Test Your Fate: Unique Pinball Features

In 1990s game designers often hid recurring images or references within the games which became known as easter eggs. The methods used to find hidden items often involved pressing the flippers in a certain order or at a certain point in the game. Designers have also been known to hide hidden messages or in-jokes within games.

Easter Eggs:
An easter egg is an intentional joke, message, image or secret featured within a piece of work, most commonly found in video games and computer programs. The term originates from the 1979 game Adventure for the Atari 1600 game console, programmed by Warren Robinett who secretly hid the message 'created by Warren Robinett' within the game (see figure 1). This was a result of programmers names not begin included within the credits of video games over fears competitors would steal employees. The message would only appear if the player moved his/her avatar over a certain pixel 'the grey dot' during a certain point in the game. When the secret message was discovered, Steve Wright, Director of Software Development at Atari suggested that the message should stage, and encourage more messages, describing them as easter eggs for consumers to find.

Although the term easter eggs originated in 1979, hidden messages and images can be found in earlier games, with some believing the first was a message was 'Hi Ron!' hidden in the game Starship 1 (1997) by Ron Miller. However, others believe messages can be found in games pre 1977. Since the 1970s more elaborate easter eggs have been incorporated such as hidden levels and developers rooms (fully functioning hidden areas of the game).

Although easter eggs are commonly associated with software they can sometimes be found in hardware. The Commodore Amiga 1000 computer includes signatures of the design and development team embossed on the inside of the case. The Commodore Amiga models 500,600 and 1200 all feature easter eggs in the form of song titles by The B-52's as white printing on the motherboards. Many integrated circuit designers have included hidden graphics elements, chip art. These are visible only when the chip package is opened and examined.

Hidden messages are not exclusive to software and hardware as they are often found in comic book artists work. Indonesian artist Ardian Syaf is known to hide references to political figures in the background of his artwork.

The idea of including hidden elements inside the pinball machine design is interesting as there could be multiple or hidden routes within the design.

Figure 1

Backglass: figure 2
Backglass is a vertical graphic panel mounted to the front of the top back, containing the game name/graphics and game score. In older games the backglass image in screen-printed in layers onto the reverse side of the piece of glass. However in more modern machines the image in imprinted into a translucent piece of translite which is mounted behind a piece of glass. Earlier machines didn't include backglass as they where playfields in a box, however backglass became popular during the electrification of the game. The backglass is used to represent the theme of the game, drawing peoples attention in order to play the game.

Figure 2