MAP16: Suburbs (Doom II)

MAP16: Suburbs is the sixteenth map of Doom II. It was designed by Sandy Petersen and uses the music track "The Demon's Dead".

In the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn versions of Doom II, this level grants the player access to the hidden level MAP58: The Mansion.

Essentials
From the start, walk straight ahead and go through the door just around the corner. The outdoor area you'll arrive in (A) consists of two small buildings inside a tall, circular, black barrier wall, as well as several buildings outside the wall. There are two exits in the black wall (B); go through either and make your way to the nukage pond in the southwest corner of the map. In the pool is a wooden structure with some stairs leading up to the blue skull key (C). Upon picking the key up, a large number of monsters will teleport in, so be prepared.

At the north end of the map is a grey brick building; walk up the stairs in the corner and go through the lion-faced door around the corner at the top. Inside is a glowing blue/red wall as well as a blue key door. Open the blue door and pick up the red skull key inside (D). Next to the red key is a satyr face switch. Flip it; it lowers the glowing blue/red wall in the previous room, revealing a hidden teleporter. Run to it quickly, as it only lowers for a short time period. You'll be taken to an otherwise unreachable platform with some likely useful plasma guns (E).

Once you're ready to exit the level, make your way to the structure made of several black and gray "cubes" in the northeast (F). The two platforms with the more rectangular-shaped patterns on them lower like lifts, allowing you to access the highest ledge. Once you reach the top, turn around and lower the second lift platform again (while still on the top ledge). This causes the wall of the ledge you're on to lower as well, revealing the exit teleporter blocked by a red skull column (G); open it using your key and exit.

Other points of interest
The southwest corner of the complete map contains a rectangular inaccessible area connected to the nukage pool by a small tunnel. This room contains the swarm of imps, cacodemons, and mancubi which teleport in when obtaining the blue key.

Official

 * 1) Enter the southern building in the central area in the level (H). Inside is a blue-carpeted room with a small pedestal-like structure in its center. Use this pedestal as you would a lift, and ride up. There is a small fiery hole in the eastern wall of this room. Shoot inside this hole to cause one of the bookshelves to rise, revealing a megasphere (I). (sector 41) You will need to fall into the pit for the secret to count, as it is possible to retrieve the megasphere without triggering the secret.
 * 2) Use the torch in the southwestern corner of the room to raise the wall in front of the pair of eyes. It leaves a small, low wall which you can use as a lift to get level with the eyes, allowing you to shoot the eyes. Once you hear the sound of a door opening, turn right to enter a newly opened alcove (K). (sector 33) Alternatively, you can ride the same pedestal as for secret #1 and use the super shotgun, thanks to its wide spread it may impact the eyes after a few tries.
 * 3) Enter the red brick building in the east of the map through the door on its eastern wall (L). The corpse-wall behind the door is an illusion that can be walked straight through. (sector 13)
 * 4) Inside secret #3, lower the right grey stone wall (M) and ride it up. Once at the top, run onto the adjacent raised platform, into a pool of blood. Flip the switch to reveal a BFG9000 (N). (sector 7)

Non-official

 * 1) To get to the raised platform with the plasma guns on it, go inside the northernmost building. Behind the blue door is a red skull key sitting in a window. Stand in the window sill and press the satyr-faced switch to lower the big blue/red fire wall in the previous room, which reveals a teleporter. Step through to get the plasma guns.

Bugs
The high number of monsters in this level, combined with the high occurrence of monster infighting that results, frequently causes the Sony PlayStation port of the game to crash on high skill settings during the level. Also, in the Doom II port found in the Xbox version of Doom 3/Resurrection of Evil, if too many monsters are on the map and a game is saved and later restarted, it runs the risk of freezing upon loading it, resulting in needing to reboot the Xbox system entirely and starting the game anew.

Records
The Compet-N records for the map are:

The data was last verified in its entirety on October 21, 2012.

Inspiration and development
Sandy Petersen has claimed that the layouts of two of the buildings in Suburbs were directly taken from real life: one was modeled after his own house, and the other was modeled after his father's house.