Video Games Are Full of SurprisesAdd to FavoritesNews: TechnologyHIGHLIGHTDICTIONARYSCREEN MASKINGREAD ALOUDTRANSLATESETTINGSMagnifyMagnifyPhoto credit: NintendoMinus World was a secret level in the video game Super Mario Bros.RED BANK, New Jersey (Achieve3000, January 05, 2022). In Minecraft, players often meet up with mobs of cows, chickens, and pigs. But they rarely spy a Disco Sheep. With fleece that pulses in a rainbow of colors, this flashy farm animal isn't a stock feature. Only players who know its secret code name can create it.The Disco Sheep is an "Easter egg." In video games, Easter eggs are features that are hard to find. "It's like you're on a hunt," said gamer Gavin W. "It becomes a fun challenge." Some successful searchers share their breakthroughs online.What qualifies as an Easter egg? There's some debate about that. People use the term in different ways. An Easter egg might be an image, message, or animation players wouldn't normally encounter. It could be a detail only the sharpest observers spot, a secret level, or power-up. Easter eggs are often revealed when a player does some actions in a certain order. In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, for instance, people can watch an otherworldly message broadcast by aliens. But they have to be playing the game on a Saturday at exactly 3:33 a.m. In the NBA Jam video game series, players can enter codes to unlock some famous hidden characters. They include Will Smith, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden.All this high-tech hide-and-seek isn't new. Hidden features have been around about as long as video games have. The term Easter egg was first used to refer to a sly surprise in Atari's Adventure. In 1979, programmer Warren Robinett was dissatisfied that the company didn't credit creators by name. Without his bosses' knowledge, he added a secret room in Adventure. It could be accessed by a complex, undocumented series of actions. A few players stumbled across it…and saw the words "Created by Warren Robinett." At first, Atari was not amused, but the company soon discovered gamers loved trying to locate the message. An executive told Electronic Games Magazine, "From now on, we're going to plant little 'Easter eggs' like that in the games."Egged on by enthusiastic players, more and more developers started stashing surprises in the code for fans to find. Some well-known Easter eggs, however, started as mistakes. One was the Konami Code. It's the button sequence Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A. In the 1980s, a programmer at Konami used it as a quick way to "cheat" while debugging the game Gradius. But he forgot to disable the shortcut before the game was released. This inadvertent Easter egg became a beloved feature. Other developers started putting it in their games. Even in some of today's titles the Konami Code still unleashes useful power-ups or silly surprises.Super Mario Bros., which came out in 1985, included another unintentional Easter egg. If players pulled off a difficult series of steps, a glitch in the code sent them to a hidden level. Gamers started calling it "Minus World." There was no way to win it. But that didn't prevent people from seeking it out. As gamer Henry B. explained, discovering an Easter egg is a victory in itself. "Finding something you didn't know existed makes you feel like you've achieved something," he said. "And that's cool."

Video Games—Play OnZachary Felton1Video games pull players into worlds they could never imagine. In these worlds, players become top athletes, animated characters, alien commanders, and so on. So, if video games use so much imagination, why do people look down on them? News reports today often talk about the bad effects of video games. For example, some blame video games for making children more violent. Others blame them for causing children to sit in front of the television, instead of getting exercise. While such claims may hold some truth, not all video games are bad. In fact, some actually have great benefits.2Playing video games on every platform, from large computer displays to handheld devices or even cell phones, improves thinking skills, reaction time, and hand-eye coordination.3Research has shown that playing video games is good for players' minds. Video games improve players' thinking skills. A researcher from one study said, "It's difficult to find kids who earn poor grades but who do well in video games." Video games challenge players to recognize patterns and think to survive in the game. Players must use their brains to plan their next move to avoid losing the game.4Even simple games seem to boost brainpower. For example, the goal of one popular game is to arrange falling blocks into a solid wall. When the game begins, the blocks drop at a slow pace, giving the player plenty of time to put them in the correct place. As the player gets better at arranging the blocks, the game starts dropping them at a faster rate. The player must speed up his or her thinking to reach the next level of the game.5Video games help to improve players' reaction time. Reaction time is the time it takes for a person's body to respond to something. It is important in many sports and day-to-day activities. For example, suppose your mom makes you a cup of hot chocolate. You touch the hot cup and pull your hand away quickly. That is reaction time—the time it takes your mind to tell your hand to pull away from the hot cup. Because video games move at such a fast pace, people who play them improve their reaction times. In video games involving car races, for example, players face obstacles as they speed toward the finish line. Players must rely on reaction time to avoid hitting anything so they can make it to the end.6Video games also help hand-eye coordination. This coordination involves turning what our eyes see into physical responses, such as guessing where a ball will fall so we can catch it. People with unusually high hand-eye coordination can go into professions where using their hands is important. A recent study of surgeons found that doctors who played video games were a lot faster at performing difficult operations. In addition, surgeons who played video games made fewer mistakes in operations than those surgeons who did not play video games.7Many people are starting to take notice of the benefits of video games. For example, educational computer games are becoming more common in schools as teaching tools. Teachers have found that students enjoy learning through video games. They find the games both fun and educational. This has led to the rise in "edu-tainment," or using educational video games in the classroom to make learning fun. In addition, the U.S. military is now using video games to prepare soldiers for the decision-making skills they will need during combat.8On average, children spend one hour per day playing in video game worlds. It is good to know that this time will help them in the future.QuestionWhy did the author write this passage?ResponsesA to teach people about handheld gamesto teach people about handheld gamesB to explain why people buy video gamesto explain why people buy video gamesC to support the use of video games in schoolsto support the use of video games in schoolsD to convince people that video games are good

Video games have always been queer. Even games that appear to haveno LGBTQ content can be played queerly, and all games can be inter-preted through queer lenses. This is because queerness in video gamesmeans more than the representation of LGBTQ characters or same-sex romance. Queerness and video games share a common ethos: thelonging to imagine alternative ways of being and to make space withinstructures of power for resistance through play. From the origins of themedium, to the present day, and reaching into the future, video-gameworlds have offered players the opportunity to explore queer experi-ence, queer embodiment, queer affect, and queer desire—even whenthe non-heteronormative and counterhegemonic implications of thesegames have been far from obvious.

Which pet-breeding game is considered the first web3 game to gain popularity?Defi KingdomsAnimal CrossingCryptoKittiesStray

Which was the first Zelda game to feature 3D graphics?Tears of the KingdomOcarina of TimeBreath of the WildSkyward Sword

Many people see games (and the activity of gaming) as a creative form of self-expressionand art that can deeply move people.Question 4Select one:TrueFalse