An frequently- overlooked Easter Egg in Google Chrome is the dinosaur game, which appears when you try to visit a website while disconnected from the Internet.

The Chrome dino game is a simple horizonless runner, which sees you jump over cacti, and dodge underneath obstacles. Controls are introductory. Press space to jump (and to start the game), and the down arrow to duck. The thing is to survive for as long as humanly (or dinosaurly) possible — or at least until your Internet starts working again.

To celebrate the fourth birthday of the Chrome dino, Google has published an interview with the inventors who erected the game, explaining its origins.

So, why the dinosaur theme? According to Chrome developer Sebastien Gabriel, it’s a play on going back to the “ neolithic periods,” before the actuality of ubiquitous Wi-Fi. While this will really be alien to some of our youngish compendiums, others will remember only really being suitable to get online in certain places home, academy, work, and specialist Internet cafés.

Original designs of the dinosaur character were given the codename “ Project Bolan,” which itself is a reference to Marc Bolan, the late lead songster of the 1970’s glam gemstone band T-Rex.

Alan Bettes, the Senior Visual Developer at Google, explained that the only restriction the platoon placed upon themselves was to keep the stir rigid.

“At the morning we allowed, “ What if it did a cute little kick in the morning like our favorite 90’s hedgehog? What if it roared to signal to people that it was alive?” But in the end, we settled on the basics of any good runner game run, duck and jump.”

The game was released in September 2014, but originally plodded to perform on certain platforms — particularly on aged Android bias. This needed a rewrite, which was completed by December of that time.

The Chrome Dino game boasts emotional figures — especially for a commodity that’s largely hidden from view, and you’re only likely to encounter if your Internet goes down. According to Edward Jung, Chrome UX mastermind, 270 million games are played each month, across both desktop and mobile. Utmost players come from requests with precious or unreliable data — like India, Brazil, Indonesia, and Mexico.

You can play the Chrome dino game without turning on Airplane Mode. Just open chrome// dino in your web cybersurfer, and you’ll be taken to a “ hall mode” where you can exercise in a full-window terrain.

The current interpretation of the game celebrates its 4th birthday and is filled with various galettes, balloons, and party headdresses. You can forget about beating it, still, as the game concludes after 17 million times of playtime — roughly how long the T-rex was alive on earth.

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