ZT1 Cheats and Easter Eggs

[jbl89]

He's also credited for the original game, and seems to be part of a lot of major Microsoft projects nowadays. But yeah, seems like after all those years, ZT1 still holds a lot of secrets we may never find out.

[HeatherL]

I tried the Dr. Frankenstein cheat. Several dino eggs changed species AND random babies in other exhibits became various dinosaurs. It didn't seem to matter what kind of exhibit. I got a T-Rex in the otter exhibit & a Gallimimus in the Narwhal tank. It certainly kept me on my toes! :-0

[(Admin)Savannahjan]

I don't remember the Dr. Frankenstein one, how interesting.

[jbl89]

Anyone knows if Marwan Jubran works and what it does?

[pukkie]

No sorry I never heard of that

[fountain]

Was there ever an auk and a dodo or Irish Setter for ZT1 or are these fake Easter Eggs?

 

[(Designer)Vondell]

Wow, reading that brought back memories of scouring the web for ZT cheats and tricks in the early 2000s.

Back then it really was plenty reasonable to believe just about anything you'd read, since a lot of ZT's real working cheats were so genuinely strange. The devs had a LOT of fun with easter eggs.

But yeah, those were fake. So was the "dragon" that you were supposed to get by putting a bigfoot, a penguin, and a crocodile in an exhibit together, and a lot of others.
So many of the real easter eggs seem so unlikely that back before folks had gone through the game files with a fine-toothed comb, you really never knew what you'd get.
The yellow-brick road one sounds SO fake but sure enough, it's in there.

 

I still don't get a lot of what I assume are meant to be joke references in some of the cheats. What's the deal with a Grizzly Bear named Deer that climbs fences? That's got to be something, right? Deer don't climb fences. Was I not privy to some national news story in 1999-2000? I've always been so curious about some of these.

[fountain]

I assume those were inside jokes at Blue Fang and maybe some digs at Microsoft personnel, too.

 

My first husband worked at Microsoft back when it in a small Bellevue office with less than 39 employees (mid-1980s) and while it expanded and built its own office building then more.  It was standard procedure to sneak odd things into code and see who caught it.  He did some work/testing on Flight Simulator game way back then but I don't remember any tales of cheats or Easter Eggs from then.

[HeatherL]

5 hours ago, Vondell said:

The yellow-brick road one sounds SO fake but sure enough, it's in there.

This is one of the ones that seemed more logical to me since it's an obvious reference to "The Wizard of Oz".

[(Designer)Vondell]

Logical for sure, just unexpected!