Top 10 Most Well Hidden Video Game Easter Eggs Ever

Totaka’s song is a short melody hidden in nearly every game that composer Kazumi Totaka has worked on for Nintendo. It was first discovered on the title screen of “Mario Paint” by clicking the “O” in “Mario,” but it was later revealed that the very first usage of the tune was in the Japanese Game Boy title “X” that predated “Mario Paint” by a few months. Some famous instances of the song appear in “Animal Crossing,” “Yoshi’s Story” and “Pikmin 2” and, according to the composer himself, there are actually quite a few games where the short melody has yet to be found like in “Wave Race 64.” Happy hunting, everyone!

This secret remained hidden for almost three years and came to light via twitter user KarmaIngram1 who somehow found out that dialing 1-999-367-3767 connects gamers to an outlet called Black Cellphones, which for some reason causes a small explosion in the area and changes the appearance of the in-game cellphone. Now, we’re not saying that it’s the most USEFUL Easter Egg out there, but the fact it remained a secret for so long was very cool, considering just how many people poured endless hours into “GTA5.”

It took 26 years for this Easter Egg to come to light, which is really the most exciting thing about this secret, seeing as it’s just the programmer’s initials on the title screen. But, hey! It sure was well hidden! Landon Dyer, the person who programmed the Atari versions of “Donkey Kong” even admitted himself that it’s a pretty lackluster Easter Egg and way too hard to find, but that didn’t stop people from wanting to find it. In the end, gamers used emulators to look through the code to find the secret, which saved everyone a ton of time and effort.

Fans were delighted when the long-running boss in the fighting series became playable through what’s known as the Name Entry Glitch in “Super Smash Bros. Melee.” The glitch also allowed gamers to do other things, such as play as an all-black character, perform a zero second melee and play alone, but playing as Master Hand was by far the most desired aspect of this glitch. It remained hidden for quite some time, however, as the game was released in 2001 and this secret was only discovered in 2008 and made widely available a year later when it was posted on the popular online forum Smashboards.

Finding this secret is only the beginning as tracking down the hidden skull unlocks some seriously funny dialogue throughout the game’s main campaign. Sure, finding the skull will have you jumping through hoops – quite literally – but the satisfaction of hearing characters essentially make “Yo Moma Jokes” and talk trash one another makes the difficulty of finding this Easter Egg well worth it. It’s not the only well-hidden Easter Egg in “Halo 3,” though, as pressing both thumbsticks down on the controller during a load screen when the system clock is set to December 25th reveals a happy birthday message to the daughter of one of the developers. Happy Belated Birthday Lauren!

This secret room hidden within the dungeons of Hyrule has a bit of backstory to it. Back in October 1990, “Nintendo Power” magazine held a contest in which a selected winner would get his or her name programmed into a future Nintendo game. There are rumors that developers were not too happy with this contest and thus decided to make the winner – one Chris Houlihan – wait a LONG time to see his name on screen by making it damn near impossible to find, locking it away in a secret room that wouldn’t be found until 2002. Poor Chris had to wait almost 10 years to show this secret off to friends!

This Easter Egg was so well hidden, gamers dubbed it the Illuminati Easter Egg after the infamous secret society. It involves Morse code, foreign languages, hidden switches and keypads, and requires gamers to record sounds from the game and change the pitch to reveal song lyrics. And that’s not even all of it! The final part of this mind-bending journey is a randomized puzzle that, wait for it, only gives you a new outfit to use in-game. You’ve got to be kidding us… We were fine with the large variety of outfits offered already!

It took gamers nearly 10 years to find this Easter Egg hidden within the game’s opening menus, but the result was well worth the wait. Ripping around the lush waters of “Wave Race” with the usually upbeat and bright announcer replaced by a bored, sarcastic one is amazing and such a great idea for an in-game secret. An, no! We’re not being sarcastic! All it took was a specific combination of buttons on the audio settings screen, and, voila! Snarky announcer!

This gaming secret is truly epic in size and scale and even transcends the game itself! Oh, and guess what? It can’t be unlocked until 2113! No, that’s not a joke. It goes something like this: a secret location within “Trails Evolution” led to a secret move and a secret song. The song contained Morse code and pointed to four real world locations that each contained a small box housing a key. These keys will unlock another box under the Eiffel Tower in 2113. Well… I guess we won’t be learning the secret to this Easter Egg! But, it gets an “E” for Effort.

Though most of this game’s secrets were uncovered shortly after release, a computer engineer managed to find a rather special one some 15 years later: a gaming emulator hidden deep within the game’s code. It turns out, Rare were experimenting with emulation on the N64 back in the day and placed a ZX Spectrum emulator (the UK’s version of the Commodore 64) with 10 games inside of “Goldeneye 007,” including “Lunar Jetman,” “Gunfright” and “Knight Lore.” Instead of removing the emulator before the game’s release, Rare just disabled it’s access from players and so this Easter Egg still exists within the legendary N64 game even today.