I used to play them a lot on camping trips with the family, so they bring back lots of memories. Unfortunately, these games are hard to find these days, and if you are successful finding them, you will need to pay top dollar.

I was very excited when I came across a site where quite a few of these games had been recreated for you to play on your PC. There are around 20 of these classics for you to enjoy.

Everything that the original game gave us is included in these packages. The sounds have been recorded and the graphics have all been scanned and touched up. The only main difference is that you control your character with your keyboard.

While most programs used to play old games are emulators, the programmer of these games was not able to get his hands on the required processor information that could have been used to make an emulator. I read on his site that each game has a unique processor. Instead of making an emulator, he recreated each game by hand. Each game is a separate entity. What this means is that the game may not run exactly the same as the original. Saying that, I couldn’t tell the difference in the games I tried out.

The site also contains a lot of interesting information about converting your hand held games to the PC format, if you would like to give the programming a go yourself. I might have a go at remaking Fire!

Get your favourite games from Madrigal Design.

In my last job, I knew when I walked into work on the 1^st of April, I would be greeted by a computer that had been tampered with. It was always fun to figure out how the trick had been planted.

This article will cover some of the tricks that have been played on me, and tricks I have played on others. They are all taken from the Friday Fun articles already shown at Inspect My Gadget.

Tricks covers in this article are

• Trick Wallpaper Desktop
• The Start Virus
• My mouse is doing crazy stuff
• The infamous Blue Screen of Death(BSOD)

All the tricks are completely harmless and the computer can easily be restored to its original state once the joke is over.

Which one will you pull?

Trick Wallpaper Desktop:

This trick is one that will confuse just about anyone. The desktop appears untouched, but when your victim tries to launch programs or documents from the start menu or the desktop, nothing will happen.

This can be achieved by taking a screenshot of their desktop with all the icons intact and then setting it as the desktops background. There are lots of small additional steps that you can use to make the effect even more convincing.

To make it happen:

1. Choose your victim and ensure they have left their computer logged in.
2. Minimize all running programs.
3. Press PrtScn (Print Screen) to take a screenshot.
4. Open up “Paint” and press “ctrl-v” to paste the desktop.
5. Save the image as “trick.jpg” somewhere that is easy to get to.
6. Right click on the taskbar and ensure “Lock Taskbar” is unticked.
7. Drag the Taskbar to the top or side of the screen.
8. Go into the Taskbar Properties and tick “Auto-Hide taskbar”
9. Right click on the desktop, enter into “Arrange icons by” and ensure you have auto arrange unticked.
10. Right click on the desktop and go into properties.
11. In the appearance tab, click on “Customize Desktop…”
12. Untick the options such as “My computer”, “My Documents” etc.
13. Click “OK” and then browse for your trick.jpg file you created earlier.
14. Ensure you set the wallpaper to “Stretched”

Restoration is easy. Work your way backwards through the steps above.

For more information and more thorough instructions, please check out the original article. 

The Start Virus:

The Start Virus is a very annoying trick. This one plays a sound just about every time you click on something. It is a good idea to find the most annoying sound you can for this task, i.e, Crazy Frog.

To make it happen:

Ensure your victim has left their computer logged in.

We need to take a few quick steps to ensure we can return the machine back to it’s previous state and possibly preserve your friendship.

1. Go into your victims control panel.
2. Open “Sounds and Audio devices”.
3. Select the “Sounds” tab.
4. Save their current sound scheme.

Step 4 is important as it allows you to return your victims computer back to its original state quickly.

The rest of the procedure is very straightforward. Click on each sound and select browse to change it, each time replacing it for the same sound you have chosen. The more you change the better the trick will be. It can be quite time consuming to make all these changes so start off with the essentials such as maximize and minimize. The shutdown sound may be good for clicking on start.

Restoration is fairly straight forward. All you need to do is restore the saved sound scheme.

For more information on this, please check out the original article.

My mouse is doing crazy stuff:

Where would we be without USB? One nice feature of USB which isn’t often utilised is the ability to plug in numerous mice or keyboards into the one computer.

In this trick, you can control the victims mouse from the comfort of our own chair, or whilst we are talking to them, asking them to email a file or to show you something.

This one is very hard to solve. It can be played out over hours if you are subtle enough.

To make it happen:

Get your hands on a cordless mouse and attach the receiver to your victims computer. Make sure it installs and works fine and then ensure the receiver is tucked away out of sight.

Head back to your desk with the new mouse and let your victim use their computer as normal. You are going to need a little patience for this to work really well.

You have a few options as to how you will most annoy your victim. You will need to be within around 3 metres range of your victims computer for the cordless mouse to work, so if your desk is nearby, you can give the mouse a little nudge every now and again to get them thinking. Even if it is very subtle, it will be noticeable.

I like to put the mouse in my pocket and get them to show me something on their computer. As you are talking to them, you can move the mouse a little in your pocket and even occasionally press the right mouse button.

To restore the computer, unplug the mouse.

The infamous Blue Screen Of Death(BSOD):

This trick is a little bit more complex to set up. This trick brings up the BSOD at a predetermined time. This will send shivers down the spine of anyone who is attacked with this trick.

To make it happen:

Very briefly, we need to find a full screen image viewer like pictview. The next step is to create a shortcut that will load up the BSOD image with Pictview. Finally, we need to setup a scheduled task to launch it.

It is completely harmless but takes a bit of work to set it up. It is extremely effective as it is impossible to tell that it is a joke until after the event.

For detailed instructions for how to set this up, please visit the original post. There are a few tricks in this article, but the final method is by far the most effective.

Conclusion:

I hope you have some fun on April Fools day, and that these tricks will come in useful for you. I look forward to hearing how you went in the comments. Stay tuned to Inspect My Gadget for more practical jokes on coming Fridays.

There are more types of Easter Eggs than just the chocolate variety. They come in many forms. Easter eggs are also the name of hidden features or novelty items found in movies, DVD menus, software, websites and sometimes even hardware.

I have put together a list of some of my favourite software Easter Eggs for your enjoyment. I have tried to select examples from programs that are found on the majority of computers. This way you will be able to try many of them out yourself.

We are going to look at eggs in the following programs:

• Pinball
• Solitaire
• Nullsoft Winamp
• Google.com
• Notepad

Read on for your eggs…

All of these eggs are completely harmless for your computer. They are just a bit of fun. The most you will need to do to restore your program back to its original state is to close it and start it up again.

Pinball:

Pinball that comes with Windows is a fun and challenging pinball game. To work your way through all the missions is practically impossible as there are so many of them. There is an easier way which will have you climbing up the scoreboard very quickly.

This Easter Egg will let you control the ball with your mouse. You can drag the ball onto any bumpers and up any ramps. I assume this egg was originally placed in the program for testing, but it was never removed.

Please follow the steps below:

1. Open pinball
2. Wait until the ball drops
3. Type “Hidden Test” (include the space)

You can now drag the ball anywhere you want with your mouse, clocking up that score you were never able to achieve in the past.

Solitaire:

Solitaire is a great time waster. It can be hard to finish, but there is a way that you can see the waterfall of cards and finish the game without getting red eye fever.

1. Open Solitaire
2. Hold “Shift+Alt+2”
3. Watch the waterfall

If you wait for 30 seconds before pressing the key combination, you will get huge scores next to your name in the High Score table.

Nullsoft Winamp:

Winamp has a number of Easter Eggs built in. Nullsoft must spend hours making them. Today we will look at a couple related to the beats visualisations. I think these will work in any version 5 variation. The skin may need to be changed though.

Winamp – Bento Skin: Make the window change opacity according to the beat.

1. Open Winamp
2. Type “nullsoft” (press Esc after each L as below)
   n u l (Esc) l (Esc) s o f t”
3. Watch the effect

Winamp – Modern Skin: Watch two llamas head bang to your music.

1. Open Winamp
2. Drag the main window wider, until the word beat appears
3. Hold “Ctrl+Alt+Shift”
4. Click in the middle of the beat visualisation
   It’s a little tricky to find the right spot. You may need to click a few times.
5. Watch the llamas

Winamp has many more Easter Eggs. This is just a small sample, read on to find out where you can find more.

Google.com:

The folks at Google have a sense of humour. They have a wide variety of searches that bring up amusing results. They used to have more than they have now, but many have been removed. There is still plenty of value to be found. I won’t tell you what this one does. Try it for yourself.

1. Open Google
2. In the search box type “answer to life the universe and everything”
3. Click Search and check out the results

Notepad:

Even a program as small as Notepad can have an Easter egg embedded within it.

1. Open Notepad
2. Type “Bush hid the facts”
3. Save the file
4. Open the file
5. Look at the screen with confusion

I was surprised when I came across this one.

Conclusion:

I hope you have enjoyed playing with a few of these easter eggs.

I sourced all of these eggs from eeggs.com. It is a site full of eggs that can be found in movies, games and software. There are thousands of eggs listed. I have spent hours on their site over the years.

Happy Easter from Inspect My Gadget. Please take care over the break and enjoy this great celebration.

None of these articles will damage your computer or expose you to viruses, and they will all be easy to revert the computer back to it’s previous state, at least, after a few laughs.

I saw funny video this week on YouTube of a guy logging onto a computer in a lab situation. Someone had planted some weird sheep sex startup sound on his computer that played at startup. This caused him a whole lot of stress and embarrassment. I thought it would be worth looking at a few options of how this can be done.

The result:

• The desktop will appear untouched.
• A video or sound sample will play at startup without any user input. 
• Both methods will take around 30 seconds to return their computer back to it’s fully working state.
• Using method 2, the victim will be able to close it down quickly once they realise what is going on. 

Maybe a sex video or audio sample isn’t the way to go. It might be more suitable to play some Barbara Streisand or Michael Bolton.

Read on to find out how to make this happen, and how to restore the system quickly before you get decked.

This is the video I saw that made me start thinking about this. It’s a little cruel but you can see the concern and embarrassment he went through.

All methods:

Find your unsuspecting victim. Make sure they have a sense of humour and know a thing or two about computers. You don’t want somebody to be freaking you that they have a virus. Doing this for malicious reasons is just silly and it could result in you having to answer to the boss. Take plenty of caution in this.

Unfortunately, the video method will load up the video or audio file as other startup programs are loading. This will be just after they have seen the desktop, hence they have control over closing the movie down when they realise what is going on.

This article is written for Windows XP. The Vista setup is very similar, so you should also be able to make this to happen in Vista using these instructions.

Track down a video or audio file you think will suit your victim. You can search around YouTube and then download the video using aTube Grabber. If you want to use an audio file instead of a video, the setup is the same, it’s just that audio is a bit harder to track down. Save the video in an easy to get to location. C:\Temp is ideal as you can find and delete it easily once the joke has been played.

Method 1: Play audio at computer startup

This method involves changing the Windows startup sound to the audio file you have chosen. Windows startup sounds must be in the wav format and there is a limitation on the file size. If you want the file to be longer than around 20 seconds, you will need to drop the bit rate using a program like Audacity. The file will still play but it will be cut off at the 20 second mark if the bit rate is not dropped.

Follow the steps below to set the startup sound.

1. Go into your “Control Panel”
2. Open up “Sounds and Audio Devices”
3. Click on the “Sounds” tab
4. Scroll down to “Start Windows”
5. Click browse and navigate to the audio file you want to use
6. Click “OK”

You have now set the audio file to play at startup. To restore the computer back to its original state, change the audio file back to what it was. Alternatively, you can load up the Windows default sound scheme towards the top of the window.

Method 2: Play a video at computer startup

This method involves creating a shortcut in the start menu’s startup folder. It is fairly straightforward, but you will need to remove it from the startup folder after it is first run so that it does not happen each time the computer is started up. 

1. Open “Explorer” or “My Computer”.
2. Navigate through your “Startup” folder to the “Start Menu”.
3. Right click on the startup folder and select “Explore”.
4. Right click and select “Create new shortcut”.
5. In the location box place the following code, replacing the movie path and name for your own.
   wmplayer.exe C:\Temp\hotstuff.wmv /fullscreen
6. Call it whatever you want. “Joke” may be a good choice as you will be able to recognise it easily.

You have now set the video file to play at startup. To restore the computer back to its original state, delete the shortcut from the startup folder.

Conclusion:

If you want to get really clever, you may want to play around with the Runonce key of the registry. This will let you play a video at startup, before Windows has fully loaded. An added advantage is that all traces are removed automatically.

I hope that this article has given you and your work-mates a bit of a giggle. Stay tuned to Inspect My Gadget on coming Fridays for more workplace mayhem.

There are a number of things that we can do with the BSOD, including one of the few practical jokes you can play on yourself, but have the effect of it seen by others in the room.

The BSOD Screensaver:

I was surprised that the BSOD screensaver was hosted at Microsoft. It isn’t really a great thing to be promoting, but it does show they have a sense of humour. Head over to Technet to get it.

The BSOD screensaver works the same as any other screensaver. Once downloaded and installed, you can select it in your screensaver settings. It will load up after the default 10 minutes your computer is idle. This screen saver also shows the machine reboot in an endless loop. It looks very realistic.

I used this on my work computer in a previous job. It was a fairly laid back atmosphere so I could get away with it. The screensaver would show up during meetings and presentations. People were quite concerned about the stability of my computer. They would tell me that I needed to have my computer looked at. They were also amazed at how quickly I brought the machine back from this crashed state.

You may have known about this already and you may be thinking I have nothing more to offer you. I assure you, that there is some value after the link.

Practical Joke 1: Basic

If you have somebody in your office who has a photo screen saver (fairly common) operating in full screen mode, you can copy the BSOD screen grab into their Pictures folder. In the general cycling of their photos, eventually the BSOD will show up. Hopefully, this will happen while they are near their computer.

Of course the computer will move to the next photo after a few seconds, but by that stage the damage has been done. The shivers have already gone down the spine. It’s good if you can stay quiet for this one and play it out for months.

To remove it, simply delete the file.

Practical Joke 2: Complex

This one is a little more nasty – in fact, it is very nasty. It takes a little bit of setting up. What we want to do is make the BSOD show up in full screen at a certain time. We do this by creating a scheduled task which will launch a full screen image viewer showing the BSOD screen grab.

Note that this doesn’t look great on dual screen setups. Saying that, the appearance is probably close enough to fool most victims. On a single screen, it will work flawlessly, and undoubtedly fool everyone.

Instructions…

Get your hands on the freeware Pictview. I use this as it is small (100k) and DOS based.

Create a folder in the root of C: and place Pictview into it.
Click on the BSOD image above for a full size image. Right click on it and save it into the same folder.
Create a Batch file with the following command in it.

Start "" C:\BSOD\pictview.exe C:\BSOD\BSOD.gif

Save it

Otherwise…

If you want to cut out all the above steps, you can download this file and extract it to your C Drive. I thought it would be best if you knew what steps we were taking to make it all happen.

Finally, open up Scheduled Tasks and create a new task which will point it to the batch file. You can set up how regularly it should launch, and at what time. I think the joke will only need to be run once though.

You can test it out by running it 1 minute ahead of time, before switching it to a certain time. You could even make it happen each time the computer starts up, but that is taking it too far.

Make sure that around the time of it being launched, you are nearby. You will have to fess up as they might try to restart their computer. They won’t know it is a joke, and they may lose unsaved work. Pressing Esc will bring back the desktop.

To remove it completely from your computer, delete the scheduled task and delete the folder you created from the C drive.

Conclusion:

You probably didn’t learn much in this article, but I hope you have enjoyed it in any case. Use it with caution. If you want some less stressful practical jokes, check out some earlier ones here.

This is the part III of a new series of articles here at Inspect My Gadget. While most how-to articles you will find on this site will help you to be more productive, it’s sometimes fun to plant a practical joke on your work mates computer.

This week we look at crazy mouse. Normally when you move a mouse around the screen, it will go where you want it to. That is until you try this practical joke.

The result:

• The desktop will appear untouched.
• You will be able to move your victims mouse cursor without them knowing, which will create confusion and frustration.
• The more subtle you are, the longer you can play out the joke.

This joke takes little explanation but it is extremely effective. I used this practical joke on my boss and it went down well. Read on to find out how to make this happen, and how to restore the system quickly before you get decked.

Sidenote:

Windows will let you attach as many mice as you want to one system. They will all work simultaneously. This can be handy if you connect your TV to your computer. You can have one mouse on your desk and another on your coffee table.

The Method:

Get your hands on a cordless mouse and attach the receiver to your victims computer. Make sure it installs and works fine and then ensure the receiver is tucked away out of sight.

Head back to your desk with the new mouse and let your victim use their computer as normal. You are going to need a little patience for this to work really well.

You have a few options as to how you will most annoy your victim. You will need to be within around 3 metres range of your victims computer for the cordless mouse to work, so if your desk is nearby, you can give the mouse a little nudge every now and again to get them thinking. Even if it is very subtle, it will be noticeable.

I like to put the mouse in my pocket and get them to show me something on their computer. As you are talking to them, you can move the mouse a little in your pocket and even occasionally press the right mouse button.

If your victim starts getting really frustrated and smells something is going on, stop the game. You can play this out for a long time. The chances of your victim checking to see if a second mouse has been plugged in, is very slim if you don’t over do it.

Restoration:

It will be fairly obvious when you get caught, how you have gone about making this practical joke work. Pull out the mouse receiver and run.

I hope that this article has given you and your work-mates a bit of a giggle. Stay tuned to Inspect My Gadget on coming Fridays for more workplace mayhem.

None of these articles will damage your computer or expose you to viruses, and they will all be easy to revert the computer back to it’s previous state, at least, after a few laughs.

This week we look at “the start virus”. Basically, what we do is change every internal windows sound to the startup sound or some other annoying sound. This will work well in an IT workshop environment because the more tech savvy the user, the less likely they are to look for the obvious solution. This is very distracting and in your face.

I have seen this one used on a very good computer technician. He was really stressed by this and it took him over an hour to figure out even though it is so blatantly obvious. You may want to let on to the victim know how to fix this before they reinstall windows.

The result:

• The desktop will appear untouched.
• Every action, such as minimizing and maximizing windows, will cause the windows startup sound.
• It will take around 20 seconds to return the computer back to it’s fully working state.
• You can use any sound. The longer the better. An awful laugh or crazy frog may be just as ridiculously annoying.
• Take caution if you are going to be in the same room as the trick may backfire on you.

Read on to find out how to make this happen, and how to restore the system quickly before you get decked.

Method:

Find your unsuspecting victim. Make sure they have a sense of humour and know a thing or two about computers. You don’t want somebody to be freaking you that they have a virus. Doing this for malicious reasons is just silly and it could result in you having to answer to the boss. Take plenty of caution in this.

Ensure your victim has left their computer logged in.

We need to take a few quick steps to ensure we can return the machine back to it’s previous state and possibly preserve your friendship.

1. Go into your victims control panel.
2. Open “Sounds and Audio devices”.
3. Select the “Sounds” tab.
4. Save their current sound scheme.

Step 4 is important as it allows you to return your victims computer back to its original state quickly.

The rest of the procedure is very straightforward. Click on each sound and select browse to change it, each time replacing it for the same sound you have chosen. The more you change the better the trick will be. It can be quite time consuming to make all these changes so start off with the essentials such as maximize and minimize. The shutdown sound may be good for clicking on start.

Now it is done. You will notice that if you minimize and maximize windows, the sound will play, each and every time.

Really Nasty Method:

On top of what you have already done, if you want to be really nasty, you may want to disable access to the audio controls in Group Policies. I won’t tell you how to do this though, because if you don’t know already, you shouldn’t do it before you have had a lot of practice.

Another thing you may want to do is use windows task scheduler to play an audio file every 10 minutes or so. Without any warning, this with create more bamboozlement.

Restoration:

Restoration is very easy for this one as long as you didn’t do any of the bonus steps. Go into your audio settings, the sound tab, and select the sound scheme that you saved earlier. If you missed this step (naughty), your best bet is to load up the Windows Default and hope for the best.

I hope that this article has given you and your work-mates a bit of a giggle. Stay tuned to Inspect My Gadget on coming Fridays for more workplace mayhem.

None of these articles will damage your computer or expose you to viruses, and they will all be easy to revert the computer back to it’s previous state, at least, after a few laughs.

I will start with an old favourite. This is sure to trick many as the effect is almost flawless. The only noticeable clue is that the clock in the tasktray will not change.

The result:

• The desktop will appear untouched.
• The start Menu will not work.
• None of the default icons on the desktop will work.
• It will take around 30 seconds to return the computer back to it’s fully working state.

Read on to find out how to make this happen, and how to restore the system quickly before you get decked.

Method:

Find your unsuspecting victim. Make sure they have a sense of humour and know a thing or two about computers. You don’t want somebody to be freaking you that they have a virus. Doing this for malicious reasons is just silly and it could result in you having to answer to the boss. Take plenty of caution in this.

Ensure your victim has left their computer logged in. Take notes of how the computer was set before you started tampering with it. If your victim likes a particular wallpaper, make sure you know where it is. If your victim has auto arranging icons ticked, turn it back on afterwards. Ensuring you can return the machine back to it’s previous state is possibly preserve your friendship.

1. Minimize all running programs.
2. Press PrtScn (Print Screen) to take a screenshot.
3. Open up “Paint” and press “ctrl-v” to paste the desktop.
4. Save the image as “trick.jpg” somewhere that is easy to get to.
5. Right click on the taskbar and ensure “Lock Taskbar” is unticked.
6. Drag the Taskbar to the top or side of the screen.
7. Go into the Taskbar Properties and tick “Auto-Hide taskbar”
8. Right click on the desktop, enter into “Arrange icons by” and ensure you have auto arrange unticked.
9. Right click on the desktop and go into properties.
10. In the appearance tab, click on “Customize Desktop…”
11. Untick the options such as “My computer”, “My Documents” etc.
12. Click “OK” and then browse for your trick.jpg file you created earlier.
13. Ensure you set the wallpaper to “Stretched”

Now it is done. You will notice that if you drag icons around the desktop, it will appear as if you have two copies of the icon. The originals will still work, but “My Computer” and “My Documents” will not. They will appear, but they can’t be clicked on. This is especially fun when they try to drag files into the recycle bin.

The Taskbar will also remain open, well at least a picture of it will be. I think what makes this such an effective joke, it that some icons work as they should and others do not. It is a struggle for the most avid computer tech to get their head around.

Restoration:

Start from point 5 and work down, reversing what you have done. Make sure you refer to your notes and you set it back exactly how you found it. Ensure you don’t check “Auto Arrange” their icons if they did not have it checked before.

I hope that this article has given you and your work-mates a bit of a giggle. Stay tuned to Inspect My Gadget on coming Fridays for more workplace mayhem.