Fun Fact #498 Easter Eggs

 Fun Fact #498

Easter Eggs

In the early days of Video Games, developers were a rare and treasured commodity, and noteworthy ones quickly became a selling point in and of themselves. To retain as many developers as they could in this Video Game Cold war most games did not credit their developers but just the companies that made them. Employees could even be reprimanded for discussing their games outside of work. 

This would all change thanks to “The Gray Pixel” which was a specific pixel on one of the levels of Atari’s game Adventure which would reveal the game’s developer Warren Robinett.  Atari was outraged but there was little they could do, Warren had quit a few weeks after release, and it was too costly to remake just to exclude the dreaded pixel. Worse yet the pixel practically caused a revolt by other developers who wanted to credit themselves in their games (The Pixel Revolt of 1980). Instead, the lead Director of Software Development –Steve Wright– suggested they take a page out of Martin Luther’s playbook and call them “Easter Eggs” for players to find. The practice has continued to this day and has expanded well beyond Videogames with most forms of visual media including them, resulting in dedicated online communities to finding these “eggs” (“ScreenCrush” does video guides to easter eggs for example). 

As for how the Easter Eggs tradition came about relates to Martin Luther and the protestant Reformation. In short he had Men hide the eggs for women and children to find bringing the congregation closer together during times of celebration (not Limited to Easter). The Christian symbolism behind this practice was that the search was like the search the early Christians made when they discovered Jesus’ body was missing, while the egg was a symbol of life contained within a tomb. Makes even more sense at that time as sometimes they’d hide viable eggs as well which would hatch later as a way to show Grace overcoming the grave. 

As time went on this practice combined with other egg traditions from various groups around the world introducing elements like the Easter bunny into the mix. The newest addition to Easter Egg hunts that I was able to find is the use of Cascarones (soft-shelled confetti filled eggs) in “Egg Fights” –essentially dodgeball but the balls explode upon impact. It seems to be limited to the American South currently however.

(Screen Shot of Warren Robinett’s Attribution Easter Egg)

Now while I didn't bring in any eggs to give out, I did bring in a bunch of individual Psudeo-Lego Mini-sets (10-25 Pieces in each set) with me today to give out for anyone who has kids they’d like to give some to. You don't have to celebrate Easter to get one, just please let me know or preferably stop by and I’ll give you one. Fair warning though I only have around 20 of these things. There are various vehicles such as race cars, planes, boats, and even a few sets of ICBM launch Trucks and minesweepers.

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One of these things is not like the others…

In any case, thank you for reading, I hope you have a Happy Easter (if you celebrate it), and a Fantastic weekend. (PS: If anyone knows of a local place which does those Egg fights let me know. They sound like fun!)