Starfield Player Finds Hilarious Konami Easter Egg

Highlights

• A Starfield player uncovers a Konami Code Easter egg, adding to the game’s pop culture references and hidden surprises.
• The famous cheat code appears in a desk note, with a slight variation, in homage to gaming history and nostalgia.
• Starfield is full of Easter eggs from different genres and media, including nods to Bethesda’s past games and popular culture references.

One observant Starfield player has discovered a new Easter egg that pays homage to one of gaming’s most popular inside jokes. While the developers at Bethesda Game Studios have included a lot of references, big and small, to remind players that Starfield takes place in a future version of this universe, most of them aren’t a direct nod-and-a-wink to the gaming community.

The Konami Code was created by Kazuhisa Hashimoto and is a cheat code that’s been appearing in Konami games since 1986, when it was used in Graduis for the NES to instantly provide all ship upgrades when a player entered it while the game was paused. The original code was up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-Start, although there have been some variations made to it over the years, such as adding a Select before the Start or requiring two sets of B-A prompts.

Starfield wasn’t made by Konami, but a player (who goes by the Reddit handle burried-to-deep) has stumbled across a desk with a note on it that contains the infamous Konami Code — sort of. This version of the code actually contains one too many down arrows, and a marker on the desk is concealing the spot where a left arrow probably resides, but the code is otherwise pretty much correct. Of course, the scientist sitting at the desk, presumably the person who wrote the note, is dead, so perhaps the imperfection in the code failed to save them, since Contra had one of The Konami Code’s most famous uses, providing the player with an extra 30 lives when entered.

Easter Eggs Abound In Starfield

The discovery of The Konami Code is just one in a long line of pop culture Easter eggs that Starfield players have dug up, which range from a locker with plushies and apples that pays homage to an early Dr. Seuss children’s book, to an item description for potatoes that connects Starfield with Lord of the Rings.

Of course, The Konami Code isn’t the only video game reference contained within Starfield‘s vast galaxy, but most of the time, the references are Easter eggs referencing other Bethesda games. These include tips-of-the-hat to The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, with its Adoring Fan character returning as a potential Starfield companion, and an old Earth baseball with a plaque stating it was used in Boston, the setting of Fallout 4, whose Diamond City location is a repurposed version of the famous Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox.