Adam’s Atari Adventure

The Robinett/Atari Easter Egg was first found by a 15-year-old from Salt Lake City called Adam Clayton. He discovered the secret room, found Robinett’s signature and wrote the letter in the pic to Atari.

The letter is in Robinett’s book ‘The Annotated Adventure’ (2016) with Clayton going so far as to draw maps showing exactly how he got there. The letter was the first time Atari got clued into Robinett’s creative subversion, subvertere from the Latin root meaning ‘to turn from below’ or turn something on its head. This describes exactly what Robinett did!

Atari’s ‘Adventure’ was considered the first video game to introduce the Easter Egg. By following a puzzling series of steps, players could unlock a secret room that featured the giant flashing words “Created by Warren Robinett.” There was a yellow, white and a black castle; and a yellow, white and black key. If you found the black key, you could open the gate of the black castle. Inside was a maze.

The Mother Lode
That particular maze consisted of two disjointed ones that were intertwined with one another and the only way you could get into that part of it, was if you used the bridge to cross one of the maze walls inside the black castle. Do those, use the bridge and cross the wall and you got into a tiny chamber. Go inside and you ran into the key to the secret room. BAM! You’d hit the mother lode!

The key didn’t look like a key, it was a single pixel that Robinett called ‘The Dot’. Players called it that too. Some players figured out that if you took ‘The Dot’ into one particular room and had two other objects in there, it would let you get through one of the sidewalls. At that point, Robinett didn’t see any reason to hold back, and half the screen filled up with his name in flashing colours!

Egg Hunters and other Tales

Easter Eggs add another dimension to games. Some of the best and most popular video game Easter Eggs include: Call of Duty 2 that has playable Atari 2600 games in the middle of a map. Duke Nukem 3D contains Homer Simpson’s Nuclear power plant desk Fallout: New Vegas includes the skeleton of Indiana Jones in a fridge. NBA Jam SNES version has cheat codes to play as The Clintons, Prince Charles or the Fresh Prince of Bel Air; and finally (perhaps humorously too) GTA: San Andreas has a sign on top of a bridge that said, “There are no Easter Eggs up here. Go away.” Image Credit: Atari/Giantbomb

OFF the WALL

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