Whether you found it out before everyone else doesn't matter, it's pure personal experience in that when you found it, YOU didn't know about it previously.
I remember playing Kingdom Hearts when it first came out and I decided to do some backtracking in Agrabah, when this huge motherfucker jumps out of nowhere and starts kicking my ass. I didn't die, but I was severely underleveled, and as a result, he took THREE HOURS to beat. It wasn't until later on that I found out he was called Kurt Zisa and that you shouldn't be fucking around in Agrabah at the level I was at.
Many times, although sometimes I didn't know that it was a secret or bonus as it fitted into gameplay nicely even if sometimes it made few things later on much easier.
Not sure if its a secret more than a glitch, but in Rainbow Six Vegas 2 I did the machinegunner farming in story mode to gain my exp the day I got the game.
The place in one of the GTAs that you can go in by piling cars and that has a tag saying "you're not supposed to be here" and a ramp to get out. I don't remember exactly, it was with a friend and we were baked randomly fucking around the city.
The altar of gods shortcut in MMVI, also the hidden NWC dungeon (the second one was mere luck, I was just clicking around trying to get the boost on all my characters before being burnt to death by dragons when suddenly POOF teleport)
The hotel room with the staked guy in Max Payne.
Almost all the secrets in FFVI. God I played the shit out of that game.
And many, many others. Some of them I didn't even realize were secrets... I have the nasty habit of scraping around for hidden stuff.
I used to find them all the time when I had more time...sadly as I've grown older, I no longer have as much free time. Now I'm too impatient to spend the time looking for secrets when there's a ton of other things I need to do nagging in the back of my head. :(
There are quite a few, but I can't think of any at the moment.
My friend and I accidentally 'figured out' how to clone Pokemon in the original Red/Blue game boy games, using the "remove the link cable halfway through" glitch. Too bad the Pokemon that came out cloned was that stupid buffalo pokemon instead of the legendary we were trading. Oh well, the knowledge was worth more.
I still remember my first time playing Metal Gear Solid, at a friend's house. He couldn't believe it was my first time playing.
I remember being the first to figure out in my school that you could actually SAVE Cid in FFVI. Also, I enjoyed going there because it glitched the ocean slightly, and made parts of it white. I ran around seeing if there was anything else weird.
If you take a Pikachu into the Viridian Forest In Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver, the encounter rate for Pikachu skyrockets.
I was playing Final Fantasy X-2, happily scavenging scrap in the desert when I suddenly got ambushed by Angra Manyu. I didn't know what the hell it was, other than the fact that it was some sort of boss.
I frantically IM'd my friend asking what it was. His reply was "um... have u saved recently?"
Anyone ever play Gauntlet Legends? I found some secret level that was supposed to look like the office where the staff worked. The staff members were all skeletons lying in chairs.
Then a hamster jumps out at you and tries to spin kick with its stubby little feet.
Yeah, once when playing Starsiege:Tribes - I found a place called "Griffin Town" in a tutorial level. You had to wait a while before you could enter. mostly useless, but made me go looking around.
Oh yeah! Now that I think about it, another tutorial level had something else weird - if you travelled REALLY FAR away from the area you were supposed to be in (i think it was the last tut level) you were able to find a place with identical layout of where you started the level - only there were no buildings - BUT there were shadows, like buildings were supposed to be there. It was pretty neat to find - must have been the first place they had it, and then moved it.
I found all of the secret levels in Super Mario Land 2 as a kid. Because I'm just awesome like that.
This is really taking far too long. I say we all register accounts, mature them, and all hit the same board within the same 10 minutes. There'll be uproar.
SBAllen hasn't had to deal with any major shit since he took over. It's time we inducted him into the real world.