Play the Same Games Parzival Conquered to Find Halliday’s Easter Egg
I recently posted a review of Ernest Cline’s famous novel “Ready Player One” here on Offworlders. My review focused more on the dark undercurrent ever present in the book. My review purposely glossed over Cline’s celebration of eighties geek culture. The work was such a joy to read that it was easy to forget that the world the characters existed in was a dying world. Real social interaction only happened anonymously online. Existence In Real Life (IRL) sucked, and the only chance the heroes of the tale had to escape this drudgery was to find Halliday’s Easter Egg (see my review here for details on the characters and the plot of the story).
Needless to say, there be spoilers ahead Matey!
Unlike my previous “Ready Player One” post, this time I want to focus on super fun parts of the novel. Specifically, the quests that Percival and the gunters faced in their search for the three gates and the hidden easter egg.
OK, here we go – The Copper Key:
In the invitation to the game Halliday tells players how to win the multi-billion dollar prize:
Three hidden keys open three secret gates
Wherein the errant will be tested for worthy traits
And those with the skill to survive these straits
Will reach The End where the prize awaits
Then there is a Limerick that players need to find the copper key that will open the first gate:
The Copper Key awaits explorers
In a tomb filled with horrors
But you have much to learn
If you hope to earn
A place among the high scorers
To get your hands on the Copper Key, you must beat Acererak the Demi-Lich in two out of three games of Joust. Could you beat the Lich King? Click the image below to try your skill in the online remake of the game hosted at Classic Arcade Games.
Excellent work. You beat the Lich King! When you have the Copper Key you get this single line of text:
What you seek lies hidden in the trash on the deepest level of Daggorath.
Dungeons of Daggorath
This clue leads the gunters to a recreation of James Halliday’s hometown and his RadioShack computer a TRS-80, which we affectionately called a Trash Eighty back in the day. The gunters in the book also knew the slang term for the TS-80. This early system was Halliday’s first computer. To complete the first gate, you must make it through the game Dungeons of Daggorath, the game that excited Halliday in his youth and got him interested in programming. I did not find an online version of Daggorath, but I did find a mod that you can download and play from Mod DB. I took a stab at it, and I must tell you that this game is impossible if you are accustomed to today’s mainstream gaming titles.
Click the image to visit Mod DB where you can download a playable version of Dungeons of Daggorath
Breezed right through Dungeons of Daggorath despite my cries of woe? Far out! After you complete the dungeon you are given this to chew on:
The captain conceals the Jade Key
in a dwelling long neglected
But you can only blow the whistle
once the trophies are all collected
Ready to blast through the first gate and go after the Jade Key? Whoa, there pardner! You must first complete a Flicksync of the eighties movie Wargames.
Only after completing the Flicksync do you get the next key. Easily done, right? After you Complete the Flicksync and have a blast playing the part of Matthew Broderick in the film and delivering all his lines right on queue, you insert the copper key into the gate that appears in a movie poster for “Wargames.” The gate opened you bravely step forward and fall into a star filled abyss.
The Jade Key – A Building Long Neglected – Zork
The building long neglected clue leads you to the text based game Zork I. God, I loved that game and still do to this day. When you play this entirely text based game, you use your imagination in hyper drive. This quest involves collecting nineteen specific trophies hidden in the Zork landscape. After you complete this endeavor, you can then blow the Captain Crunch whistle that you find in a box of cereal in the neglected white house. Blowing the whistle turns the cereal box prize into the Jade Key.
Never played Zork? Give it a go here online at text adventures by clicking the image below.
Click image to visit Textadventures.co.uk where you can play an online version of Infocom’s Zork I
You can also download the game from the original publisher here: Infocom.
After completing Zork, gunters acquire the Jade Key and a silver wrapper.
“The moment I said the word ‘unicorn,’ aloud, the wrapper began to fold on its own, there in the palm of my hand. The square piece of foil bent itself in half diagonally, creating a silver triangle. It continued to bend and fold itself into smaller triangles and even smaller diamond shapes until at last, it formed a four-legged figure that then sprouted a tail, a head, and finally, a horn.
The wrapper had folded itself into a silver origami unicorn. One of the most iconic images from Blade Runner.” -Ernest Cline, Ready Player One
Gunters also get this line of text now: Continue your quest by taking the test.
A direct reference to “Blade Runner” and the Voight-Kampff machine that can determine if you are human or a replicant. Gunters must find an exact recreation of the Tyrell building from “Blade Runner,” and insert the jade key into the replicant tester.
After you manage to get inside the second gate, you must beat the Capcom game Black Tiger. Can you beat the game? Give it a shot here on Play Roms by clicking on the image below.
Click the picture above to play Black Tiger on Coin Op Arcade.
After defeating Black Tiger, gunters get to pick from a selection of giant robot toys. Percival picks Supaidaman. After you put the selected robot toy in your inventory, you get another clue: A star inside a glowing red circle. The Temples of Syrinx of course! Did you guess that? Good for you!
The Crystal Key
In The Temples of Syrinx you find a Les Paul guitar jutting into a rock just like the sword in the stone from Arthurian legend. After the guitar gets pulled from the rock, Parzival plays “Discovery,” a Rush song not surprisingly about a hero that finds a guitar behind a waterfall.
After playing the song, another hint:
The first was ringed in red metal
The second, in green stone
The third is clearest crystal
And cannot be unlocked alone
From your knowledge of schoolhouse rock, you deduce that it will take the power of three for the Crystal Key to open the third gate.
After placing the guitar on an alter you get the crystal key and another hint: The letter A, the very same one that adorns the gates to Halliday’s Castle Anorak.
Off to Castle Anorak
A lot happens here (read the book to fill yourself in on all the details). After you get inside the castle, you have to get the high score on Tempest. Try your luck by clicking on the image below:
Click image to play Atari’s Tempest online here at Arcadethunder.
Easy peasy lemon squeezy, right? Now you need to complete another Flicksync. This time you will be a character in one of my favorites, a recreation of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
After you ace the Monty Python Flicksync, you must find the hidden room in the Atari 2600 game Adventure. To play online at IGN click the image below.
Click the picture above to play Atari’s game Adventure online.
Congratulations, you have found Halliday’s Easter Egg! Now wasn’t that easy! Here is your hundred bazillion trillion dollars.
What are you going to buy with your newly acquired fortune? Need some time to think about it? Here, listen to this as you ponder the question: Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One Playlist.