Make your way to the large window through which the control room containing Dr. Carrol is visible. Stand facing this window and use your FarSight or X-Ray Scanner to peer through the floor directly beneath it. You should see what appears to be a flat pane of glass set inside the wall. This particular pane of glass seems to be unbreakable, although your bullets will leave holes in it. Flying through the appropriate section of wall with the moon jump code reveals just what you'd expect: A normal-looking piece of glass suspended in the blackness. If your aim is good enough, you can even float up and stand on top of it, as it is quite solid.

One more addition to the growing list of hidden items concealed within Perfect Dark levels. How many more remain to be discovered?

Unsolved Mystery 32: The Skedar beta level.
Description: Could it be that a new, previously hidden level has been found in Perfect Dark?

Yes and no.

Thanks to a new GameShark code for selecting solo levels, a very interesting discovery has been made. Most variations of the code just access normal solo levels, crash the game, or cause your character to die. There does seem to be one exception, though.

8009DFE9 0032

Select any solo mission with this code active and you'll find yourself not in a regular solo mission, but instead in the Skedar multiplayer level! Not only that, but you start out in a new spot, not a regular multiplayer spawn point. And you begin with a selection of weapons. A Falcon 2, CMP-150, AR-34, and Reaper. You can even play the level in Co-Operative and Counter-Operative modes like normal, although the other player in Counter-Operative mode will appear as an unarmed Joanna Dark. There are no mission objectives and no apparent way to complete the level.

Nevertheless, the fact that the programmers included every setting needed to run Skedar as a solo level (a unique start point, starting weapons, two player support, etc), means that it must have been playtested as one at one point during Perfect Dark's development. None of the other multiplayer levels seem to be playable in solo mode.

Could the Skedar arena have been originally intended to be a solo mission and was downgraded to multiplayer level status later? Perhaps it was used as a test board for perfecting different aspects of solo play while the other levels were still excessively buggy or incomplete.

And so, another mystery. Why is Skedar the only multiplayer level programmed to fuction in solo?

Update: Just in case there was any doubt that the current Skedar multiplayer level was once a solo level, this picture seals the deal:

It's the Skedar level, all right, complete with a hoard of aliens shooting at a human guard. It's clearly a solo mode picture because of the way the guard is shown flinching as a result of being shot and the way the Maian characters are posed. Characters in multiplayer don't behave like this. So the original plan was to have Joanna Dark and a bunch of alien allies fighting human guards? Interesting.

To propose a solution to some of the mysteries presented here or to suggest a new mystery contact me at: greenyamo@hotmail.com