Full Trilogy Guide

# Background

Each of the easter eggs in the trilogy are based on another game, and the only real goal in each of them is see the credits.  They are each fully functional games though, and they can be speedrun to the extent that you can get to (or drive through in the case of 2000) the end credits.  They were meant as elaborate showcases for the developers, since often times, their work would be largely uncredited within the application itself.

# EXCEL 2000 - Dev Hunter

2000's is based on an old arcade game named Spy Hunter.  Aptly named Dev Hunter, you drive through the credits in a Spy Hunter style car, blasting the "Evil and dangerous Excel developers", as the credits text jokingly refers to them.

## How to get to it:

1. Open Excel 2000.
2. Under file menu, select 'Save as Web Page'
3. Select 'Publish Sheet' and check the box for 'Add Interactivity'
4. Save the file as an htm page on your drive.
5. Load the htm page you just saved with Internet Explorer. You should have a web enabled Excel box in the middle of the page.
6. Scroll to row 2000, column WC. Select row 2000, and tab so that WC is the active column. Note that this has to be done manually, no excel hotkeys work on the web enabled forms.
7. Hold down Shift+Crtl+Alt and click the Office logo in the upper-left.

## Game Controls:

- Use the arrow keys to drive, forward and backward to accelerate and decelerate, left and right move you like wise. 
- Space bar to Fire.
- Press O to drop oil slicks.  
- When it gets dark, press H for your headlights. 

## Background Info:

- There's not much to this one, but it is of note that it's built around early web based technologies (the team that designed it was responsible for getting Excel enabled web forms working) and uses some complicated early Direct X 3D rendering.  
- From a technical perspective it's very difficult to get it to run properly, and you might see some artifacts and temporary black screens at times.  It's probably the least stable of the easter eggs, and it's the only one that was removed from later versions of Excel 2000.  Only the very first release of Excel 2000 has it.

# EXCEL 97 - Flight to Credits

97's is based on Microsoft's own in house flight simulator series of games, probably taking inspiration from the then in development Microsoft Flight Simulator 98 or the older 95 version.  The goal of this one is to just see the credits.  It's fairly basic, but it's actually somewhat difficult to control.

## How to get to it:

1. Open Excel 97.
2. On a new Worksheet, Press F5.
3. Type X97:L97 and hit enter.
4. Press the tab key once.
5. Hold Ctrl + Shift
6. Click on the Chart Wizard toolbar button.

## Game Controls:

- Use mouse to change your direction and orientation.
- Press the right mouse button to accelerate forward or decelerate if you're moving backwards, and left mouse button to decelerate, or accelerate in reverse.

## Background Info:

- It's possible to fly through the floor to an extent - there is absolutely no collision.
- The only object that isn't terrain is the credits screen here.  It's pretty funny to read if you can manage to sit still for long enough.

# EXCEL 95 - Hall of Tortured Souls

95's is based on the famous original Doom by ID Software, which had come out only a year before the team started working on Excel 95.  Apparently the team were huge fans!  This is the most fully featured of the games, and also the hardest!

## How to get to it:

1. Open Excel 95 with a blank work sheet.
2. Scroll down to the 95th row.
3. Select the whole row by clicking on the row number.
4. Tab over once to Column B.
5. Go to the Help/About menu.
6. Hold down ctrl + alt + shift and click on the Tech Support button.
7. A window will appear called "Hall of Tortured Souls"
8. Immediately turn around and type **excelkfa** to open the wall. Navigate the zig-zag catwalk to see the dev portraits and the real credits.

## Game Controls:

- Use the key board arrows to navigate.

## Background Info:

- In order to see what's considered the "real" Credits, you have to turn around, type the secret code "excelkfa" and pass a gauntlet of angled platforms with just arrow keys and no ability to look down to see where the player is.  
- It may not look impressive, but when this came out in 1994/1995, writing a 3D engine that runs this well inside of Excel within Windows was incredible.  Programs like Doom would run in full DOS with all system resources available.  HoTS did not have such luxuries, so they had to limit the size of the window to what you'll see here.  
- The credits room also contains a really grainy team photo of the developers.  The quality is due to the engine only being able to display a certain amount of colors.  The official name for the Excel 95 Easter Egg is "Hall of Tortured Souls" to fit with the Doom theme.

How to run Hall of Tortured Souls

So, in order to run this game, you need to know how to open up Hall of Tortured Souls first.
The first thing you want to do after opening Excel 95 is get to the 95th cell.
Once you're at the 95th cell, you want to click on the 95 to highlight the entire row, and then hit tab once to highlight the 2nd column ( column B ).
After column B is highlighted, look at the options at the top of the bar then click Help ---> About Microsoft Excel
A window will open up after clicking on this, and you'll see a couple of options. What you want to do is hold down Ctrl + Shift + Alt and then click on the "Tech Support" button.
If done correctly, the Hall of Tortured Souls should now open up in a window.

Once you've opened it up, you can look around with the "left" and "right" arrow keys, and move forward/backwards with the "up" and "down" arrow keys.
The "D" key will cause your camera to look up, and the "C" key will cause your camera to look down.
If you look around the room, you'll notice a couple of pillars, some windows, and a staircase in front of you.
If you look behind you, you'll see a wall. This wall can and must be removed in order to complete the speedrun.

In order to get rid of this wall, you will need to type in "excelkfa" without the quotations.
There is no text box to enter this in, you just need to type this on your keyboard once the window opens up and you've clicked on it.
If done correctly, the wall that was behind you when the window opened up should disappear, revealing a zig zag catwalk.
Traverse your way across this catwalk and into the room at the end of it. You will see on both walls pictures of the developers, and a square with the credits scroll.
The speedrun ends the moment you get in the room and have both walls in view.

Naam	Auteur
Full Trilogy Guide	Krayzar 4 years ago
How to run Hall of Tortured Souls	xilverknight155 4 years ago