10 Secret Video Game Easter Eggs Left By Developers
3. Halo 3’s Happy Birthday Message
Halo 3 was one of the Xbox 360’s biggest tentpole offerings, concluding Master Chief’s original trilogy and offering a multiplayer experience that kept many gamers entertained until the early morning many times over. With the number of hours that the game’s 14.5 million copies had plunged into them, it’s surprising then that one of its secrets lay dormant for eight years.
In fact, its creator had to allude to it himself as players hadn’t organically come across it in the first five years since shipping. In the frequent Q&A mailbag sessions that Bungie would post on their site, long-time Halo developer Adrian Perez said that a specific date and loading screen could trigger something he had coded into the finished product.
By changing the Xbox 360’s internal clock to December 25th, booting up a campaign mission and holding down both thumb-sticks players can be treated to… a zoomed out loading screen? Oh. That’s not all that special.
However, written into the halo that forms as the mission loads is the message “Happy Birthday Lauren”, an ode to Perez’s wife. This is the gaming equivalent of buying your partner a plane with a banner behind it except that this banner is immortalised in every copy of an award-winning FPS title. How sweet.