An OG Xbox Easter Egg revealed after almost 20 years of its launch, but it may not be the last

It’s been almost two decades since the first Xbox console was introduced in November 2001. And talking about the records more than 24 million units were sold worldwide till 2006 because after that Microsoft discontinued it to shift audience focus on its new Xbox 360 at that time. And where any ester egg hunter would think that a 20-year-old device wouldn’t have any secrets left to share, the original 2001’s Xbox can become an exception in that situation. Because this week, an anonymous developer who worked on Xbox’s first console has disclosed to Kotaku that a hidden Easter Egg in the OG Xbox’s Dashboard has remained undiscovered for almost 20 years.

“I didn’t really expect it to be found, not unless the source code leaked or somebody reverse-engineered the Dashboard,” said the anonymous developer to Kotaku. “Its trigger was the same as the ‘main’ Easter egg so I knew it was possible. I figured somebody would have to leak it for it to be known.”

Now the ‘main’ Easter egg that the anonymous developer is referring to is known for many years and can be triggered by going into the audio CD ripping screen, naming a new rip as “<<Eggsβox>>”. Which later triggers a hidden credit roll, and after which the console reboots. As per Kotaku, the new Easter egg starts in a similar manner.

Steps to Activate The “New” Xbox Dashboard Easter Egg

• Go into “Music” and insert an audio CD. (A short album will take less time.)
• From the Audio CD screen choose “Copy,” “Copy” again, then “New Soundtrack.”
• Delete the default soundtrack title and replace it with (no quotes) “Timmyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!” (That’s the letter “y” 26 times. No need to count; just fill the entire field and replace the last one with a “!”.)
• Sit a spell. Enjoy the sounds of the hard drive stealing the disc’s essence.
• When ripping completes, back out to the main menu.
• Choose “Settings” and then “System Info.”
• You should now see new screen listing members of the “Xbox Dashboard Team.”

And that’s it, it will replace the standard contents of the “System Info” screen with a new listing showing the names of the Xbox Dashboard team – an easter egg that was hidden in the 24 million Xbox consoles for almost 20 years.

Now every reader must have a question that why the developer didn’t talk about this earlier? Well, answering the same question the anonymous developer said, “I decided to share now as it’s been 20 years, and I thought it would be cool if people knew this actually existed.” He further added “I also thought if I didn’t do it now it would never likely happen. It had been so long I couldn’t even remember the trigger! I had to connect the Xbox up and try out several things to be sure.”

One Down One More to go

After this news surfaced online, Seamus Blackley, often referred to as the “father of the Xbox” told Kotaku that he didn’t know about this Timmy Easter Egg before he saw it on the website. And according to him, it is not the final secret hidden within the OG Xbox that he tweeted about in 2017.

Further talking with Kotaku about this, Seamus Blackley revealed that there’s another easter egg in the OG Xbox hidden somewhere in the system’s procedurally generated boot animation. When asked that this Easter egg involves entering certain controller inputs during the animation, he replied, “Nope, it doesn’t. But I’m tempted to say it does. But no it doesn’t really. At all. For sure. I’m pretty sure at least.”