The hidden message in Pole Position II, a 42-year-old video game: an Argentinian discovered how to activate it.

The world of video games is full of secrets. From invincibility cheats like Doom 's famous "IDDQD" to the infamous Konami code , developers have always programmed hidden shortcuts that were even useful for testing. But within that world, there's a special category: Easter eggs.

Easter eggs are hidden messages or references that creators leave hidden within a video game, although the concept also applies to movies, series, albums, and even advertisements. They're not something you can see with the naked eye; you have to look for them. Or, even, find them by chance.

And this is what happened for 42 years with the video game Pole Position II , one of the icons of the arcades (" fichines ") of the early 90s: there was a message that was triggered with the names of the creators, but without knowing how or why it appeared.

Gustavo del Dago , a professor at the National University of José C. Paz (UNPAZ) and a specialist in “computational archaeology,” discovered it: he understood what it takes to send that message.

And although it may seem like a nostalgic detail, it is a specific case of reverse engineering , a key concept in the history of computing that continues to open doors for researchers, scientists, and hackers to this day.

Here is the story of a discovery and the historical context of what was one of the most remembered arcade video games.

“In the world of video games, an Easter Egg is essentially some kind of hidden content within a game, which is unlocked with a particular sequence of actions or commands—usually difficult to discover—and which is usually a small detail; a special screen, an animation, some text, a brief surprise,” Guillermo Crespi, screenwriter , professor at the National University of the Arts (UNA), and director of Modo Historia, a podcast on the cultural history of video games in Spanish, explains to Clarín.

The origin of the name, "Easter Egg," came from the American video game magazine Electronic Games. "In its October 1981 issue, the publication asked an Atari executive about a rumor that there were hidden messages in one of the games for its Atari VCS console, 'Adventure.' When the executive answered affirmatively and assured them that they were going to start 'planting little Easter eggs in the games,'" Crespi unwittingly ended up establishing the term's use .

The first in history, at least until today, is identified in a 1973 game called Moonlander .

“It was a game created to demonstrate the capabilities of a new vector display from DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation). The programmer created what many would later call a “lunar lander” subgenre game (having to carefully land a space capsule on the moon), except that if you managed to explore several screens and carefully land next to two arches that appear on the surface, an animation of a small astronaut disembarking the ship, entering those arches, and ordering a Big Mac would appear (a text appears that says Two cheeseburgers and a Big Mac to go ) ,” Crespi recalls.

Throughout the evolution of this concept, there have been various interpretations: when computing power was already proving to be more powerful, some began to hide games within games.

“For example, in Day of the Tentacle (1993) you can play the entire Maniac Mansion (1987) on a character's computer (i.e. the previous game in the series), and in the menu of Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010) - a very advanced shooter for its time - you can bypass the usual options on the start menu to end up playing the entire game of a famous text-based game called Zork that had come out 30 years earlier,” he recalls.

There are entire sites dedicated to recording Easter eggs, both from video games and movies: they are part of the popular culture of these arts and, for many, underground content that fuels the conversation, between myths and realities.

Pole Position II had a secret , which many had seen by chance, but without understanding how.

Pole Position , developed by Namco and distributed by Atari, was a novelty in the early 80s. Released in 1982, the game was notable for having a steering wheel and a pedal, something novel for an era in which cabinets had levers and buttons.

The game, a Formula 1 racing simulation, took place on a track based on a real-life circuit, Japan's Fuji Speedway . It was a commercial success in Japan, becoming the most popular coin-op game in the industry. In the United States, it became the most played racing game of its time.

“The original was clearly a milestone in the history of racing video games, which until then had mostly been games about going full speed ahead while dodging other cars as if they were obstacles in the way. Pole Position innovates by recreating a real track (the Fuji Speedway in the original game), including a qualifying lap, and prioritizing completing the race in the best possible position instead of simply dodging cars,” says Crespi.

“Furthermore, it was visually state-of-the-art for its time, perfecting a technique that was just beginning to be used called sprite scaling (the ability to manipulate the size of visual objects to simulate a sense of depth by making them appear increasingly larger), and defining what would become a standard in camera setup for this and other types of games (viewing the action from behind and slightly above the car),” he adds.

The year after its release, Pole Position II came out in 1983, with three more tracks in addition to Fuji Speedway: Test Track, Seaside, and Suzuka, which increased the replay value. The sound and graphics , two very important parameters for the time and often taken as an indicator of the power of its manufacturers, had been improved.

The game wasn't just another arcade game . " Pole Position II isn't exactly a sequel to the first game, but rather something comparable to an expansion or downloadable content for a modern game: an ingenious piece of engineering that allowed the owner of an arcade to 'upgrade' their machine from the first game by simply replacing a handful of chips," Ignacio Esains, a journalist specializing in culture and video games, told this outlet.

“Atari was going through the most difficult period in its history due to the collapse of the home console industry (the 1983 video game crash that ended with thousands of ET game cartridges buried in the New Mexico desert). However, Pole Position II was one of the few bright spots in the night: not only was it the most successful game of the year , but it repeated that success in 1984 and was still in the charts in 1985. Remarkable considering the speed at which arcade technology was advancing at the time,” he contextualizes.

What few people knew was that in that sequel there was a secret screen that some players had managed to shoot but without knowing how.

Gustavo del Dago, who in addition to teaching at UNPAZ works at the National University of Hurlingham, came to discover this secret through his work as a "computational archaeologist," a discipline that studies the history of computers through various types of analysis.

What's unique about Pole Position is that "it's a truly advanced machine for its time; suffice it to say, it has three microprocessors working simultaneously, plus another for sound and two more for input/output controls (buttons and the like)," explains Del Dago. This is why it caught his attention.

"I don't know the history of the Easter egg; in fact, it's not documented. What we know for sure now is that the developers left a hidden message," he told Clarín .

The journey to find it involved working on the game's source code. "I'm investigating an Argentine hack (TC-2000), a modification of Atari's Pole Position. My work method relies on reverse engineering techniques, that is, starting from the product to reveal its design, its component parts, the techniques used in its construction, and the development tools employed," he explained.

Reverse engineering is a technique that allows us to infer how a system works by analyzing its external behavior.

“It's about discovering how a software or hardware system is composed or how it operates internally, in order to understand it, reproduce it, or even improve it . All of this without needing to access confidential technical details, such as a program's source code or the specific architecture of a microchip,” adds Augusto Vega, an engineer at IBM's renowned TJ Watson Laboratory in the United States. Vega was born and raised in La Pampa, although he currently resides in San Diego, California.

In the case of such old games, reverse engineering is often the only way to study the programs.

“During the work process, I found the names of the development team in the source code. Knowing the game, I immediately knew it was an Easter egg . I searched the internet to confirm, and besides finding nothing documented, I found a video of a user accidentally finding it . At that point, I began studying the code to understand how it was activated.”

Firing the secret isn't complicated, but it requires a specific sequence that, if not done correctly, must be started from scratch: "You have to shift (it doesn't matter if it's HI/LOW or LOW/HI, the important thing is to shift) every time the scoreboard ends in the following numbers 40, 30, 20 and 10. The order and sequence are important. If the user makes a mistake, you have to start the sequence again when the scoreboard ends in 40," he adds.

Beyond the technique, the significance of the case is that, even more than 40 years later, hidden secrets can still be found in old programs. Secrets that lie within a program's source code, waiting to be discovered.

This is what "computational archaeology" does. "Although it sounds pompous, I think it defines the working approach well. Starting from the 'artifact' (in this case, binary code) we can gain new knowledge. Reverse engineering techniques in the software world allow us to achieve symbolic representations (for example, in assembly language) semantically equivalent to the code contained in the presented memories (the one executed by the microprocessors of the original arcade machine)," he says.

In this regard, Vega emphasizes that "the importance of reverse engineering lies not only in its potential to imitate a product. It is a key tool for acquiring knowledge about systems that, due to various limitations, cannot be directly accessed , which allows for the development of complementary or expanded solutions, as well as verifying their functionality."

"In this sense, it's a form of rewriting (pure symbolic manipulation) that allows us to study the artifacts that survive to this day. Documentary sources are as valuable as they are fundamental. But, ultimately, everything is written in code," Del Dago concludes.

At the end of the day, code, both binary and source, is still text.

Reconstructing that text today is also writing history.