Hot Coffee and Himbos - Unintended Easter eggs

r3nu4l

A while back the creators of the GTA series got in trouble over the 'Hot Coffee' Easter egg in GTA: San Andreas.

Long before that however and much more sinister in many ways was the Gay Himbos in SimCopter (anyone remember that game?).

The game gained controversy when a designer inserted sprites of shirtless "himbos" (male bimbos) in Speedo trunks who hugged and kissed each other, who appear in great numbers on certain dates. Their fluorescent nipples were drawn with a special rendering mode usually reserved for fog-piercing runway landing lights, so they could easily be seen from long distances in bad weather. An unintended emergent behavior of the code caused hundreds of himbos to swarm and crowd around the helicopter, where they would be slashed up by the blades, and then need to be air-lifted to the hospital -- which earned the player easy money. The easter egg was caught shortly after release and removed from future copies of the game.

The designer, Jacque Servin, was fired afterwards for adding unauthorized content (which delayed the release of the game, and caused Maxis to miss Christmas season). He cited his actions as a response to the intolerable working conditions he allegedly suffered at Maxis.[1][2] This caused a member of AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), a gay AIDS organization, to call for a boycott of all of Maxis' products, a measure which Servin rejected.[3] Some months later, a group named RTMark announced its existence and claimed responsibility for the himbos being inserted into the game along with 16 other acts of "creative subversion."[4] Servin stated that he had received a money order of $5,000 from RTMark for the prank.[4]

It turns out that Jacque Servin may actually be a founding member of RTMark.

So does anyone else know of 'unapproved' Easter Eggs in Games that caused controversy or were maliciously inserted? I'm not talking about online hacks or mods. I'm talking about stuff deliberately inserted by one or more programmer that was 'not approved' by the game developer.

wyrn

I can't think of any at the moment, however I LOVED SimCopter. I loved putting out fires, causing traffic jams and listening to the radio. That part I thought (at the time) was really cool and realistic. I would love to be able to play it again.

Even today, when Ride of The Valkyries comes on the car radio - I think back to Sim Copter. Mwhahahaha!

gouche

Isn't there a data file in Elder Scrolls Oblivion that allowed you to view al the female characters in the game with their tops off? Think it resulted in the game being given an R rating in the states.

And I think in Rings of Power on the Megadrive by Naughty Dog if you pressed a certain button combination at the title screen it would show some blonde girl taking her top off - albeit in pixelated megadrive graphics.

Robert ninja

Unintended easter egg? THat would make it a glitch. The SimCopter thing was intended by someone, albeit, not the marketing team.

THe only thing I can manage to think of is that sofa glitch in Hitman: Blood Money that I found some years ago. The sofa made a guard go crazy and he tried to kill it, even shooting through his fellow guards. I only ever experienced it on the PS2 version.

Have a vid of it here http://youtu.be/iwp7yvZG2wQ Please excuse the awful quality, spelling and overall lameness of the video. I made it years ago and I rushed or something. Yeah.

dreamers75

Guile freeze in SF2 which via rumour (word of mouth not the interweb) led me to believe if i did the move i would be untouchable and win every fight.

As i found out it only worked vs some characters and when i actually pulled it off i got the **** kicked out of me


http://blog.analogmedium.com/2005/12/street-fighter-2-guile-bugs.html

Potential-Monke

gouche wrote: »

And I think in Rings of Power on the Megadrive by Naughty Dog if you pressed a certain button combination at the title screen it would show some blonde girl taking her top off - albeit in pixelated megadrive graphics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P8M264e5Vc

You're welcome

Mr Freeze

Isn't there a bit in Oblivion, where one of the female voice actors fluffs a line and then says dammit or something and let me try that again and then restarts the line.

Hardly an Easter egg, just a audio editing miss.

ProjectColossus

Not quite from a game (but a military training helicopter flight sim), I think this fits the category of "unintended easter egg" pretty nicely. Particularly funny if you are a software developer.

The reuse of some object-oriented code has caused tactical headaches for
Australia's armed forces. As virtual reality simulators assume larger
roles in helicopter combat training, programmers have gone to great
lengths to increase the realism of their scenarios, including detailed
landscapes, and, in the case of the Northern Territory's Operation
Phoenix, herds of kangaroos (since disturbed animals might well give
away a helicopter's position).

The head of the Defense Science & Technology Organization's Land
Operations/Simulation division reportedly instructed developers to model
the local marsupials' movements and reactions to helicopters. Being
efficient programmers, they just re-appropriated some code originally
used to model infantry detachment reactions under the same stimuli,
changed the mapped icon from a soldier to a kangaroo, and increased the
figures' speed of movement. Eager to demonstrate their flying skills
for some visiting American pilots, the hotshot Aussies "buzzed" the
virtual kangaroos in low flight during a simulation. The kangaroos
scattered, as predicted, and the visiting Americans nodded
appreciatively... then did a double-take as the kangaroos reappeared
from behind a hill and launched a barrage of Stinger missiles at the
hapless helicopter. (Apparently the programmers had forgotten to remove
that part of the infantry coding.)
* The lesson?
* Objects are defined with certain attributes, and any new object
defined in terms of an old one inherits all the attributes. The
embarrassed programmers had learned to be careful when reusing
object-oriented code, and the Yanks left with a newfound respect for
Australian wildlife. Simulator supervisors report that pilots from that
point onward have strictly avoided kangaroos, just as they were meant
to.

It's true according to snopes.

Potential-Monke

Mr Freeze wrote: »

Isn't there a bit in Oblivion, where one of the female voice actors fluffs a line and then says dammit or something and let me try that again and then restarts the line.

Hardly an Easter egg, just a audio editing miss.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F06xl1hM_a8

I don't have my own, but i'll find videos of other peoples!!!

Atavan-Halen

There was this one in GTA 3

http://www.g-unleashed.com/index.php?cat=14&pid=118

And this site is good for looking up glitches and game secrets

http://tcrf.net/The_Cutting_Room_Floor

deathrider

atavan-halen wrote: »

There was this one in GTA 3

http://www.g-unleashed.com/index.php?cat=14&pid=118

I'm pretty sure I remember seeing a similar notice in the last level of the first chapter in Duke Nukem 3D (at least I think it was that level). I can't rememeber where exactly, but it took some jetpacking and some night-vision goggles to see it.

Potential-Monke

deathrider wrote: »

I'm pretty sure I remember seeing a similar notice in the last level of the first chapter in Duke Nukem 3D (at least I think it was that level). I can't rememeber where exactly, but it took some jetpacking and some night-vision goggles to see it.

Apparently there was a few of those messages in DN3D:
Linky

deathrider

Potential-Monke wrote: »

Apparently there was a few of those messages in DN3D:
Linky

Nice one.

Signed
The Levelord!