User finds Windows 1.0 Easter egg featuring Valve’s Gabe Newell

Finding secrets in software is always fun, and something some users try to do as soon as a new piece of software is released. But recently, a Twitter user named Lucas Brooks discovered an easter egg in a very old version of Windows – the very first version, in fact. Over 35 years later, it turns out Windows 1.0 was hiding an undiscovered easter egg, and it features Gabe Newell, who’s mostly known for being the president of Valve.

The Easter egg itself is relatively simple. It’s a list of members of the team that worked on Windows 1.0, which you can scroll through. The reason Gabe Newell is featured is that he was actually working at Microsoft for a few years before founding Valve. Newell joined Microsoft in 1983, just two years before Windows 1.0 made its debut, but apparently he still made it into this list. He ended up leaving the company in 1996 to found Valve.

Which version of @Windows is the first to include Easter eggs? Windows 3.0? Nope. What if I tell you there is an Easter egg in Windows 1.0 RTM? This is what I have recently discovered: pic.twitter.com/dbfcv4r7jj

— Lucas Brooks (@mswin_bat) March 18, 2022

As to why it took so long for the easter egg to be discovered, it looks like it was just very well hidden. In fact, even Windows itself congratulates the user for finding the secret, with a small text bubble saying “Congrats!” next to the list of team members.

According to the Twitter user who discovered the easter egg, it’s still unknown how it can be triggered via normal methods. Some binaries had to be patched in order for this to show up. Apparently, the data containing the easter egg is hidden inside a bitmap file featuring a smiley face, and it would have been undiscoverable to anyone at the time.

While there isn’t much to it, it’s always interesting to find these tidbits in old pieces of software that somehow remained undiscovered for years. Windows is no stranger to Easter eggs, though we have to hear of any new ones introduced in Windows 11. Over on smartphones, pretty much every version of Android in the past few years has had some kind of Easter egg, usually themed around the dessert each version was named after. in Android 12, it just showcases the Material You design language that was introduced with that version.

Source: Lucas Brooks (Twitter)
Via: WinFuture

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