So where was I….oh yes Mortal Kombat (MK) and Pong! Wasn’t Pong a nice game? It was, like many other gamers, the first game I played. A Simple Tennis/ping-pong game where you had this controller which only uses a big round button to turn left and right to move you bat. For hours and hours I was playing that at my friend’s home, I was six years old at the time and already amazed me. Soon after that I got my Videopac which started my videogame passion and craze to collect them.

Hmm, I am wandering off! Let’s get back to the main subject here as part 2. I have to say, it’s hard to come up with my personal experience with hidden secrets when I played thousands and thousands of games in the past 30 years…. Alright, I will give it go!

1993 was not only great for MK2 to come out, but also my only favorite basketball game NBA Jam! Wow, that game got me interested in basketbal a lot. Yeah, it wasn’t a sports simulation game or as serious as FIFA games was but a enjoyable, fun, arcade style basketball game with over the top slamdunks where the hoop turns into fire or the glass breaks. Not to mention the super high jumps before the slamdunk. Boomshakalaka! Which (old school) gamer doesn’t remember the iconic voice-over of this game?!

Later on there was a special edition released, a Tournament edition, unfortunately which I don’t own. It said that you could unlock a lot of characters of which were hidden. The most special character was this couple:

We jump to the year 1993 where I loved to play 2d beat’em up on SNES and Sega megadrive. Streets of Rage series were always a memorable series to me, played for hours alone or with friends. We finished the game a zillion times and often talked about certain levels which were very cool to play. It wasn’t long until my friend came up with a level-select code which was very handy. To unlock this you had to do the following:

When the menu screen appers you had to hold B, then press up on the d-pad and select the Options button. Now while you still hold these buttons, press the Start button on your d-pad. You will hear a certain sound which gave you the idea it worked. This was extra confirmed as a new Stage Select mode was available. And oh boy, how we enjoyed this feature a lot!

Alright, a few years later one of my favorite series had part 3….Mortal Kombat. It was 1996 and I really enjoyed my nice Sega Saturn and put aside Daytona USA and Panzer Dragoon to play some good old MK3.

Learning the combo’s in such game is one thing, it also meant trying to unlock cool new things and find the hidden gems (remember reptile in MK1??)

I believe there was a hidden character in the game which was Smoke. A cool character that utilize his ability….yeah! smoke. You got that right. To unlock him you had to try out a sequence of buttons on your joypad. We tried and pressed a thousand buttons in once hoping to find out what it was. But nothing! We kept on trying and trying untill we found the answer

After the Game Over screen both players had to press the following:

X, Y, L, B, A,

And there he was, SMOKE!

Now for the last secret, I am gonna return to where I started this blog, where I got my NES and Super Mario Bros 1. That game was awesome even still today I love to play it. My daugther of 4 likes it very much also :)

Anyway, the hidden secret is right at the beginning of level 4.2 and you can only pull this off if you are big Mario. You jump over the small gaps untill you enter the small corridor surrounded with blue bricks. At the beginning of the corridor you see a gap with a question-block. Stand +/- 3 mario’s away from the question-block. Now hit the blue bricks. When you hit the upper blue block you go downwards but…..you get stuck halfway with nothing underneath you! This is the hidden secret and the only way to get on top of the level’s environment. When you get on top walk all the way behind the pipe you normally go in to complete the level. You will see a warp zone to level 5.

Yes, you don’t need to do the 4-4 castle with the secret order of passages…. Now that I’m talking about this, let me explain how that one goes, if you want to skip the warp to level 5. When you enter 4-4 and fight bowser again you keep walking and jumping. After a while you notice that you keep on getting to the same point. Walking in circles if you will but without the circles. The is a secret pattern in this you know to find out yourself. If you can’t here is some help!

From the start you need to follow the upper path untill you see stairs no drop down and follow the lowest path which lead you straight to Bowser.

Easy isn’t it….once you know it. It took me quite a few hours to crack it at the time. Don’t blame me, this was one of the first games I played on NES.

Don’t you just love hidden secrets in games? Back in the days and even now I like it. The game you play is most of the time pretty lineair storywise and you know what to do for walking the beaten path towards the goal whatever that is. Nowadays it’s much easier if you get stuck, walkthroughs are everywhere, youtube can let you take a look how you beat a endboss or find the hidden secrets.

The fun part of this all is the find it yourself. Just explore the game, what if there is something I didn’t discover yet! It makes you play the game longer and that’s nice if you enjoy the game. Those bonus items you can get or extra’s you see can be the cherry on your cake when you like a game very much. And it’s a good story to tell at school to your friends and classmates. Or for those like me, co-workers at work.

Nowadays gaming is much more a public thing, whilst back in the days it was something that some like but most people were not interested in. As a gamer you were considered a loner and not social at all. It proves to be wrong as on this moment everyone plays games, whatever and whenever. Like Sony’s CEO Kazuo Hirai quoted in his CES 2014 Keynote. And it is true! We play games, listen to music, watch movies everywhere at any time.

It has it’s charm to play games in current time but I can’t help the fact that without walkthroughs, without easier gameplay elements, the retro games from the past were much more challenging and above all had secrets……

This concludes my retrospective on hidden secrets in games for now. I am not gonna say I stop with this subject as there is much to say about this topic. My next blogpost will be about something else….something we all can relate to, old school gamer or whatever gamer you wanna call it now. Stay tuned, comments would be much appreciated and remember…..Don’t be clumsy!

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