1 Adventure - The original Easter egg
"Easter eggs" are hidden items in games. Often they are but a playful nod to another release; sometimes they conceal complete playable experiences. More frequently, though, they are silly, absurd gags placed by a developer. And it all started with the 1979 Atari 2600 game Adventure. Apparently agitated by the fact he would not get a credit for his creation, the game's author concealed a message in a room. It was buried so deep it was not until a year after release when a 15-year-old from Salt Lake City stumbled on the message "Created by Warren Robinett". After finding the code concealing the text, Atari eventually agreed it could stay and apparently coined the term from the obvious comparison with the hunt for treats at Easter.
2 Grand Theft Auto IV – Liberty's human heart
Observant GTA IV players may have spotted a sign in the base of the Statue of Liberty that reads "No Hidden Content This Way". Best ignored, it marks a secret entrance to the colossal sculpture's insides. A quick clamber up a ladder and there hangs one of the Grand Theft Auto series's most peculiar secrets; a throbbing, fleshy human heart scaled up to suit the 151ft statue's size. A nod perhaps then, to the scene in Ghostbusters 2 when the lady comes to life and helps save the day.
3 Metal Gear Solid 3 – Snake's nightmare
Game director Hideo Kojima has long made games packed with hidden features, playful destruction of the fourth wall, and sometimes disturbing, cryptic secrets. The most ambitious is undoubtedly the "Guy Savage" sequence in Metal Gear Solid 3. After protagonist Snake is tortured and a player save is forced, a reboot of the game will trigger a dream sequence realised as a playable hack'n'slash action game. Initially Kojima refused to recognised its existence, but eventually revealed that originally some element of Konami's shoot-'em-up Gradius was intended to make up part of Snake's dream. Another series highlight was exclusively for players of the first Metal Gear Solid. In the boss fight when Psycho Mantis reads the console's memory card, certain existing game saves – most famously from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night – would trigger character dialogue around the given game.
A discarded newspaper in Uncharted 3 sports a headline seemingly referencing the plot from The Last of Us. And the paper's masthead looks awfully familiar too…
Of course, nobody paid any attention at the time. On a bar top in a fictional pub in Naughty Dog's game Uncharted 3 lay a newspaper. Named the Overseer, and sporting a front-page layout that may feel remarkably familiar to Observer readers, the publication led with the headline "Scientists are still struggling to understand deadly fungus". Two years later, with ample hindsight, it became apparent it was an early allusion to the narrative of the next game from Naughty Dog, the critically celebrated The Last of Us.
5 Gone Home – Mitten's Journal
Cult indie game Gone Home was saturated with mysteries and secrets. There were the benign, such as the "Levine's Own Thousand Island Dressing" bottle; a seemingly throwaway nod to the legendary games maker Ken Levine. Then there were those that were very much part of the game, such as abstract clues that together helped the player piece together the game's greatest mystery; what it was about. And there were the delightfully absurd, with one example shining through. Players that found and dislodged a purple basketball before carrying it to a particular room and tossing it through a hoop were rewarded with something magnificent; a cat's journal narrated in meows – and a little human giggling – while an in-game television set presented a slideshow of one of the the internet's most popular cultural currencies: pictures of cats.
6 Just Cause 2 – The Lost island
Not content with a subtle nod to the Lost TV series, the Just Cause 2 team built the show's entire island.
If ever there was a TV show that could be argued to contain Easter eggs, it was the fleetingly captivating Lost, back in 2004. It's fitting, then, that Lost itself is the subject of a video game Easter egg. The game in question is action-adventure romp Just Cause 2, which doesn't just give the J J Abrams co-created show a subtle nod. Instead, it recreates the series's entire island and packs it with references to the show, down to the notorious hatch. How to get to the island? All it takes is a quick plane flight overhead, which triggers an inevitable, unavoidable crash. Called Hantu Island in the game, the area also features its own black smoke monster, a beached plane wreck and a sign pleading for rescue in the sand.
TRENDSPOTTING
Mobile VR
Before the Oculus VR company was acquired by Facebook for $2bn, its rift headset was the darling of many game-makers. Rift has not gone away, but its move to Mark Zuckerberg's empire has served to expose alternative VR systems. The most interesting are perhaps the mobile VR headsets. They are free from electronic components, making them remarkably cheap, and some, like the coming Altergaze, can be 3D printed. Each, including the VRase and the already released Durovis Dive, work much like that classic childhood plaything, the View-Master. But instead of slotting in a disk of stills, a mobile phone clips into the headset. The result is impressive, delivering interactive stereoscopic 3D worlds. Despite issues with controls and the number of apps available to support the systems, they have great potential as an alternative to Rift.
PIXEL PERFECT
One of the most significant updates to Nintendo's Game Boy line came in 2001, with GameBoy Advance. Thirteen years later, vintage GBA games are enjoying a new lease of life, having secured a place in the Wii U's online Virtual Console store. Yoshi's Island and Metroid Fusion are the most well-known of the first wave of releases, but accessible military strategy game Advance Wars is the best of a good bunch. F-Zero: Maximum Velocity delivers a thrilling serving of futuristic racing, while Wario Ware Inc provides a compendium of 200 increasingly silly microgames. With more GBA games being added to the list, all at £6.29, the Wii U has cemented its position as a leading portal to gaming's rich back catalogue.
