Hall of Tortured Souls

From as far back as the early nineties, the development teams of Microsoft have been slipping easter eggs into their software. Microsoft Office is very notable for this. In the 97 edition a rudimentary flight simulator, pinball and basic 8 ball games were hidden in Excel, Word and Access respectively. But then there is Excel 95, whose developers hid a much more creepier game called Hall of Tortured Souls.

To access this game, you must follow these instructions:

1. Open Excel 95 with a blank work sheet

2. Go down to the 95th row

3. Select the whole row

4. Tab over to column B

5. Go to Help/About

6. Hold down ctrl-alt-shift and click on the tech support button

7. A window will appear, called Hall of Tortured Souls.

The game is set in a first-person perspective, with Doom like graphics. The game appears to only have two rooms, one with blue pillars and green pools, and another with a window crediting the development team in red. However, if you type "EXCELKFA" while facing a certain direction, one of the walls will disappear and in its place will be another room which can only be entered once you cross an extremely narrow and hard-to-cross bridge.

The name "Hall of Tortured Souls" finally makes sense when you enter the room. In this room, there are loads of low-resolution photos of the development team, plastered on garish red walls...