8 Most Spiteful Video Game Easter Eggs Ever
3. The Bulls Fail Against The Pistons )Because The Designer Is A Pistons Fan) (NBA Jam)
When NBA Jam launched in the mid-1990s, there was a huge real-life rivalry between the Detroit Pistons and the Chicago Bulls. And unfortunately for Bulls fans who picked up the game... the guy who designed it was a Pistons fan.
And so, during the production of the classic sports title, lead programmer/Pistons fanatic Mark Turmell saw an opportunity to get one over on those pesky Bulls, by effectively nerfing them with a special line of code.
As he explained in an interview with Ars Technica (19:40 in the video below), this code would activate whenever the Bulls took a late-game shot - making them miss those shots every single time:
"Making this game in Chicago during the height of the Michael Jordan era, there was a big rivalry - the Pistons and the Bulls. But the one way that I could get back at the Bulls was to affect their skills against the Pistons in NBA Jam. And so I put in special code that if the Bulls were taking last-second shots against the Pistons, they would miss those shots."
A petty move? Sure. But let's be honest: if any of us had the opportunity to make our sporting rivals look like idiots, then we'd absolutely take it.