10 Most Important Video Game Easter Eggs Of ALL TIME
Good luck finding these without an investigative degree.
Nothing oozes charm more than a video game Easter egg. The practice, started in earnest with the rudimentary depiction of a McDonald's, of all things, has since become a trademark of the industry at large. Love letters of the most endearing kind, their discovery is (almost) always left for fans to discover through serendipitous means organically.
There's always an exception to the rule, though, and some secrets are so well-hidden that they go undiscovered for years or decades. One of Donkey Kong's programmers giving up the ghost 20 years after the fact to reveal their sneaky inclusion is likely the most extreme example; others are deliberately made less obtuse to guarantee their discovery before everyone involved kicks the bucket.
On rare occasions, developers will go the extra mile and conjure something remarkable crossing the line from digital oddity to real-world globetrotting adventure. Bungie and High Moon Studios delivered exactly that with Destiny 2, requiring internet sleuths to hike up a bloody mountain to earn their promised reward. Then there's Trials Evolution's utterly bonkers generation-spanning saga which nobody living today, it can be said with great confidence, will have the pleasure of seeing through to its fruition. Pack a rope: the rabbit hole goes deep with this list.
10. Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night - Listen To The Music
Up there as one of the most memorable Easter eggs of the '90s, Konami got oh-so creative with this musical number. Back when physical media reigned supreme and people still used an antiquated form of audio storage called compact discs, Symphony of the Night's most well-hidden secret had some hefty hardware requirements for the time.
To access a bonus track — it never received an official name beyond "Alucard #2" — owners of the OG PlayStation Metroidvania title needed to insert the game disc into any device capable of reading (and playing) music and skip to track two. Upon thumbing the play button, none other than Alucard's voice would spill from the speakers, recognising the incorrect use of a PS1 disc and stressing that it be returned to its rightful home in your console. Ignoring his protestations for long enough would eventually yield a reward in the form of a remixed Castlevania theme.
Because of course it would happen, the discovery of Symphony of the Night's Easter egg would prompt PS1 owners the world over to fruitlessly try their luck with every game they owned, hoping for similar results.