Since the dawn of time, or the 60 or so years ago when video games were created, there have always been secrets in the programming. “Easter Eggs” in gaming date back to 70’s arcade games like Starship 1 where a specific sequence of controls would award you 10 free games – it would go unnoticed for 30 years after it’s release in 1978.
Finding Easter Eggs in games is fun, but sometimes there’s more satisfaction in finding what you’re not supposed to. The abstract test rooms or bizarre unfinished levels that were only supposed to be common knowledge to the developers; here’s 10 of our favorites.
10 Fallout Dev Room
Starting off with our list with a classic that is prevalent in modern Bethesda RPGs is the coveted “Dev Room”. All you have to do to visit is hit the ~(tilde) key which will bring up console commands and type in the respected command for the game you’re playing. Fallout 4, for instance, is “COC QASMOKE.”
There you’ll find every single weapon, armor, audiotape and upgrade in the entire game. Obviously it makes the game pretty boring if you access it early, but can be loads of fun if you’re trying to cheese Fallout 76.
9 Unfinished Big Surf Island (Burnout Paradise)
Burnout Paradise was the last game to come out of the acclaimed series, but ended things off with a notable bang. While the base game was loaded with content from an open world to a seemingly endless amount of events, it did receive an add-on which opened up Big Surf Island.
It was another open-world environment located right across the water from the main area of Paradise., unfinished Big Surf Island. Though, if you wanted to get into Big Surf early you could if you could glitch your car over the bridge. Then you’d see the island in all its greatness.
8 The Pool Of Upside Down Sinners (World Of Warcraft)
What is probably one of the strangest hidden area on this list comes from the first World of Warcraft. At the cemetery of Morgan’s Plot you’ll find an inaccessible crypt that holds some striking imagery behind its doors. If you can glitch inside you’ll find a dungeon that is 90% finished and is full of skeletal remains.
It’s certainly very eerie and one of the creepiest areas in the game, but it gets elevated to whole new level when you find the “Pool of Upside Down Sinners.” It’s a lake with people hanging upside down and has kept players theorizing it’s meaning for years.
7 Mountain Observatory (Bioshock Infinite)
Bioshock Infinite has a ton of cut content. Originally the game was supposed to start in Rapture, Comstock was going to be a politician instead of a prophet, there was going to be multiplayer, the list goes on and on. Some of the cut-ideas are bonkers, one of them being different variations of the lighthouses at the end of the game.
There was to be an arctic Lighthouse, an Arabic tower and a space station that looked very similar to Citadel Station from System Shock – mind blown. It was all eventually removed, but you can still visit the unfinished mountain observatory during the late game.
6 Sonic Adventure 2’s Test Level
This is Sonic Adventure 2’s version of Bethesda’s Dev Room. Unlike Fallout and Skyrim however, accessing this one is a little more complicated than inputting a few letters into a console command. Any fans interested can take a look for themselves here .
Once you get inside the test room you’ll find an assortment of colors and platforms designed to help the devs test the physics of the game. It’s a fun little playground and feels a lot like the “free play” option in a game like Rocket League.
5 A Zelda Fan’s Secret Room (The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past)
While the WOW hidden area might take the cake for creepiest on the list, this Link to The Past one might be endearing. If there’s one company that knows how to make something cute and invoke those feelings of childlike astonishment it’s Nintendo.
The company ran a competition for their magazine, Nintendo Power that would give one lucky fan the chance to have their name appear in the next Zelda game – that fan was Chris Houlihan. However, the developers behind the game made Chris’ room inaccessible through normal means making it a tough area to track down.
4 Beta Industrial Area and Hazard01 (Half-Life 2)
Valve, the developers behind the Half-Life series had their own test room for the second game that has become a major talking point for fans of the acclaimed game. Unlike the areas in Fallout or Sonic Adventure 2, Half-Life 2’s beta area was much more cryptic because this is Valve we’re talking about here.
The area was made to test GMan effects that were supposed to be used throughout the game. There’s just a whole mystic about the place as you encounter creepy sound effects and distorted GMan images in this truly stunning area.
3 Glitching Beyond The Borders Of The Saint’s Row Demo
Younger gamers might not know, but back in the 90’s and early-to-mid 2000’s, video game demos were all the rage. You’d find them in the back of gaming magazines or in a two-disc set of some promotional games and would immediately feel the satisfaction of being apart of an exclusive community.
Video game demos are a thing of the past as platforms like Steam feature “early access” titles, but one of the last popular demos was for the first Saint’s Row. In this GTA clone, you could explore an urban city and get into crazy shenanigans. And if you knew how to glitch the game you could enter into the blocked off section of the demo and fall through the world in all it’s glory.
2 Jungle Book World (Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep)
The only game that can compete with the amount of cut-content that was featured in Bioshock Infinite are the Kingdom Heart games. Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep released in 2010 and was the sixth installment in the popular franchise.
While Birth by Sleep was avoided some of the major cuts that have plagued other games of the series – such as a playable area outside of the famous Disney castle cut from the first game – it still had its fair share of exclusions. The most substantial being an entire Jungle Book world that was axed from the final version of the game. But in usual gaming fashion, you can still manage to check out what could’ve been.
1 The Minus World (Super Mario Bros.)
The Minus World from Super Mario Bros. is one of those things that you really have to see to believe. It’s a glitched level that can be found in World 1-2 and is reminiscent of the underwater level in World 7-2. It got its iconic name because before the level begins the screen reads “World -1”
It’s like the upside-down from Stranger Things but in Super Mario Bros. And what makes things even more chaotic is you can’t escape or finish the level, so all your exploring has to be done before you’re taken down by enemies or run out of time.
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