Fetch Quest

You're plowing your way through Super Mario RPG, having a good old time, when you land at Booster's Tower. This is a nifty dungeon for many reasons, especially because you A) add Bowser as a member of your party, and B) finally are about to rescue the princess after she got blasted out of her castle at the start of the game. Midway through the level, you enter a room devoid of enemies or treasure. At first, you may wonder what the point of it is. Why have a small, empty room in the middle of a dungeon? Of course, there is that one area in the back, covered up by curtains. How could any adventurous gamer resist seeing if there is anything back there?

Those gamers who do check out the curtain with one of the cooler Easter eggs I have come across in a game: your isometric, 3D-ish Mario is transformed into a perfect replica of the original sprite from Super Mario Bros. You can walk around and jump in all your retro glory, while listening to the classic Mario theme playing in the background. Eventually, you'll try exiting the room, at which point you'll be treated to the leaping death animation, followed by Mario scurrying back behind the curtain. You'll then emerge back with your isometric sprite, ready to continue on in the game.

There really wasn't a point to this little feature at all. You weren't powered up, didn't get any loot, couldn't even take your graphical overhaul outside the room. But it was just so cool the first time you saw it. And totally unexpected. One of those things that probably takes about a half hour of development time, but will delight fleets of gamers. Super Mario RPG was great at this, with tons of one-off references to other games and series. Newer games should learn their lesson from this: it's the small things that can change a game from good to great!