20 Software Easter Eggs

Geek out this weekend with our alternative Easter Egg hunt…

Tilt on Mobile Browsers

Open up your smartphone browser and search for  “tilt”, “slanted” or “askew” in Google and watch what happens.

Nintendo 3DS – Home Screen Rave

Rub the in-built microphone to make the menu items spin faster. Shout at your console and they will move up and down too as they spin. Party on.

DVD – Wall-e

In Special Features, press left and then up to find a hidden menu button. Press enter to see the makers of Wall-e talking about “geeking out”. 

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare – The Griggs Rap

Complete the last level of the game and wait until the first song of the credits has finished for a Sgt. Griggs “Deep and Hard” rap about Call of Duty and Infinity Ward.

Skype – Emoticons

In Skype chat, type in (drunk) or (ninja) to send funny, little emoticons. Also try (drunk), (bandit), (mooning), (tmi) and (swear).

Windows XP – Pinball Mouse Control

An oldie but a goodie for Pinball – one of the original timewasters. Wait until the ball appears and type in “hidden test” to control the ball with the mouse. Hello high score.

Chrome – Internets

Type about:internets into Chrome and if you have the “Pipes” screensaver installed, you’ll see a reference to US senator Ted Stevens’ clumsy description of the internet.

Adobe Photoshop – Splash screens

To access  Photoshop’s hidden title screens, hold Control and click About Photoshop on a PC or hold Command and click About Photoshop on a Mac. CS4 has a Stonehenge themed splash and CS5 shows an artistic White Rabbit.

DVD – Fight Club

Read the Warning message that flashes up at the beginning of the DVD. You can’t pause it so you’ll have to start it up a few times to get Tyler Duerden’s full message on disobeying authority.

Mozilla Firefox – The Book of Mozilla

Type about:mozilla into the Firefox URL bar for a cryptic biblical message that some say is aimed at Internet Explorer. Or about:robots for a pure waste of a few seconds.

Lego Star Wars 2 on Xbox 360 – Secret Disco

In Episode II Chapter I after Jango Fett’s room go across the hall and enter the opposite room. There’s a large set of switches – with R4 light all the floor panels to kick off a techno disco.

Google – I’m Feeling Lucky

Google Search is available in a few different geeky languages: for computer leetspeak type in “google l33t”, Klingon “xx-klingon” and if you’re feewing wucky type in “ewmew fudd” for a Looney Toon search engine. Oh, whilst you’re there hit I’m Feeling Lucky for a ‘find George Bush’ search and see where Google takes you. 

Nintendo 3DS – Fishing With Colours

If you finish the Fishing Game in the 3DS’s AR (Augmented Reality) Card section you can play the Free Fishing game. Once you’re in, try placing the AR card on different coloured surfaces – blue, red and green give you different species to catch. 

DVD – The 40 Year Old Virgin

Go to Bonus and press up, down, up down, left right. Then select Whack it! for an extended clip of Seth Rogan’s character Cal. You can guess what he’s talking about.

Super Mario 64 – Yoshi

When you’ve got all 120 stars to complete the game, you can get up to the castle’s roof with the unlocked cannon in the front courtyard. Here you’ll find Mario’s dinosaur pal Yoshi who fully stocks up your lives. Pointless but a rite of passage.

DVD – Inception

Insert Disc 2 – Special Features and enter 528491. Click on the image of Cobb’s spinning top that appears to bring up a motion comic prequel to the film.

Google Reader – Ninja

In Google Reader, use the arrows to type this combo – up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A. The screen turns blue and a ninja shows up on the left of your RSS feeds in an homage to an early Nintendo cheat code.

Mozilla Firefox – Mozilla Firefox 

Type this into your Firefox browser – chrome://browser/content/browser.xul. We can’t decide if this could be useful for multitasking or just odd.

DVD – The Office Series One

In episode 5 skip to the Slough by John Betjeman scene. Press enter when the room goes dark and you can see Peter Purves training video in full.

Google – Answer to Life

If you think Google search has the “answer to life, the universe and everything”, you’d be right. The first result is from Google Calculator. What else did you expect? Other Google Calculator jokes are “number of horns on a unicorn” and “once in a blue moon”.