Approximately 25 years after the second Doom game launched, the Doom 2 “last-standing” secret was discovered a couple of days ago. John Romero, Doom co-creator, sent his congrats for the Doom player who made the discovery, Zero Master.
“CONGRATS, Zero Master! Finally, after 24 years! ‘To win the game, you must get 100% on level 15 by John Romero.’ Great trick getting to that secret!” said Romero on Twitter.
The secret area is located at Level 15: Industrial Zone in Doom 2 and, although gamers were aware of its existence, no one could enter that zone without using cheat codes. According to John Romero, solving this puzzle is virtually impossible under normal circumstances. However, when getting to that hidden region of the Level 15’s map, you’ll score 100% on secrets which would allow gamers to win the game instantly.
But, Zero Master, a nostalgic Doom player managed to solve out that mysterious puzzle, mostly by chance.
The “last-standing” secret of Doom 2 discovered 25 years after the game’s launch
“Secret explained – A secret teleporter is marked as a discoverable “secret,” but when you touch it, you never enter the sector. So you would never get inside the teleporter sector to trigger the secret. The only way to trigger this secret is to be pushed by an enemy into it!” explained John Romero on Twitter.
Accordingly, Zero Master is the only Doom 2 player in the whole world to score a perfect 100% on Level 15 without using cheats, as the video game has initially been coded.
What’s interesting is that following ports of Doom 2 considered this a bug and fixed it, establishing a link between the teleporter and the secret area. However, the original MS-DOS Doom 2 version, the one Zero Master was playing, was coded as such. Also noteworthy, Zero Master was also the first Doom player in the world to beat Doom 2’s sequel The Plutonia Experiment’s Nightmare difficulty level, back in 2015.
Below, you can see the Zero Master’s video on YouTube where he shows how he managed to beat Doom 2’s Level 15 with 100% secrets found, without cheating.
