ATAW3D Level 69

This is, without a doubt, amount the strangest, if not THE strangest level ever made of Wolf3D. But despite it's difficulty, I loved it, although I think it should've maybe been a secret level. What's your take on this most unusual map?

It's alright, because it's good with all that randomness but it's really tough.

Read this: https://wolf3d.darkbb.com/miscellaneous-wolf3d-topics-f11/can-anybody-beat-all-this-and-wolf3d-t1105.htm
Also, Balames87 did videos of All This And Wolf3D for me:
Level 68: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB64ni2cLEs&feature=related
69 left tunnel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e20ObCpf6aU
69 right tunnel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb3tmk9Hn8g
70: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4bi801ZTEU
The coder for level 69 was Chris Chokan. I had heard that he’s been having some personal problems and hasn’t been on the forums in 6 months.

Oh, the overkill on this thing!

Chris will come back. If not, his epic shadow will forever be cast on the world of Wolf.

I gotta get myself to play that level. I think I had a savefile from level 68, and I never found a way to finish that level.

Imagine having to do the beta testing on the thing as I was at the time!

I just had to give up on it after a lot of trying, I just couldn't finish it on the hardest difficulty no matter how hard I tried. To this day I've still only completed it on the easiest.

I do love the idea of the level but I only suggested that it should have been the one and only secret level because it differed so greatly from all the other levels in the rest of the mod.

Dean wrote:Imagine having to do the beta testing on the thing as I was at the time!

I just had to give up on it after a lot of trying, I just couldn't finish it on the hardest difficulty no matter how hard I tried. To this day I've still only completed it on the easiest.

I do love the idea of the level but I only suggested that it should have been the one and only secret level because it differed so greatly from all the other levels in the rest of the mod.

Yes, this took me MANY tries the first time too, and I wasn't under testing pressure or anything of that sort.

I'd seen the idea of it being a secret level somewhere in some other thread, that's actually how I can up with the "secret level" thing. When I thought about it myself, that idea quickly sounded very logical to me, and I agreed with it. (My own vote in this poll was the "very good, but should be secret" option.)

About this secret level discussion though, one argument that can also be made is that if Level 69 should have been moved to secret for that reason (difference from other maps in the set), then (albeit to a bit lesser extent) Level 68 should also be secret - it's not nearly as tough, but it is very different. Level 70 (and attendant 0) seemed like an anticlimax in comparison, I would have thought the oddness of Level 68 and utter "one-of-a-kind" weirdness of Level 69 would have led up to something far different and more unique/bizzare from the actual Level 70, which is a fairly standard boss level affair. So in a nutshell, my thought would have been that this mod would be structured perfectly if Levels 68 and 69 were moved to secret maps, and secret exits were placed in some random map in the set (or, a secret exit from Level 67 to 68 and super secret exit from Level 68 to 69 with normal exit on Level 68 leading to 70, and Level 67's normal exit led straight to Level 70).

Certainly Level 69 is the one I most think should be secret though - if you only considered difficulty, then there's no reason to want to make Level 68 secret. And none of this was a mod ruiner for me by any means - this add-on is still right at the top of my "best of best" list, and for more reasons than simply having 70 levels.

BTW I reloaded 69 from the F1 checkpoint today; can't even remember what difficulty it was on, but I blazed through and (this is no tease) hit all six faces with nearly five minutes (290+ seconds!) to spare. The funny scene on this hitting of the final face is much longer and funnier with more noise than if you hit it with less time to spare. I only wish I had a demo to prove it; unfortunately I don't, because I don't know how to record/upload them.

Finally in case this didn't circulate in some other thread, Balames87 did YouTube videos (with comments) of the last three levels of this mod, on his channel. Watching his Level 69 video (actually two vidoes), the amount of guards I saw was the same as what I dealt with today; this makes me think there's at least a possibility my difficulty was not easy, because this guy almost always goes on a higher setting. He also managed to get by without collecting one of the keys by having a mutant (or some other guard) die in one of the critical locked doors; in my run today I did collect all four keys. So I wonder if with luck I could have even more time to spare (although, the key he missed doesn't take much extra effort to obtain).

Anyways that was a lot of talking about (mainly) just one level. But it truly is a one-of-a-kind map, nothing to its level of bizzareness was seen before it from what I know, and who knows if something like this will ever be seen again, at least until Chris Chokan returns to the scene. The fact that much of the level is composed of (slighly modified) original Wolf3D designs is just icing on the cake. Balames87's video said that you couldn't find enough words to fully expplain it, and I concur fully.