HostGator Easter Egg

Have you ever been typing away, had your fingers slip on your keyboard, and stumbled upon a new trick or keyboard shortcut?

These happy accidents are one way people find easter eggs in websites, software, or video games.

Now Easter eggs have become so well-known, that people regularly look for them. One of the most popular ways to find them is by using the Konami Code.

 

What Is The Konami Code?

In case you don’t know, the Konami Code made its debut in the 1985 Nintendo arcade game Gradius. Entering the code, which is up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, gives the player a boost of power-ups or some kind of bonus. The guy who invented it, Kazuhisa Hashimoto, was in charge of developing and testing the game. The only problem was, he wasn’t any good at playing it. So he created something that would be easy to remember and give him power-ups so he could continue playing and testing.

The Konami Code is legendary even today, and the fun has extended from the video game console to the desktop computer, with many websites revealing a song, a free download, or a funny redesign of the page upon entering the code. Mashable has a list of their favorites, and you can view a complete list of all websites that feature the code on KonamiCodeSites.com.

 

HostGator Hides An Easter Egg

We know a lot of you love digging into code and are experienced gamers, so we at HostGator felt it was about time we hid an easter egg on our own site. Kyler Patterson from our Marketing team joined up with Isaac Acuna from our Customer Experience team and they hid an easter egg on the registration page of our site. They figure it would be fun to have the Konami Code activate a surprise 80% discount for one lucky visitor.

You may have seen Snappy in his Easter Bunny garb before'¦ so we knew he’d approve of us hiding some eggs on the site.

HostGator Easter Snappy

They deployed the code on June 21st and started to wait. When would someone discover it?

 

The Egg Is Found

One day in early August, Andrew Bonar, founder of EmailExpert.org, was looking to purchase a reseller hosting package. How did he know to look for it? Andrew explains, 'I found it as a result of poring over your code. I was trying to identify how you verified and applied your discount vouchers quickly and seamlessly without a page refresh and how that then got applied to the package choices.'

After he selected his hosting package and added it to his cart, he continued playing around. Finally, he decided to try the Konami Code. The next thing he knew, this popped up on his screen:

HostGator Konami Code

Bonar admits he was surprised it wasn’t a gimmick. 'I was not certain it would be honored and half expected an email advising the offer was not applicable due to whatever series of terms and conditions. Had I been more confident I may well have taken the offer up on a multiyear basis!'

[bctt tweet=”Congratulations to @AndrewBonar on finding the @HostGator Konami Code Easter Egg!” username=”hostgator”]

 

The Hunt Continues'¦ Will You Find The Next Easter Egg?

Where will the next Easter Egg be?  Will it be on our checkout page again? Or maybe hiding on our dedicated server page? Maybe it will only be accessible to current customers in cPanel. It is up to you to find out…

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