Hidden menu in Mortal Kombat - and other game secrets we love

The original Mortal Kombat was a coin-operated arcade game which came out in 1992.

Twenty games, two films and a TV series later, the franchise has built a huge global fanbase.

The game even caught the attention of the US Senate, which led to the creation of the US ratings system ESRB (Entertainment Software Ratings Board).

In all that time nobody managed to find the hidden menu - it was in the very first game.

Cutting Room Floor, whose members search for hidden and obscure video game content, unlocked the menu after discovering a code to access it.

This code appears to have stayed hidden for so long because users must enter it so fast it's almost physically impossible.

It's called the EJB menu, after the game's creator Ed J Boon.

From there you can edit the high scores, skip straight to the game's endings and access tools used by the developers to test the software.

Secrets are everywhere in games and apps, often they are in-jokes by the developers or a way of rewarding particularly dedicated fans. They're referred to as Easter eggs.

If you went to school at a certain time you're probably familiar with the purple world you could fly around in, hidden inside Microsoft Excel 97.

It may have been just a sneaky way of getting you to pay attention to the developers' names, but it was the closest lots of us got to playing video games in IT lessons.

Word 97 also had a pinball game hidden in it, which was really good for productivity...

Almost every Legend of Zelda game has Mario's face hidden somewhere - both are made by Nintendo after all. One of the most well-known of these is in the classic N64 game Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

If you take Link up to Hyrule Castle and stand in the right place, peer through a window and you can see two very blurry portraits of Mario and Princess Peach.

If you stand outside Earl's Court Station on Google Street View you'll see a blue police box.

Police boxes used to be fairly common on the streets of London, but click on it and you'll find this one is bigger on the inside.

For some more fun with Google, try typing any of these into the search bar and click "I'm Feeling Lucky".

In the futurist, gunmetal grey world of Crysis 2, look in a certain lift and you will find two soldiers making the best of a bad situation.

When aliens invade, rave.

The first Halo game's Legendary difficulty setting was notoriously hard, but if you did manage to get to the end you'd be treated to a heart-warming alternate ending.

Sergeant Major Johnson is grappling with an Elite as the ring the game takes its name from blows up.

When they see the explosion they put aside their differences, Johnson opens his arms wide and says "This is it baby, hold me".

Then they cuddle.

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