Get the cake ! (2006)

About

Portal is a single-player first-person action/puzzle video game developed by Valve Corporation. The game was released in a bundle package called The Orange Box for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 on October the 9th, 2007.
In it, one of your goal is to get a cake. But, be careful, because the cake is a lie

“Get the cake”, sometimes reffered to as “Get the delicious cake”, “Delicious cake game” or sometimes “You vs Cake” is a solve the puzzle game. The first poster gives you a plan (most of the time a picture) featuring your character on one side, and your goal, a delicious cake, on the other side.
Now, you have to imagine this: You can’t get your attention away from the cake. You WANT to eat it at any cost, no matter what obstacles or… things are in your way.
Then, any other posters have to find the most suitable way to get to the cake unharmed.

Origin

In July 2006, during the well-known annual E3, a first trailer from the Portal game was released:

Then, according to a ED talk from 2007 about Portal, where they discussed the presence of the This is sparta meme inside the game, a user named Anonylol stated the following:

“It is delicious cake, you must eat it” has been around for a long ass time. Much longer than when portal was announced. I remember first seeing “NOW YOU’RE THINKING WITH PORTALS” back in summer of 2006 in the Pit crossing guy threads, and the “GET THE DELICIOUS CAKE” threads appeared shortly afterwards. Portal was announced sometime around July ’06, and the aperture science website was up on July 20 2006 as can be seen here http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/results.jsp?domain=aperturescience.com So they popped up around the same time.

There doesn’t seem to be any 4chan archive from that exact period. However, Google insights, as well as the existence of many “Get the Cake!” 4chanarchives’ threads way before the game’s release, in october 2007, plus this link they talked about, tend to agree with that statement.

“Get the cake”, initially called “Delicious cake threads” were threads that started on 4chan /b/ and were represented like this:

The only request was to solve that puzzle without breaking the rules given by the first poster.
This mix between Portal and an equivalent game using only mspaint tool caught on immediately there and a great amount of threads on /b/ as well as the /v/ board ensued:

- Here is the earliest 4chanarchive version, dating from January 2007, that can be found:

(WARNING : 4chanarchive got NSFW explicit content : Don’t click this link if you’re under the age of 18/21 depending on your county/country’s laws)

• http://4chanarchive.org/brchive/dspl_thread.php5?thread_id=50542352&x=get+the+cake+-+efg+style

There are more archives about it but, due to the NSFW content, they won’t show up here anymore.

The fact it featured EFG on that version is an indication that older versions must have existed before that.

- Following the game’s release, so in october 2007, which gave new strength to that meme, a somewhat accurate Urban Dictionary entry mentionning it was created.

Notable variations

Get the delicious cake:

Get the cake, wheelchair edition:

Get the cake, EFG edition:

Get the cake, Hard mode:

Get the cake 3D:

Outside of 4chan

The meme went to several websites, some creating their own version of the puzzle game:

• Le post French article
• Puregrim forum
• Armoregame community
• Gamespot forum
• popgive blog
• Oddthought forum