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Read JFK's E-mail in Call of Duty: Black Ops

Ask not what your command prompt can do for you...


This image is so extremely secret that it had to be uploaded upside-down. Sshhhh! 
This image is so extremely secret that it had to be uploaded upside-down. Sshhhh! 
Well, I hope you're all having a happy Call of Duty: Black Ops day. Did anyone take the day off work, or are we past that? Anyway, one of my favorite parts of Black Ops is almost completely outside of the main game. It's a hidden computer terminal that you can access that contains a lot of concept art and soundtrack access, but more interesting than that is the series of e-mail accounts you can hack into and read. Yes, Richard Nixon has an e-mail account. I know that's hard to wrap your mind around, given the timeframe that all this takes place in, but like most of the anachronistic aspects of Black Ops, it's best to not think about it very hard.

Getting to the terminal is easy: while you're sitting in the chair in the main menu, hit the left and right triggers on your controller a few times. L, R, L, R, L, R, L, R, L, R! After a few back and forths, Mason will rise up, free himself from his shackles, and you'll be able to wander around the room. From there, the only thing to do is either sit back down or head to the back of the room 

So the obvious things to do in the Black Ops terminal are the DOA and ZORK commands. DOA unlocks Dead Ops Arcade, a cool dual-joystick shooter that you can find on the zombies menu once you've got it open. ZORK, as you might have guessed, launches the classic text adventure, Zork. Yeah, dude. Zork!

But there's more to do in the terminal that just unlock that stuff. Typing in "3arc Intel" will let you open up all of the intel documents, though that'll prevent you from earning the trophy or achievement tied to unlocking them naturally. And you can also read Mason's e-mail by launching the mail client (by typing "mail" into the terminal).

The "who" command gives you a list of accounts on the system and the "login" command lets you attempt to login as another user. This is where it starts to get interesting, since each user has his own e-mail inbox and some extra concept art to see. Most of the passwords I've figured out so far have been relatively straightforward, but they aren't really found in the game. Instead, a little Wikipedia scouring turned up passwords for multiple presidents and a Manhattan Project head.

There's probably more to do here--I still haven't figured out how to get on the remote Dreamland server run by Majestic-12--but here are a few passwords to get you going.

l: jfkennedy
p: lancer

l: rnixon
p: checkers

l: lbjohnson
p: ladybird

l: vbush
p: manhattan

And if you ever want to get back into Mason's account, amason's password is the most obvious of all... it's password.

Let me know if you find anything else, and good luck!    
Jeff Gerstmann on Google+

70 Comments

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Hollister

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Edited By Hollister

Neat!

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DougWilliams

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Edited By DougWilliams

 So to log in to Hudsons account the user is jhudson and the password is  bryant1950. It seams that there might be a bit more to find from the intel in game.

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HydraHam

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Edited By HydraHam

I bought it after i heard about zork from a friend. 
 
Not even lying.

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DougWilliams

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Edited By DougWilliams

Well after a fair bit of trial an error and mainly monkeying around it seams that the intel you collect in game isn't so worthless after all. If you check Masons mail at the terminal the first message from Hudson tells him to change his password to something else (memorable name followed by a memorable date, which is what he uses). So after trying a few things with out any joy I had a look at the intel collected from the mission "S.O.G". In his profile it says something about his adviser being Marshall Bryant and he got an award in 1950. So I went back to the terminal and tried to login in with this info to guess his password. And hey presto it worked.

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halberdierv2

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Edited By halberdierv2

DOA? dead ops? I thought it was gonna be Dead or Alive Volleyball :(

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Steve_C

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Edited By Steve_C

You have a guide feature yo!

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ArbitraryWater

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Edited By ArbitraryWater

Alright. Sold. Again.

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Jimbo

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Edited By Jimbo

Majestic-12 is a thing outside of Deus Ex?  I had no idea.

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Nunchuckles

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Edited By Nunchuckles

I want to play, but my PS3 YLOD'd

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jorbear

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Edited By jorbear
@Jeff: When is the quick look coming up? I'm really on the fence about this game, as I've never been a huge COD fan.
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Edited By Brackynews

"...ask what you can sudo from your command prompt."

So now the obvious question: does this make it okay to call Treyarch cool?
I'm not sure who's in charge of public opinion on whether Treyarch has ever had an original idea, but freeing yourself from bondage only to load up a game of Zork is pretty damn cool.
 
If the multiplayer menu could work with the same concept, I can see having a lot of geeky fun with it. You can set up a private server, but you have reformat the box and install a new OS first. :)

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natetodamax

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Edited By natetodamax

Whoa, that's sick. Thanks for the info! I'll have to try this out.

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jeff

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Edited By jeff
@FlipperDesert: Be sure to watch the Quick Look when it goes up, we've got a lot of this stuff in there.
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FlipperDesert

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Edited By FlipperDesert

I have no interest in actually playing Black Ops but to hear there was a super-hidden terminal with Zork on it in the game's main menu made my brain 'splode and I kinda wanna see just that part of it.

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Edited By MistaSparkle

My friend told me if you type in DOA you can play a dual stick shooter, but I'm not sure.

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Dalai

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Edited By Dalai

I already knew about this. Marilyn Monroe tweeted about it.

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MattDementous

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Edited By MattDementous

XD weird!

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FlyingRat

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Edited By FlyingRat

Do you not know about the little dual joystick shooter minigame, Jeff? I forget what the command was that you have to type in.
 
Edit: Oh wait, totally in there. Sorry, didn't read every word.

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Lukeweizer

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Edited By Lukeweizer

Wait a minute... the main menu is a torture room?! I need to get home and play!!
 
P.S. Sorry for stealing someone's quest.

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jeff

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Edited By jeff

This image is so extremely secret that it had to be uploaded upside-down. Sshhhh! 
This image is so extremely secret that it had to be uploaded upside-down. Sshhhh! 
Well, I hope you're all having a happy Call of Duty: Black Ops day. Did anyone take the day off work, or are we past that? Anyway, one of my favorite parts of Black Ops is almost completely outside of the main game. It's a hidden computer terminal that you can access that contains a lot of concept art and soundtrack access, but more interesting than that is the series of e-mail accounts you can hack into and read. Yes, Richard Nixon has an e-mail account. I know that's hard to wrap your mind around, given the timeframe that all this takes place in, but like most of the anachronistic aspects of Black Ops, it's best to not think about it very hard.

Getting to the terminal is easy: while you're sitting in the chair in the main menu, hit the left and right triggers on your controller a few times. L, R, L, R, L, R, L, R, L, R! After a few back and forths, Mason will rise up, free himself from his shackles, and you'll be able to wander around the room. From there, the only thing to do is either sit back down or head to the back of the room 

So the obvious things to do in the Black Ops terminal are the DOA and ZORK commands. DOA unlocks Dead Ops Arcade, a cool dual-joystick shooter that you can find on the zombies menu once you've got it open. ZORK, as you might have guessed, launches the classic text adventure, Zork. Yeah, dude. Zork!

But there's more to do in the terminal that just unlock that stuff. Typing in "3arc Intel" will let you open up all of the intel documents, though that'll prevent you from earning the trophy or achievement tied to unlocking them naturally. And you can also read Mason's e-mail by launching the mail client (by typing "mail" into the terminal).

The "who" command gives you a list of accounts on the system and the "login" command lets you attempt to login as another user. This is where it starts to get interesting, since each user has his own e-mail inbox and some extra concept art to see. Most of the passwords I've figured out so far have been relatively straightforward, but they aren't really found in the game. Instead, a little Wikipedia scouring turned up passwords for multiple presidents and a Manhattan Project head.

There's probably more to do here--I still haven't figured out how to get on the remote Dreamland server run by Majestic-12--but here are a few passwords to get you going.

l: jfkennedy
p: lancer

l: rnixon
p: checkers

l: lbjohnson
p: ladybird

l: vbush
p: manhattan

And if you ever want to get back into Mason's account, amason's password is the most obvious of all... it's password.

Let me know if you find anything else, and good luck!