8 Times Developers Snuck R-rated Easter Eggs into Video Games

Have you spotted these hidden erotic gems yet?

Video game developers are an odd sort. Not many jobs call for the same long hours or strange customs like sleeping on the office floor instead of going home in order to make a deadline.

So it’s only natural they might have a bit of fun on the job to stop the insanity from taking over. And often the fun developers inject into their work is R-rated. Let’s have a look at eight times these mischievous fellows planted such explicit content into their games.

1. Kirby’s Dreamland 2’s infamous level 5-5

Kirby's Infamous hidden lady

Back in the golden age of video gaming in the mid-1990s, an innocuous little game was released for the Nintendo Gameboy: Kirby’s Dreamland 2. This simple game saw our favorite pink puffball Kirby battling across a variety of side-scrolling levels to restore the rainbow bridges before facing off with his nemesis King Dedede. Sounds innocent enough right?

Inside a hidden location in world 5-5 we get our first glimpse of game devs adding some adult humor to the innocent dreamland landscape. There the form of a seemingly naked woman appears in the level's geometry. This hidden gem took gamers years to discover since the Gameboy screen was so small you could only see this little effigy one boob at a time.

2. Wild Woody and the topless mermaid

Another 90s gem is Wild Woody for the Sega CD. Apart from the inappropriate name chosen for a game marketed to children, Wild Woody features a secret topless mermaid Easter egg. During the second level, the player must collect four hidden items from each corner of the game map. They must do this in a specific order before returning to the start of the level to collect the hidden mermaid item.

These days it may seem like a lot of work just to see a picture of a topless mermaid. But back in the mid-1990s, the Internet was not like it is today. So for many teenagers being able to show this one off to your friends was kind of a big deal.

Wild Woody, despite the topless mermaid, scored an “E for everyone” rating from the Entertainment Software Rating Board.

3. Shadow Warrior’s Sailor Moon scandal

The Classic 1997 first-person shooter Shadow Warrior was jam-packed with risqué content ranging from bathing anime women, cars manufactured by “Titsubishi,” to a hidden bound up Lara Croft. One specific Easter egg stands out amongst gamers of the era, which was a hidden and scantily clad Sailor Moon, the protagonist of the popular anime of the same name.

If the game's protagonist Lo Wang interacts with the hidden character, she will deliver a few spoken lines of dialogue like, “I don’t think my mother would approve “ or “Maybe later Mr. Wang.” Not many players at the time noticed the sexy sailor since she was safely tucked away on the 20th level. That’s a lot of grinding just for a 2D-image of Sailor Moon.

4. Princess Peach's Vibe Sceptre

2005 saw the release of Super Princess Peach for the Nintendo DS. The game centered on the artifact known as The Vibe Sceptre. It’s not too hard to imagine what the localization team at TOSE Software were alluding to.

Peach’s pinnacle title for the DS was quite the innocent entry, until the end credits when the player was given a cutscene about the legendary Vibe Spectre.

Yep, TOSE software managed to slip a mom joke into the end credits. Dad is mad and mom is smiling a lot more, probably because she’s got the special Vibe Sceptre hidden away somewhere. Nice work TOSE.

5. Pokémon lovers battle

If you’ve ever played a Pokémon game, you’ll be familiar with having to battle your way through hordes of rather odd Pokémon trainers who seem to litter the roads connecting the towns of the Pokémon world.

One battle, in particular, stands for some of us older gamers and that’s the battle against ”young couple Duff and Eda” on route 47. This battle starts like any others until you look at the choice of Pokémon sent out by the young horny trainers.

Alone these two Pokémon don’t spark much controversy., But put them together with context and well it’s quite obvious what the developers were getting at. Duff slaps down his enormous phallic Pokémon called Onix; Eda opens her Pokéball to reveal her very “Yonic” Pokémon Cloyster onto the field.

Before too long you will realize that you are literally battling the physical manifestation of the young lovers’ libidos.

6. Striker 1945 naked pilots hidden ending

Striker 1945 was an insanely difficult top-down shooter game in which you controlled a WW2 era plane taking down scores of fast-moving enemy fighters. You start by choosing from a variety of planes, each having a unique female pilot. Everything plays just like a normal vertical shooter from that era with one very odd exception. If you somehow manage to get gold on every stage and complete the game, you will also be rewarded with an image of your female pilot in the nude accompanied by a caption listing her age, height, and measurements.

But if you think this one doesn’t get any stranger, wait. In true Japanese video game fashion, it leaves the land of strange behind and sets sail for a disturbing island. Alice who pilots the spitfire is only 15 and Ai the pilot of the Zero is only 17. Yes, this was a full AAA release PlayStation and arcade game containing underage topless girls. What were they thinking when they put these them in as rewards for completing the game?

7. Peach’s XXX

Super Mario RPG was well ahead of its time back in 1996. In fact, t was one of the most memorable collaborations between Nintendo and Squaresoft. Super Mario RPG is also the first Super Mario game with a somewhat adult Easter egg dubbed “Toadstools ???”. If Mario decides to snoop around the princess’s bedroom and look behind the fireplace, he will discover the questionable item named “Toadstool’s ???”

Now if you are playing the later translation you may think, so what? The original version of the game at first referred to this item as “Toadstools XXX” but was quickly changed to “Toadstools ???” for Western markets. Even with this slight change, we all have a pretty good idea what Mario found and we understand the princess’s frustration at the nosey voyeuristic plumber. This is perhaps a good life lesson: don’t leave strange plumbers alone in your bedroom.

8. SiN hidden masturbation scene

The 1998 release of SiN for the PC was all about pushing the boundaries of the new technology and helping to cement in the over-sexualization of female villains in gaming. Great job, guys. During a certain mission, you are ”exploring the compound of the game's antagonist Elexis Sinclaire (not a typo).

If you spend enough time snooping about you will eventually find a hidden security camera feed overlooking a hot tub with naked Elexis inside, masturbating along with a full audio clip that sounds like it was ripped straight from RedTube.

What do you think of our list featuring eight times developers snuck in R-rated content into video games? With so many to choose from, we may have missed some gems. So if we left out your favorite adult Easter egg, let us know in the comments section below.

Image sources: Nerdy Facts, Moby Games, Daniel May, Let’s Play Archive, Amit Dabydeen, Where’s My Sammich, rockinmidnight18