Sega's 1998 Saturn port of Winter Heat is known for its colourful visuals, exuberant cast and frantic sports action, so it's not the kind of game you'd expect to be hiding a dark secret.
However, AM3 staffer Yasushi Kameda decided to smuggle a foreboding portent of destruction within its code, a message which predicted the end of the world as we know it.
As highlighted by privateye, the Japanese and US versions of the game contain a file called SATFF.TXT which is full of messages from the developers. Via the wonders of machine translation, we can surmise that Kameda—who worked as a graphic artist on the project—was in a fairly downbeat mood when he made his contribution:
As noted by privateye, the world thankfully didn't end, and we're all (mostly) still around to tell the tale. Kameda is thankfully still with us, too; he has worked on games such as Kingdom Hearts, Shenmue, Dissidia: Final Fantasy and—most recently—SaGa: Emerald Beyond.
However, given current global events (and Kameda's lack of a timescale)—we might be speaking too soon when it comes to the whole apocalypse thing.