One of the famous coin arrows in Super Mario World.

In-game collectibles are a staple of platformers and play a big part in various videogame genres. They help to fill out maps, provide points bonuses and aid the player in overcoming the game’s challenges. They also flesh out the setting, sometimes even being used as part of its architecture, e.g., the coin-arrows in the various Super Mario games.

Apparently all clocks in Final Fantasy VI are secretly powered by elixirs.

Collectibles seem to speak to the kleptomaniac side of our personality, encouraging us to take all that we see. In console RPGs, it’s common to break into people’s homes, rummage through their belongings, and generally pillage the entire world that you’re trying to save.

And why not, really? After all, as players we want to be rewarded for exploring. It’d be awfully dull going from one empty room to another, so letting us interact with the game as if it were an episode of Supermarket Sweep might not be such a bad idea.

Those screws are more useful than they look.

Collectibles are also associated with rewards, which become increasingly less significant as their quantity increases. Too many rewards can make the game too easy, and unlockable concept art is a poor substitute for awesome powerups.

Mega Man 9 gets around this by providing a useful in-game store and two levels to most collectibles (a small and a big version), which themselves are directly connected to the player’s health, weapon ammo, screws count (the in-game currency) and lives. Items are scattered throughout the levels, but also randomly dropped by defeated enemies. This mechanics is accompanied by an algorithm working in the background to skew the loot-drops toward what the player needs most, i.e., if you’re low on health, you’re much more likely to get an energy cell. Also, the store items tend to either regenerate the player character’s statistics or help him get past some of the trickier parts of the levels (something that’s particularly useful in Mega Man as its maps usually present more of a challenge than its enemies).

Here it is -- the greatest collectible of all time!

My all time favourite collectible, though, would have to be the rings in the 16-bit Sonic the Hedgehog games.

At first glance, the rings are not that much different from the coins in Super Mario: they’re golden, they animate, they complement the levels, they’re worth points, and for every hundred you collect you get an extra life.

Beyond all that, though, they also serve as the your health.

As long as Sonic has at least one ring in his possession, he will not die from contact with spikes, enemies, projectiles, etc. Whenever he touches any of those hazards (while Sonic himself is not invincible or surrounded by a shield powerup), all the rings in his possession come spilling out, cascading over the map before flickering out of existence.

Well, at least you can get some of them back.

During this phase, the player can maneuver around in a mad dash to actually pick up the lost rings. Now there is a hard limit on how many rings come flying out — if you have over two hundred of them, don’t expect  to get ‘em all back — but generally speaking the amount is congruent with the number indicated in the HUD.

This mechanic allows the player to generally compensate for his mistakes, possibly turning an instant death into a slap on the wrist. It also makes boss encounters that much more manageable as the player can afford to take a hit or two, allowing him to observe and learn his foe’s various patterns. This isn’t as forgiving as it might sound, though. It’s fairly easy to have a single ring bounce off-screen and be lost forever, so it’s always in the player’s best interest to have as many rings on hand as possible.

The bonus stage entrance in Sonic the Hedgehog 3.

But there’s more!

In the original Sonic the Hedgehog, completing a level with at least fifty rings in the player’s possession allowed him to enter a special/bonus stage (the details on this change from game to game, but the concept is always the same). Now not only are these psychedelic levels a treat in themselves, but they also allow Sonic to gain extra points, lives, continues and collect the Chaos Emeralds. If Sonic gathers all 6 of these, it actually alters the game’s ending.

But there’s even more!

The special Chaos Emerald ending in the first Sonic the Hedgehog.

In Sonic the Hedgehog 2, the concept of Super Sonic was introduced. This was a speedier, near-invincible version of Sonic with a new sprite-set that could be activated by collecting all of the Chaos Emeralds. Once they were in Sonic’s possession, all he had to do was get fifty rings and jump up to transform into Super Sonic.

While in Super Sonic mode, the rings in the player’s possession would get “used up” at a ratio of one per second. This prevented the game from becoming too easy (also reinforced by that fact that getting all the Chaos Emeralds was a pretty difficult task to begin with) and added a time-pressure element to the gameplay. Getting stuck on a boss battle just as the rings ran out could be lethal, but Super Sonic was also capable of dismantling bosses in mere seconds.

Super Sonic facing off against the final boss in Sonic the Hedgehog 2. This couldn't actually happen without cheating (note the hex in the score -- it's the tell-tale sign of debug mode).

Later games would go on to introduce even more ring-powered extra stages — and these would also reward the player with new types of powerups —  and the focus on collecting the Chaos Emeralds would be further emphasized. Not only would the Super Sonic endings be changed, but entire new boss battles would present themselves if Sonic successfully completed all of the bonus stages.

Overall, the rings in Sonic the Hedgehog represent numerous mechanics, but they also happen to be OCD-friendly, so to speak. You don’t need to collect them all, and you can experience all of the things mentioned above if you only pick up a portion of them. Collecting the Chaos Emeralds isn’t a one-time thing either — in each level you have at least one chance to enter a bonus stage. This is a far-cry from the tiring collectathons of today’s platformers, and if you see any rings floating around on screen, the incentive to grab ‘em is always there…

Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas' Hot Coffee mod. Despite the scandal this polygonal sex caused, it was not a real videogame secret.

However, most forms of media tend to be strictly passive. Aside from the occasional dabbling in interaction, the audience exerts no direct influence over the medium’s content.

Games — and videogames in particular – are inherently different. They are interactive and require players, not just observers.

There are plenty of lists online cataloguing the “best secrets in videogames,” but before we delve into this discussion, let’s actually define the term:

Now let’s apply this denotation to design in videogames.

Given the above, we can now define the “videogame secret”:

This is not in any way official, but rather a clarification on my own definition of the concept. Using it to go forward, we can immediately strike down a bunch of entries in the above “best secrets in videogames” lists.

Messed up palettes are not a videogame secret either.

First, let’s eliminate anything that relies on outside interference. Mods, Game Genie/Pro-Action Replay/GameShark codes, special controllers and disk/cartridge swapping is out. As much attention as Hot-Coffee received, Rockstar did not want it exposed to the player. Well, unless you subscribe to the theory that it was always their intention for the content to get out, but that’s a whole other can of worms.

Second, glitches don’t count. Glitches are unintentional bugs that got past the QA process. Although certainly fun and interesting in some cases, as with Metroid’s secret worlds, they are the opposite of deliberately placed secrets.

Third, emergent gameplay is not a secret. Sure, combos are an integral part of Street Fighter II, but, as the story goes, they were not an intentionally designed mechanism. Fortuitous or not, emergent gameplay belongs more in the dynamics category than anything else.

Fourth, more often than not, cheat codes are simply debugging aids for the development team. Sure, the player can still access the ones left in, but most get disabled before the release of the title.

If it's on a T-Shirt, it must be true.

The ones that make it through tend to be a consequence of the developer’s/publisher’s quality assurance practices. If the QA department uses cheat codes to help them do their job, then at the end of the project there might be weariness when it comes to removing them as it might introduce all new bugs.

Now some cheat codes like the Konami Code have become quite famous, but how many of you would’ve known about them if it wasn’t for magazines, cheat books, internet sites and schoolyard gossip? It can be a bit of a gray area, but even intentional cheat codes are usually targeted at only the hardcore player. They tend to rely on communication and knowledge separate from the base product, therefore it could be said that they fall more into the fanservice category.

Oh, and password-restored game states and other rewards doled out directly by the game are not really cheat codes. At least not in my book.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about what I consider actual videogame secrets. There are plenty of famous ones such as Metal Gear Solid’s battle with Psycho Mantis, Diablo II’s cow level and the original “easter-egg” in Adventure, but I’d like to discuss three of my favourites (in no particular order).

So why was this secret so good? A couple of reasons:

• The game explicitly dropped clues for the player without disclosing the whole mystery. This encouraged deductive work and experimentation, and helped to generate even more excitement about the game (which it certainly wasn’t lacking with its digitized graphics and bloody fatalities).
• It teased the player with the character himself — a green version of two of its most popular cast members: Sub-Zero and Scropion — and the promise of encountering him somewhere in the game. The player didn’t know anything about Reptile’s abilities, where the encounter would take place, how it would play out, etc., letting his imagination fill in the blanks with tantalizing possibilities.


Reptile became a playable character in Mortal Kombat II with an all new moveset.

• Getting to fight Reptile involved nothing more than using existing game mechanics, and it was not a prerequisite to completing the game or enjoying it on any other level.
• The actual Reptile fight took place at the bottom of The Pit, an area that was only briefly shown during another secret of sorts: the stage fatality. This is significant because it’sa location that the player only got a glance at, but was never able to explore. Setting the fight in this area is an excellent example of wish-fulfillment due to the common desire to experience such teased locales first-hand.
• Defeating Reptile earned the player not only bragging rights, but also a huge points bonus that would skyrocket him to the top of the high-scores charts.

Too bad he wasn’t playable, huh? (Incidentally, the honour of being the first secret playable character in a “vs” fighting games goes to Akuma.)

Reptile also worked well because everything surrounding him didn’t really require any new resources. All his art consisted of a simple palette swap. Likewise, his moveset was just a combination of Sub-Zero’s and Scropion’s, with a bit of speed thrown in. Even his custom stage was already there, just never previously used as the background for an actual fight.

2). The inverted castle in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

SotN is filled with all sorts of secrets: random item drops, hidden rooms and passages, artifacts that grant special abilities, etc., but the inverted castle has to be the most significant of them all. The idea of flipping a tilemap upside-down isn’t new, but this secret had a lot more going for it:

Richard Belmont facing off against Dracula -- a recreation of the previous game's finale.

• To gain access to the inverted castle, Alucard had to go through a series of steps culminating in a battle against Richard Belmont, the protagonist of the previous games. Even without knowing the series’ history, though, this should seem suspicious. The game starts off with the player controlling Richard Belmont and squaring off against Dracula, a brief reenactment of the previous entry in the series. If the game’s finale turns out to be a fight against Richard, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that something was overlooked. After all, Alucard’s mission was to destroy the ancient vampire, not his friend and ally.
• Up until the fight between Alucard and Richard, it is impossible to fill out all of Alucard’s various spell/morph form/familiar/etc. slots. This might seem like a fairly insignificant fact, but it’s a clear indicator that the player hasn’t done everything there is to do in the game. Not even close.
• SotN encourages exploration of every nook and cranny, and this should easily result in the player finding two distinct rings. The rings’ descriptions read “Wear…Clock…” and “…in…Tower” respectively. Unlike many other items in the game, acquiring these rings is also accompanied by story events in which Maria, one of game’s pivotal characters, informs Alucard’s of Richard’s mysterious disappearance.


Alucard racing toward his father’s castle.

• The Clock Tower is located right in the middle of the castle, and is a unique area not duplicated anywhere else in the game. Adding to its significance is the fact that it is the only place in SotN where background elements automatically move just a single time. What I mean by this is that whenever Alucard enters the Clock Tower, slaps of concrete magically slide in to close off possible paths of exploration. This happens every time the area is visited, and although it relates to another secret in the game, it helps to make the room feel that much more important.
• Bringing and equipping both rings (most players seem to miss that second part) to the Clock Tower opens up a new passage. In this secret area, Maria informs the player that Richard is being controlled by Shaft, another old villain in the series. In order to defeat Shaft and save Richard, she gives the player a pair of Holy Glasses that, when equipped, allow Alucard to see and attack a green orb floating above his friend’s head.
• Destroying Shaft’s mind-controlling orb unlocks the passageway to the inverted castle where lots of new enemies, bosses, items and abilities await Alucard, almost doubling the content of the game.

As far as rewards for discovering secrets go, nothing has topped SotN’s enormous wealth of content in its wholly optional inverted castle.

3). The first warp zone in the original Super Mario Bros.

Quite possibly the most recognizable videogame secret is the hidden warp zone at the end of level 1-2 in SMB. Now Super Mario Bros. was a somewhat surreal game, but much of that was due to the kind of reactions it tried to evoke from the player. It’s a topic that deserves its own article, so for now I’ll just cover how it made the warp zone so great:

While powered up, it’s impossible to make this jump and snag the coins without busting through the screen’s ceiling.

• In various parts of the first stage, the player can reach — and “break through” — the ceiling of the level. This teaches him that, unlike the pits, there’s no penalty for going outside the top part of the map.
• In level 1-2, there are numerous locations where the player (provided he’s in the powered-up Mario state, which is always in his best interest) can smash through the brick ceiling. This ensures that the player thinks of it as a barrier he can breach. Furthermore, if the player experiments a bit, he can actually get over and on top of it where he can freely maneuver.


The fabled warp zone itself.

• The level ends with a pit area filled with an endless stream of upwards-moving platforms. The platforms overlook the level’s exit and a continuation of the brick ceiling. Based on the player’s experience, he knows he can make the jump from the platform to the top of the ceiling provided there’s no invisible wall blocking him. Furthermore, if he misses the jump, it’s apparent that he’ll land in a safe place as the ceiling doesn’t extend as far toward the platforms as the ground area.
• Upon making the jump and — while overlapping the HUD — running past the exit pipe, the player finds himself in the warp zone. This area allows him to enter any one of the three pipes leading to their corresponding worlds, effectively allowing him to skip ahead in the game.

Not only was this secret memorable as it allowed the player to finally breach the end-level area (from what I recall, jumping over the flag-pole was nigh-impossible as it was an unintended bug), but it also rewarded him with the ability to fast-forward through the game. This was a feature all the more significant as SMB did not contain a password or save system allowing similar functionality.

• They’re not explicitly revealed to the player, but they’re not overly obfuscated either. All the hints required to discover the secrets are also presented to the player in the games themselves.
• The hints — and the promise of potential secrets — encourage the player to experiment. Through deduction and some general “messing around,” the player can discover the secrets by himself using gameplay mechanics that are already familiar to him.
• The secrets are wholly optional. One might make a case that SotN’s “true” ending cannot be reached without exploring the inverted castle, but an ending still exists regardless of whether Richard Belmont is saved or defeated.
• The secrets are rare, and their sparing use only adds to their significance.
• All the secrets present a notable reward for their discovery, helping to give the player a great sense of accomplishment once they are unveiled.

There's always something magical hidden behind a waterfall!

Now these points aren’t golden rules — there are, for example, good secrets in videogames that are repeated over and over again — but they all help to make the above entries stand out.

Secrets themselves are not required to create great games either; a wholly static, linear and transparent experience can still be quite enjoyable.

Secrets can, however, add that extra bit of magic.

By allowing the player to explore the game (no matter how much actual exploration can take place), we imbue it with a sense of wonder and adventure. This helps to highlight the interactive aspect of videogames. It gives the player the choice to see what’s around the corner — we just have to make it something good.