10 Secret Video Game Easter Eggs Left By Developers

10. Sonic The Hedgehog’s Hidden Credits

It's hard to imagine now but not all that long ago, it wasn’t unusual for video games to have limited to no credits. In fact the term "Easter Egg" was birthed by developer Warren Robinett, bucking this trend to hide a room in the Atari 2600 game Adventure that displayed his name against his boss' wishes.

Many publishers wouldn't budge on the stance and those that did, such as Sega, had a habit of asking programmers to use nicknames and pseudonyms for their staff roles rather than real names. With the looming release of Sonic the Hedgehog, soon to be the crown of the Genesis/Mega Drive, the blue blur’s co-creator Yuji Naka was displeased with the idea that his team would go without the recognition he felt they deserved.

In a fashion like Robinett before him, Naka went against his superiors and slipped a little something-something in as a gift to his co-workers. Thus, through a series of long winded button inputs, Sonic players could boot up a secret staff roll that contains the real names of the men who worked on the 16-bit classic.

Story details on this are light but it can be assumed that Sega found this Easter egg pretty early on as it’s only possible in the first print (v0.0) of the Japanese version of the game. Later revisions, and international releases, saw the secret credits removed.