DescentBB

I feel like I've found all the secret doors and everything in D1, but I'm curious about what you all think is the hardest secret to find in the game. Maybe there's some out there I still haven't found.

I still can't find a way into the cage that is filled with Mega bombs in the very last level. Any ideas? Thanks. Al

At the start of level go through the door on the left. Keep going straight and you can go through another door right in front of you and end up in a room with three lasers. There's a secret door in the ceiling that leads you to the megas. You have to go through a couple class 1 drillers, a super hulk, and a couple platform robots to get there.

The doors are a lot easier to see nowadays. Telling them apart from the ordinary walls in their original 256 color 320x240 glory was a little more difficult.

I believe that secret level 2 was one of the more difficult for me to find at the time (I believe I found secret levels 1 and 3 on my first play through).

There's also that cool purple secret room in level 2 that I know I didn't find until one of my successive play throughs.

Jeff250 wrote:The doors are a lot easier to see nowadays. Telling them apart from the ordinary walls in their original 256 color 320x240 glory was a little more difficult.

I play only that way (well, until like 3 days ago where i switched to 1280x1024) and I have no problems with spotting them.

And yeah, I think the mega missile cage is the trickiest secret to get in D1. The hostage rooms in level S2 also used to be challenging to me, simply because I couldn't make it in time until the doors close. Once you get it, you'll never fail at it again, though.

Interesting topic, seeing as how there wasn't a lot of variety in how to set up secrets in D1. The way I see it, D2 secrets have two axes of difficulty, which is how hard they are to find and how hard they are to unlock, but D1 secrets are generally easier since only the first axis applies.

My vote also goes to the cage with the five Mega Missiles in Level 27. Even though the door doesn't actually blend in with the ceiling textures surrounding it at all, the hallway it's in is pitch-black as well as halfway across the level from the missiles themselves. Pales in comparison to the Shaker Missile secrets scattered throughout Counterstrike Level 24, but it could still be easily missed.

The exit to Secret Level 2 is also pretty out of the way, and compared to most of Level 21's tunnels, that one has somewhat higher ceilings so it's a bit harder to stumble upon the door by accident. You have to be looking for it a bit more actively than the other two, and the texture choice even has a better hidden door, so that doesn't help.

Level 12 also has a few tricky ones, as I recall. The grated Smart Missile and the missile hoards inside the tower actually took me quite a while to find...

Speaking of level 12, it took me awhile to find that 3rd invulnerability. The cloak in the red key room in level 15 was another one that I found by accident. And finally, the laser you find in level 1 (one that should be easy but took me awhile to accidentally run into)

Jeff250 wrote:Telling them apart from the ordinary walls in their original 256 color 320x240 glory was a little more difficult.

*320x200
But very true. Those seams in the walls were a lot harder to see.

Jeff250 wrote:There's also that cool purple secret room in level 2 that I know I didn't find until one of my successive play throughs.

I forget about this room 90% of the time just because I didn't find it until my 4th or 5th time through the game, so it is not in my pattern memory. It's such a great room too, so many goodies.

I remember that I found the big secret room in Level 2 only after a few years of playing the game, too.

Mine was getting into the four rooms in Secret Level 2. For whatever reason, it took me forever to realize those doors were only locked on one side.

D1 actually could have been tougher than it was on getting into secrets - there was the ability to do move-triggered doors and put the trigger a long way from the door, requiring you to do some fast flying. I don't know whether the one-shot flag actually worked though - if it did you could potentially be pretty nasty but honestly I don't think we needed that.

The secrets in the original game were pretty forgiving though, regardless. Definitely nothing like D2 level 2's Helix secret (though for a veteran pilot that isn't really difficult either, unless you haven't learned the door positions off by heart already).

The D2 level 2 helix puzzle I actually got right off the bat thanks to some dumb luck and natural curiosity about how guided missiles work.

The helix I understood pretty quickly after getting the Full Map powerup in that level.

I got the strategy guide for D1 almost right after I got D1 -- so by the time, twelve years (at least!) later that I managed to complete D1, I already knew where all the secrets were...
Except... there was one little secret on level 21, which was on the map in the strategy guide and yet I never it noticed until a year ago. So ignorance will qualify as hard. For everything else, I sort of cheated with the map book . On D2 I'm trying right now to go through all of Counterstrike and Vertigo and find everything, but it's tough in the levels that don't have full maps. And I refuse to cheat since I already sort of cheated on D1.

I always remember there being some secrets that were difficult to near impossible in Lvl 12, going towards the yellow key area I think. I may be missing some from later levels but as I played the hell out of Destination Saturn as a kid I remember 1-14 much better than the higher ones. I always remember in 12 some missiles hidden behind two sides of grates and I'm pretty sure I only ever made it to one side...

There's a Helix secret? XD lol

Alter-Fox wrote: ↑Thu Mar 14, 2013 8:05 am I got the strategy guide for D1 almost right after I got D1 -- so by the time, twelve years (at least!) later that I managed to complete D1, I already knew where all the secrets were...
Except... there was one little secret on level 21, which was on the map in the strategy guide and yet I never it noticed until a year ago. So ignorance will qualify as hard. For everything else, I sort of cheated with the map book . On D2 I'm trying right now to go through all of Counterstrike and Vertigo and find everything, but it's tough in the levels that don't have full maps. And I refuse to cheat since I already sort of cheated on D1.

Damn, I'd eat a hobo's bum hole to read that strategy guide at least once

Alter-Fox wrote: ↑Thu Mar 14, 2013 8:05 am I got the strategy guide for D1 almost right after I got D1

There is a strategy guide!? Where can I get a copy?

You might be able to find used copies on Amazon.
I was able to find D2's for dirt cheap last year, just for the sake of collecting.

I used to have both the D1/2/3 strategy guides but lost them in my separation, among other things.