"People have found a ton of amazing stuff in the game that I didn't think would have been dug up for a long time," Killian says. But the "final secret" isn't among that. His questioners try to coax more details out of him, but Seth doesn't budge.

Last October, someone on the Capcom-Unity boards speculated that the last secret was a weapon, specifically a throwing weapon. S-Kill put the splat on that.

What the hell could it be? After nearly a year, we probably stand a better chance of, collectively, blindly guessing what it is rather than actually finding it. I say it's a Ghosts N Goblins Easter egg.

EVO 2009 - Seth Killian [YouTube via GoNintendo]

Donkey Kong for the Atari 400 and 800 was one of the best early ports of an arcade game, and its writer, Landon Dyer, detailed how he built it practically by himself, with no support, reference code, or anything one would expect in a licensing deal. He also revealed the existence of the Easter egg, but incorrectly described how to get it ("something like: Die on the 'sandpile' level with 3 lives and the score over 7,000," he writes.)

Don Hodges, who earlier fixed Pac-Man's notorious kill screen, set to picking apart the Donkey Kong code and finding the egg. He did. It's rather underwhelming, but for posterity's sake, he found the conditions for achieving it.

• Play a game, setting a new high score that is either 37,000, 73,000 or 77,000. The digits for hundred thousands, hundreds, tens, and ones may be anything.

• Kill off all of your remaining lives, but your last death must be by falling.

• Then set the game difficulty to 4 (press the option button 3 times.)

• Wait for the game to cycle through the demo screen where Kong jumps across the screen, then at the title screen, the programmer's initials, LMD, will appear. (Pictured above)

That is a set of conditions so specific I can't imagine anyone discovering the egg without prying apart the code, much less knowing how to repeat it. Hodges shows how he found it in the code, using an emulator.

I think the only question remaining is why Dyer made the egg so hard to discover. Certainly other Atari-programmed games of the time had Easter eggs that were not only easier to find, their methods were widely known and circulated.

Donkey Kong Lays an Easter Egg [donhodges.com via Game Set Watch]

As a couple of unicorn-loving tipsters with a thirst for sporting news have informed us, inputting the infamous Konami cheat code (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, enter) will infest the official ESPN web site with mystical ponies. And they'll keep spawning if you keep clicking.

Not only do you get an eyeful of unicorn and rainbow, you'll also get a heaping help of Comic Sans. And every story will become "cute," "magical" or "sparkly." Thanks to Ken and CronoX2 for the mystical tip!

Update: Looks like ESPN.com has removed the "Cornify" code from the majority of its web site. It was glorious while it lasted.

When I went on my hunt for this list, I needed a theme, so I settled on "Easter Eggs I have actually observed." Having missed most of gaming in the 1990s thanks to work, college, and not owning a PC - and because you know about all the cool recent Easter eggs - we'll have to reach way back to antiquity.

Of course, commenters are invited to share with us the oldest Easter egg you can recall finding. Or just any old cool Easter egg you remember, video game or otherwise. In fact, the coolest Easter egg I can recall is the one my brother and I painted to look like Jesse Helms back in 1984. Had glasses and everything. Then Fletch smashed him against a tree.

Where was I? Oh yeah, old Easter eggs.

Smurfette Topless (Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle, Colecovision)
Yes, Smurfette porn long, long predates the discovery of Rule 34. This was a redraw glitch available on the final screen of Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle (in which Gargamel makes no appearance.) If you walked off the screen to the preceding one, then back very quickly, the slow redraw would leave Smurfette topless. The topless Smurfette Easter egg - with the false urban myth that she remained topless and would slap the Smurf out of your Smurf - was all the rage in fifth grade. I wouldn't discover it until I bought a ColecoVision off of a seller on Usenet (yes, really) my senior year of college.

RF (Missile Command, Atari 2600) Warren Robinette's secret room in Adventure is probably the most notorious Atari 2600 Easter egg. This one is a close second. I forget where I first heard how to do this, but it increased my neighborhood cred a thousandfold when it went off, as described, the first time. Select difficulty 13, and fire off all of your missiles without scoring any points. At the end of the game, the initials of the programmer, RF, pop up from the ruins of the rightmost city. The coder's name? Rob Fulop, who also wrote "Demon Attack" for Imagic, and was Billboard Magazine's 1983 Programmer of the Year.

"FEEL DESTRUCTIVE "(Pirate Cove, VIC-20) Pirate Cove was a cartridge text adventure for the Commodore VIC-20, and one of the first pieces of software Dad bought me and my brother for our first ever computer. Pirate Cove's command line was brutally unsophisticated. Two words at most, verb and object (sentence diagrammers, the subject was always implied to be "you.") For a nine year old trying to figure out how to get past the goddamn crocodiles, without any visual assistance, it was hard to imagine any solution other than "KILL CROC." But commanding the game to KILL anything brought up this peace-love-dope reply: "I'm sorry, I can't do that. I don't feel destructive." You know where this is headed; I typed FEEL DESTRUCTIVE. Came the reply: "OK, POOF! The game is destroyed!" And Dad nearly herniated himself laughing at me.

HSWWSH (Yars' Revenge, Atari 2600) Another less-publicized set of initials. These are for programmer Howard Scott Warshaw. You had to wait for the Qotile to go into swirl mode, then hit it in mid-flight with the cannon. During the explosion animation, a black line would appear in the midst of the radioactive cloud. Hovering over it brought up the initials and ended the game.

Ghostbusters Scam (Ghostbusters, Commodore 64)In Activision's original Ghostbusters game, you earned money from mundane ghost-busting missions to buy equipment and vehicle upgrades. You started the game with a pitiful sum, barely enough to buy the Ecto-mobile. But in the new game screen, where you create a "bank account" to start the game, punching in "BELLIN ADAM" - for programmer Adam Bellin - and the number 12345 got $954,000 dumped in your account. Then you could go out and buy the Porsche, the mobile ghost detention unit, and every other high dollar gadget you needed.

Indiana Jones and the Extra-Terrestrial (E.T., Atari 2600) Howard Scott Warshaw was so proud of his role in the cartridge that would destroy Atari (the first time) that he upped the self-referential Easter eggs to two: the pieces of the phone were his initials, and there was another way to get the letters up on the screen. You could also summon other Steven Spielberg IP. After collecting all the phone pieces and giving Elliot seven pieces of candy, reviving the flower turned it into a Yar. Doing it a second time changed the flower into Indiana Jones, as represented in the 2600 Raiders of the Lost Ark game. Doing it a third time brought up Warshaw's initials beside the score, so you knew whom to credit blame for this masterpiece.

But there are only nine Team Fortress 2 classes: Pyro, Engineer, Sniper, Spy, Heavy, Demoman, Medic, Scout, and Soldier. Hmmm... Valve's Robin Walker has hinted at such additions in the past. Maybe they're coming sooner than we think.

And, by the way, Valve. Put me down for some of those action figures.

To see it yourself, "prototype ammo berserk" needs to be activated. Then check out the Spec Op's ammo crate. Oh, you might also have to buy Resistance 2. And a PS3.

Resistance 2 Easter Egg Gives Props to MGS4 [PS3 Fanboy]

However, the extreme peculiarity of these discoveries has not diminished my interest in exploring games’ resource files in the least. Seeing the graphics, sounds, and codes neatly grouped in separate sections and finding out how they intermingle to bring the game to life may not be quite as entertaining as playing the game itself, but for those few who have the patience and a lot of free time, it is an interesting experience.

There is always the possibility of discovering an unused background, animation or sound file, or even just an interesting little comment made by a programmer in a script. As small and uncommon as these discoveries that I have made may be, they add a new dimension to the experience of enjoying these adventure games. In a way, they can be compared to the deleted scenes or audio commentary on a DVD release of a movie, and they give the interested gamer some true insights into the games’ design. Since I have only looked at a small portion of the files in just a few adventure games, who knows how many other hidden treasures have yet to be uncovered?

It's a neat, nostalgic (if sort of odd) look at some of those classic adventure games.

Resource Quest: hidden treasures in Sierra’s adventure games [Adventure Classic Gaming via GameSetWatch]

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]