Windows 98 included a similar developer tribute Easter egg. If you created a new folder on the desktop, renamed it several times, and then opened it, you saw the moving, fading names of the Windows 95 team accompanied by a MIDI musical score. Windows 95 shipped with a hidden musical tribute to its developers. Players used the keyboard (Z for the left flipper and M for the right) to control the game. It included a scrolling list of development team credits on a pinball-style, faux LED scoreboard.
Not to be outdone by the Excel ’97 team, the developers of Word ’97 included a simple game of pinball you could access via a series of obscure steps. The teapot originated in 1975 at the University of Utah and later became a standard reference model for testing 3D rendering across many platforms. If you set the joint style to “mixed,” in the screensaver’s settings, one of the joints will sometimes be replaced by the famous Utah Teapot. It displayed endless linkages of pipes, connecting and extending in 3D space. Several versions of the Windows NT operating system shipped with a pioneering 3D OpenGL screensaver called Pipes.
Windows NT Pipes Screensaver: Utah Teapot If you fly around enough, you find a black monolith with the scrolling names of Excel ’97’s developers on it. Rather, it’s more of a surreal 3D, first-person flying experience over a purple landscape.
In truth, though, it’s not exactly a flight simulator in the sense of gauges and airplane controls. Once word got out about the hidden “flight simulator” Easter egg in Excel ’97, it spread quickly in the press because it sounds so sensationally weird. Excel ’97: Flight Simulator and Credits Monolith If you perform the trick repeatedly, though, you might see the bear’s head in the yellow suit instead. The Easter egg normally shows a man in a yellow suit next to a scrolling list of the developers’ internal email system names. When the team hid developer credits in the Program Manager of Windows 3.1, the bear naturally made an appearance. It became an inside joke and unofficial mascot for the operating system. Windows 3.1: Microsoft Bear Creditsĭuring the development of Windows 3.1, one of the programmers carried around a stuffed teddy bear. After crossing a zigzag bridge, you discover a room with the names of Excel ’95’s developers and a low-resolution photo of the team. In this apparent reference to Doom, you can actually roam a 3D, first-person environment. For example, in Excel ’95, if you follow a series of complex steps, a window called the “Hall of Tortured Souls” appears. In the ’90s, Excel attracted a large share of elaborate Easter eggs.
For a while there, however, the eggs were on a roll-and they got pretty wild! Excel ’95: Hall of Tortured Souls