Did you find all the Secret levels in Doom 1 or 2 Legitimately?

[David_Dweedle]

Or did you Idclip or go to the nearest Cheat website for a guide on how to access it?

I found Military Base(E1M9) Completely by Accident believe it or not.. I was about 5 or 6 at the time and Dad was like " Heh Ive never seen this area before " and then I found the Secret exit switch.. and we were both like Awesome!

Heh but for the other Secret levels in Ultimate Doom I kinda.. well... Accidently got this ability to walk thru walls.

For Doom 2 I noticed this funny switch in the middle of nowhere in Map15.. I pressed it but I didn't know exactly what it did.. so I just continued the level as normal but I had to find health so I backtracked to areas ive visited and found this newly open cave area.. and it said Exit so I was like " huh? wonder what this is " and BAM Wolfenstein level.

Had to find Map32 with an accidental ability to walk thru levels heh.

[Dreadopp]

Me and my brother played a lot of the sharware version of Doom 1. We pretty much know where all the secrets are in the first episode. We pretty much did the same thing for Doom 2. It took us a while to get to level 31, but we did it legitimately.

[Super Jamie]

I didn't know where the legit secret to E1M9 was for many years. I recall idspispopd'ing into there and also using idclev to get to E1M9, but I don't think I ever bothered to look it up properly until Doom Legacy 1.42 was out.

The E2 and E3 secret levels I remember fondly as a kid, especially E3M9, where I recognised the entrance but didn't trust the game one little bit; what better way to lull the player into a false sense of security than to present them with something they think they already know? My suspicions obviously proved right.

[David_Dweedle]

Super Jamie said:

I didn't know where the legit secret to E1M9 was for many years. I recall idspispopd'ing into there and also using idclev to get to E1M9, but I don't think I ever bothered to look it up properly until Doom Legacy 1.42 was out.

The E2 and E3 secret levels I remember fondly as a kid, especially E3M9, where I recognised the entrance but didn't trust the game one little bit; what better way to lull the player into a false sense of security than to present them with something they think they already know? My suspicions obviously proved right.

IMO I think the Level designers were just lazy with E3m9.. lol just adding some new bits to a halfdone level.. but hey! what do I know lol

[pavera]

Nah man, secret levels should be quirky like that.

EDIT: Oh, and for the most part I found all the secrets myself. I had to, since I didn't have a worthy internet connection until the early 2000s. The only one I couldn't figure out how to do was E3M9, cause that jump into that pit just sounded ridiculous for a keyboarder like me. That was for Ultimate Doom anyways.

I played Doom 2 with Doom95, so I always just warped to the secret levels. Ooooh the memories!

[DuckReconMajor]

Doom 1 I looked them all up. Tee hee hee.

Doom 2 I knew the secret exit was on MAP15 and I knew there was a MAP32, but other than that I found those legitimately.

[printz]

All the Doom 1 ones were found legitly by me.
E1M9 was found when I finally detected the source of the clunks, and I was intrigued by the network of passages E1M3 would have... which was just fake.
E2M9 was found straightforwardly. In any way, it was no secret, it was a direct way. No surprise, because E2M9 wasn't the nicest place to accidentally boom into.
I used UDoom, so it had the maximum possible updates against stretching your hand behind walls, but wasn't enough. I was wandering thru E3M9 hitting every possible wall for secrets, when I started pressing space on the blue box, eventually exiting the level. No rocket bullshit there.
E4M9 was found shortly after I found the access to the cyberdemon niche. Easy to find, but not very worth it. Tame level, with only the techbase textures hinting its secret status. Even E1M9 packed better punch.

But for the rest of the secrets I decided to read the damned Doom FAQ. I always wanted to see walkthroughs about Doom, not because I was lousy at playing, but that I liked how game events were narrated. Anyway, because of the FAQ, half of the charm of Doom 2 was lost, as I knew all the hideouts from early on.

[Christoph]

E1m3 was just a matter of figuring out those mysterious "clunks" after running around randomly and seeing a lift popping back up.

We only had Shareware Doom and Doom2 growing up, so the first time I played E2-3 was on the SNES. Which was really annoying to play because A)the crappy controller makes moving thrice as hard B)the game engine is different (more nonsensical/harsh) and C) they removed a bunch of maps and textures. But I still found the secret maps for E2-3.

Map15 was a decent challenge (took me a long time to figure it out exactly) - I'm still not completely familiar with that map to this day (I really don't like that open-ended type of map design) but I do recall the switch in the slime/lava pit.

Map31's secret end was a no-brainer, since we'd also beaten the shareware version of Wolfenstein countless times previously.

[Enjay]

Doom, yes. Doom2, haven't even bothered trying to find them all. I don't play most of the levels enough to care.

E3M9 is one of my favourite maps in Doom BTW. :)

[kristus]

I really can't remember.

I know I didn't manage the E3 secret exit without reading about it though. Didn't think about trying to RJ.

[Vegeta]

I had the DOOM FAQ, and my brother found there the secrets, then showed them to me.
For E4, Master Levels, and Final DOOM fortunately I didn't have any clue (I didn't have internet at the time), and had to find them myself.

I admit I cheated for E4M9, I warped to that map first, only to beat it with idspispopd to find which map had the secret exit.

For all other id games I found secret exits in a non cheating way.

[Xeriphas1994]

For the first game, definitely — it wasn't always easy to find things on the internet in 1995, even if I had known about the FAQ or the newsgroups.  I didn't get around to finishing Doom II until much more recently, so I probably saw certain secrets in COMPET-N demos ahead of time, but I've never downloaded or read a complete walkthrough.

[Gez]

Yes except for E4 (and Final Doom). Surprise surprise, the reason some levels had secrets I just couldn't find was that cheating was required to find them...

[Shadow Dweller]

I think I stumbled across the one for Doom 1 episode 1 by accident. The others I might have looked up while I was bored.

[bimlanders]

I did find the originally three legitimately. But in DOOM 2, the news of their being Wolf3d levels was too exciting to contain. I just couldn't freakin' figure out how to get there so I cheated. However, during a later play-through, I figured it out with no cheats.

[purist]

I only found E2M9 legitimately and almost accidently. E1M9 I found with a walk-through the others I just IDCLEV'd to and have never bothered to find the correct route since.

[Enjay]

kristus said:

I know I didn't manage the E3 secret exit without reading about it though. Didn't think about trying to RJ.

I never thought about RJ either. In fact, I still hadn't until years later when I read that's how people do it. I also never got to know the map well enough or became adept enough to use the invulnerability for it either. By the time I was in a position to make a successful jump, the powerup had usually run out because I had taken a wrong turn somewhere or had already made an inaccurate jump attempt.

It's possible to strafe run into the secret switch area. That's how I used to do it.

Of course, there did used to be a bug in Doom (or maybe just in the map) where it was possible to activate the switch from outside the blue box.

[kristus]

I tried straferunning. Never managed to do it. You don't need the invuln to RJ though.

[Abyssalstudios1]

For Doom 1 I did cheat. But Doom 2? I found MAP31 kinda the way you did. Since I had played a load of Wolfenstein, MAP32 was easy to find.

[myk]

You can still hit the E3M6 switch from the side, that's the fastest way to end the level. They did make it harder to activate at one point, but it's still possible. The sr40 route isn't hard (see below).

As for whether I discovered all the secrets in a legit way, I doubt it. I know I discovered a bunch, but most likely I got others from early demos, sitting by as someone else played, or the FAQ. It's been a long time since my initial play-through sessions, so I don't remember which secrets I may have looked up elsewhere or learned about from watching others play.

I recall that the first time I saw how to kill the boss in DOOM II was while my brother was playing, as he got to the end before I did, but that's not a secret.

e3m6sr40.zip

[David_Dweedle]

took me forever to figure out how to kill the Icon of Sin. I thought you just had to keep killing monsters rofl. then I idclipped and killed Romeros head.. heh.

[printz]

kristus said:

You don't need the invuln to RJ though.

You get 128 damage, so ouch. But I suppose you can accelerate and get away with low damage anyway.

[Enjay]

kristus said:

You don't need the invuln to RJ though.

Indeed. The first description that I read of the RJ method was to get as much health and armour as possible then do the RJ and simply take the damage. It wasn't until later that I read about the invul method.

[eargosedown]

Gez said:

Yes except for E4 (and Final Doom). Surprise surprise, the reason some levels had secrets I just couldn't find was that cheating was required to find them...

Yeah, that's kinda lame what they did for E4

[Butts]

I did not legitimately find all the secrets in doom 1 or 2, but I did in the playstation version of final doom.

[printz]

Gez said:

Yes except for E4 (and Final Doom). Surprise surprise, the reason some levels had secrets I just couldn't find was that cheating was required to find them...

What are you talking about in E4? I didn't need to cheat at all to find E4M9. In fact, I didn't even know the cheat codes.

[Gez]

printz said:

What are you talking about in E4? I didn't need to cheat at all to find E4M9. In fact, I didn't even know the cheat codes.

I generalized the topic to all secrets, not just secret exits.

[Kyka]

There are only two secrets I can remember that I didn't find legitimately. The first was from E1M2. On the way down the winding passageway that leads to the chainsaw room, there is a little closet that has a few health vials in it. I remember IDSPISPOPD and sailing around that level for ages til I stumbled across it.

The other secret that I didn't find legitimately was from Doom2 level 6. The pillar right near the start that you lower by hitting the side with the little panels on it. A Megasphere is at the top. I spent forever trying to find that final secret.

Otherwise I think I found *all* the other secrets (the vast majority anyway) by slow careful searching, and long bouts of wall humping while holding down the chainsaw to trigger any shoot switches.

Good times.

[Graf Zahl]

I never found the E1M9 exit by myself because back then I didn't have my movements refined enough to go to the yellow key room fast enough to see the two lowered lifts. I got the info how to get there from a friend.

E2M9 was the first one I did find maybe on the third or fourth playthrough.

With E3M9 I knew where the switch was but the concept of rocket jumping was something I never thought about

Doom 2's secret exits were easy. I found the one in MAP15 upon first playthrough and the one in MAP31 is a non-issue if you know the original Wolfenstein level.

[Reisal]

For most of episode 1 and 2, yes..I've never been able to find out how to get the secret that is in that computer room near the sergeant pillar that lowers..