WARNING: This post contains spoilers for Ready Player One. Proceed with caution.
Ready Player One is a giant celebration of pop culture. The movie centers around a virtual world where players can create avatars that look like their favorite characters. Everyone is trying to win a mysterious game that will make them extremely rich and give them control over the virtual world.
There are countless video game characters and references throughout the film, but we pulled out a few that might deserve a little explanation.
Battletoads
During the climactic battle of the film, we see an army of characters charge forward to assist our hero Wade Watts in his journey to win the game. Towards the front of the army, there are three anthropomorphized amphibians that some fans might recognize as the Battletoads.
Battletoads premiered on the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1991. The game was a success and spawned a number of sequels. The original game is known for its high level of difficulty and is often cited as one of the hardest games of its era.
The Battletoads have always had a cult following but never branched out into mainstream success like other video game icons. But, with their inclusion in Ready Player One, it’s likely that a whole new generation will discover these radical dudes.
Swordquest
Atari 2600 games play a big part in the story of Ready Player One, and there is one that’s mentioned very quickly that actually reflects the story of the film itself. When a number of scholars are trying to discover which Atari 2600 game might be the key to unlocking a vital part of the game, one of the games mentioned is the legendary Swordquest.
Swordquest was actually a series of four separate fantasy games — Earthworld, Fireworld, Waterworld, and Airworld — that were part of a contest Atari was running. Each of the games came with a comic book that featured clues for solving a puzzle. If you solved the puzzle, you could win a real-world prize. The prizes consisted of a talisman, a chalice, a crown, and a Philosopher’s Stone. The four winners of these prizes would eventually battle each other for an ultimate prize: a sword made of pure silver.
Only two of the games were released before Atari suffered financial problems and had to cancel the contest. Still, the idea of tying video games into a real contest is definitely a huge inspiration for Ready Player One.
Joust
During a pivotal scene in Ready Player One, we get to see a childhood memory of James Halliday, the creator of the virtual world where the game takes place. In that memory, we see his old bedroom and all the pop culture trinkets he’s collected. One of those is a poster for the 1982 arcade game Joust.
In Joust, the player takes control of a knight that’s riding an ostrich. The goal is to defeat waves of enemies that come at you. If you beat one, they turn into an egg which you can collect at the bottom of the screen.
This is a nifty nod to the original novel that the film is based on. In the book, the first trial that Wade must overcome involves defeating an artificial intelligence character in a game of Joust. While that doesn’t happen in the movie, it’s still a cool little acknowledgment to fans of both the game and the book.
Adventure
The biggest trivia moment of Ready Player One happens at the end of the film when Wade has to play the Atari 2600 game Adventure in order to win the final trial. Other players try to beat it but Wade discovers the real way to win isn’t by winning. It’s by discovering the very first Easter egg in video game history.
In 1979, Adventure was released for the Atari 2600. The game’s designer, Warren Robinett, felt that it wasn’t fair that video game designers didn’t get credited for their work anywhere in the game or on the packaging. So, he devised a secret way to get his name into the game.
By following a specific path, obtaining an invisible dot, and bringing the dot into a certain room will unlock a screen that shows Robinett’s name. It’s a clever little trick and is considered to be the very first Easter egg ever placed into a video game.
What other obscure video game references did you see in Ready Player One?
