It kind of failed if you had a fancy CD player (or CD-ROM drive) that could show the lengths of tracks, if every other song on an album is 3 minutes long, then the last one probably isn't 30 minutes long.
I don't know what the point of this post is, other than that it sucks when a modern release removes the hidden track 
Yes, but if either song was a banger you were SOL for looping it. I'm looking at you SoaD!
I used to edit the MP3s to either take out the hidden tracks and play them as separate tracks, or if the ”hidden track” was just a bunch of noise, I'd remove it from the song
Piracy stays winning. Always the superior experience.