seen in public purchasing a cheat device. You could access key scenes in the game, play through the mini-games, add the invincible Sephiroth to your party or even resurrect the poor little dead flower girl Aeris.

SiN - PC
Rub-A-Dub-Dub
Activision and Ritual Entertainment's PC shooter SiN was chock full of Easter eggs, but none quite as intriguing as a surveillance camera that showed a slightly more human side of chilly SiNtek CEO Elexis Sinclaire. Before you click play be warned - definitely not safe for work!

Diablo II - PC
The Secret Cow Level
"There is no cow level." Perhaps this was true in the first Diablo and in Starcraft, where the phrase was featured as a code, but persistent rumors and speculation led Blizzard to finally included a secret cow level in Diablo II.

The Secret Cow Level can be very easy or very hard depending on your class, and what skills you use. The first thing you will notice is there are a LOT of cows. Exploring is not a wise idea, as you will quickly have an unbelievable number of Cows on your trail. Try to avoid being surrounded by the Cows at all costs.

Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes - GC
Panties, Panties, Panties
Metal Gear Solid and its remake on the Gamecube was chock full of Easter eggs, from posters for other games to funny character reactions, to Meryl in her underwear not once, but twice! After seeing Meryl working out in her cell while in the ventilation shafts you can exit the shafts, return, and she'll be pantsless! If voyeurism isn't your thing, if you follow Meryl into the restroom later in the game fast enough, you'll get the entire Snake flirting cutscene with her in her skivvies, as seen below.

Of course for every half dozen great Easter eggs, there's always a few rotten ones laying around. The worst?

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas - Xbox 360, PS3, PC
Oh My God There's An Axe In My Game
Ridiculous product placement is one thing, but tie in a little in-game blooper reel to a conspicuously placed container of Axe deodorant and you've got by far the most rotten Easter egg around. It's an adver-egg!

There's a lovely set of six and one bad egg to get you folks in the Easter spirit. Now it's your turn to share your favorite gaming Easter eggs. Is it the Mortal Kombat Reptile fight? Good old Hot Coffee? Is it a secret to everyone? Feel free to post your picks in the comments section. Happy Easter everyone!

Ninja Reflex: Steamworks Edition [Steam]

The existence of so many things hidden in the game that don't have to be found lends the game a certain quality, one best described as verisimilitude. Verisimilitude is a useful word to use in describing video games .... Properly used, the word means that there seems like there is a world outside the borders of the screen, happening regardless of what the player does. It implies the existence of a fully-fleshed world, one that's more than a mere collection of polygons or tiles that might as well be sealed in Plexiglas. It allows a game to better enable the player to forget that it is, really, just a game.

An interesting trip down memory lane and has some interesting connections to current and future game design.

Game Design Essentials: 20 Mysterious Games [Gamasutra]

I Played Through Episode Two Holding A Goddamn Gnome (Spoilers) [James via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

Having a hard time finding all the hidden skulls in Halo 3? Curious about what they all do? Instead of bogging yourself down with icky reading, GameTrailers has assembled a helpful video guide revealing the locations and characteristics of (nearly) every one of the game's boney power ups. Collecting them all nets you the ninja-riffic Hayabusa armor, further strengthening the Team Ninja and Bungie love-in.

I speak, of course, of video game Easter eggs...tricks you can perform in a computer or console title that reveal little hidden bits place there by developers to reward the incredibly lucky or incessantly curious. It all started back in the Atari 2600 game Adventure, when a programmer left a secret message in a hidden room.

Nowadays Easter eggs are much more common, and you can get a good idea of how much so by visiting the The Easter Egg Archive, which catalogs not only gaming eggs but also movie, DVD, TV, music, book and art eggs as well.

Kotaku Fun Tip: Did you know that in the PS1 game Beast Wars: Transmetals if you pressed a certain button sequence the game actually became playable? Not true!

Plenty of real Easter eggs await you at the Easter Egg Archive. Enjoy the holiday! Michael Fahey

The Easter Egg Archive [via GamePolitcs]

Who knew this weird little song was implanted in so many of the games Kazumi Totaki has scored for Nintendo? Don't say "Me!" Or, worse yet, "Mii!" I am a man capable of extraordinary acts of physical violence. Florian Eckhardt

This screenshot was found on a WoW forum and precariously claims to display the Sword of One Thousand Truths which will be winnable in arena matches in the Burning Crusade.

Some problems with the legitimacy of this claim, besides the obvious, are that the weapon model is exactly the same as another well-known sword, the Hungering Cold, and that the text kerning or ligature or whatever is all funked up in the item description.

Photoshop?! Can it BEEEE? Eliza Gauger

Gotta love the sword [WorldofWarcraft.com, via Digg, pic from GayGamer]

Previously on Kotaku: World of Warcraft Hits Southpark

Oh, thou obsessive geeks. I admire you. I sit here, withered away in cynicism like an Aztec mummy, my eyes staring at the internet like desiccated plums. I do not love gaming so much anymore that I would comb a 2500 pixel Halo 3 promo pic and discover, hidden in the texture of the assault rifle, an 18x18 pixel square nursing the Marathon logo. Yet even the dead vortex of my heart feels a slight throb when I marvel upon your crazy obsessed works. Florian Eckhardt

When Artists Want to Mess With Your Head [Bungie]

Gillian Moore (Leather Armor Merchant)

[is a reference to] Hannibal (2001) — Actress Julie Moore plays as Clarice Starling in the sequel of Silence of the Lambs. Hannibal is a cannibal and the NPC is a leatherworker, got it?

Mehhhh. Julianne Moore is almost certainly the origin of the name but the cannibalism thing is tenuous at best. That was really not one of her defining roles.

Apart from the fannish burbling and arm-waving, the list is a fun skim and will undoubtedly allow you to impress your next group with your godly powers of observation, coupled with your encyclopedic knowledge of popular culture. Eliza Gauger

World of Warcraft Easter Eggs !

Unlike most easter eggs, these World of Warcraft inspired egg creations will not finish their brief ovum existence dramatically hurled at the side of my kid sister's head. Which is just as well, because some WoW players really poured every ounce of cool they've got into these things.

Ah, the easter egg! The most transient and fragile of the true artist's mediums!

Noblegarden Contest Winners [WoW Europe]

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas [GameFaqs]

I can't tell you how much of a gyp I think it is that Japanese schoolkids got to swing their arms around wildly every morning while I had to recite things frozen in a loyalty pose. But this video does make up for it, just a little.

Out Run 2 Flag Guy [The Community At Large]

Star Wars Kid Lives [Screenhead]