D by Warp Inc.
Author: DJ Tigresa and MC Pantera
Email: djtigresa@classicgaming.com, mcpantera@classicgaming.com
This is our very first PC FAQ. As well as our second computer related FAQ in
general with Chuck Rock for Amiga which we did in 1991.
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Introduction
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Richter Harris, the director of a major Los Angeles hospital, has gone
completely mental, shooting everyone in sight and locking himself inside the
building. Harris’s daughter, Laura, is summoned to talk some sense into her
pop, but as she enters the hospital, it suddenly transforms into an ancient
castle. (You gotta hate it when that happens.) Can Laura solve the castle’s
myriad puzzles, confront her father, and find out why this spooky adventure
game was given a title that looks like a typo?
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Basic Tips
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To examine something in D—a desk, a bookshelf, whatever—turn and face it, then
keep pressing Up on the control pad to move as close to it as possible. When
pressing Up doesn’t get you any closer, press the A button to look carefully
at the object. Most of the hidden items in D are found this way.
You can’t die in D, but you’re on a time limit of sorts; if the clock runs out
before you finish the game, it’s back to the beginning. (You also get to see
one of the game’s three endings.)
Don’t take too long to move arctind or make decisions. D has a built-in hint
function: the mirror in Laura’s inventory. When you use it, the mirror shows
you an image of the next location to visit or the next puzzle to solve. Don’t
abuse the privilege, though; after three uses, the mirror shatters into
teeny-tiny pieces.
The most unusual aspect of D is—and I swear I’m not making this up—the four
glowing bugs hidden away in various locations. When you stumble upon a bug,
you get to watch a kooky flash back sequence from Laura’s childhood. Each bug
reveals a more explicit flashback than the last, with the fourth bug triggering
the most graphic scene in the game. The catch is that the bugs don’t appear in
the same locations from game to game, and sometimes don’t appear at all.
According to Panasonic, the locations of the bugs are affected by how you
explore the castle and solve puzzles. Here’s where we’ve found each of the four
bugs (these locations are also mentioned in the walkthrough):
The first bug is either next to the front door or in the chest of drawers.
The second bug is either between the marble busts or on the bookshelf.
The third bug is either in the garden fountain or underneath the first door in
the room with the crank.
The fourth bug is always at the end of the dark hallway at the top of the
castle.
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Walkthrough
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You start in the dining hail. Turn around and examine the front door; you
sometimes find the first of the four glowing bugs. (If you don’t find it here,
you’ll find it at the chest of draw ers.) Walk forward to the fireplace, making
sure to look at the bowl of “water” on the din ing table. (Press Up on the
control pad to examine the bowl and press the A button to see the water turn
briefly into blood. Lovely.) As you approach the doorway on the left, a phantom
version of Richter (who seems a perfect candidate for the Hair Club for Men)
appears to warn off Laura. We think not, O Balding Dude. Go through the left
doorway and walk up the stairs. Turn and open the door to the left (press Up on
the control pad to open it) for a gross-out, then turn right and open the door
into the bedroom.
Walk up to the chest of drawers If you didn't find the first glowing bug at the
front door, Laura automatically opens the top drawer and finds it here. Examine
the drawers and press A to activate a highlight circle. Press A again to open
the top drawer (I) and retrieve the sheet of paper. Move away from the drawers
and walk to the fireplace to find a key. (Press the A button when you’re
looking into the fireplace to take the key.) Return to the dining hall.
Use the sheet of paper in the bowl to reveal a hidden message: “O.J. is guilty!
It’s so freaking obvious!” Uh, actually, the message is IV -> II. Now where
else in the game so far have you seen Roman numerals? Unless your short-term
memory resembles that of a garden slug, you know exactly where: the chest of
drawers in the upstairs bedroom. Open the IV drawer, then the II drawer; inside
II is a valve-turning device. Walk down the stairs, turn left, and enter the
room with the keg. Try to walk to the pas sageway in the brick wall and you
come disturbingly close to setting the world record for body piercing. Examine
the keg and use ‘the valve-turner on it. This causes the spikes in the wall to
retract, which is a good thing. Walk to the passageway again and down the
stairs to a locked door marked with the number 78. Do you get the feeling these
digits will come in handy?
Return to the dining hall (examine the mirror near the stairs for a mini-scare)
and use the key on the locked door to the right of the fireplace. Inside the
room is a not-so-pleasant sight: a corpse with its arm stuck in the wall. Go
ahead and examine the body, although there’s nothing to find. Go into the room
to the left (with the bed) and examine the wooden box. Press the A button to
grasp the lever, then press A again to start the first of the two numbers
spinning. The object is to stop the numbers on 78, but it’s not quite that
easy. While the first number stays the same, the sec ond number adds the first
number to whatever it stops at. For example, if you stop the first num ber at
5, and the second number at 2, it rolls up to 7 (5+2). If you stop the first
number at 8, and the second number at 5, it rolls up (and over) to 3.
Set the first number to 7, and the second num ber to 1 (which rolls to 8), to
open the box. Inside is the hand of the corpse in the other room, with a shiny
ring on its desiccated (ooh, big writer has to use big words) finger. With the
ring in your possession, go back to the 78 door and use the ring to unlock it.
Walk through the door and witness a thrilling scene that would make Indy Jones
proud.
After outrunning the boulder, examine the picture of the smiling girl on the
far wall. Press the Abut- ton and it morphs into a circular pattern of animal
pictures. Memorize the pattern and examine the cabinet on the left side of the
room, near the bed. Spin the wheel of animal pictures until it matches the
pattern on the picture. (If you forgot the pattern, no sweat. Spin the wheel
three times so that the deer is on the bottom.) Open the door next to the
cabinet, which is unlocked after your wheel fidgeting. Enter the room and
examine the busts; you might find the second glowing bug here. If it’s not by
the busts, examine the bookshelf to find it. Leave the bust room through the
next door into a small antechamber filled with bodies. Search the corpses to
find a golden key.
Return to the room with the picture of the girl and use the key to unlock the
desk drawer on the right side of the room. Inside is a book. Return to the bust
room and examine the bookshelf after another visit from Richter’s increasingly
annoying (“Laura! Laura!”) floating head. Use the book in the empty space to
reveal a hidden stairwayinto a room with a large crank at one end.
You have to turn the crank to reveal new doors in the wall behind you. Here’s
how many times to turn the crank for each door. You start at Door 1 (Bars).
It’s three turns to Door 2 (Chest), two more turns to Door 3 (Garden), one more
turn to Door 4 (Glass), four more turns to Door 5 (Armor), and two more turns
back to Door 1 When you first enter the room, turn the crank once and walked to
the door, then walk back to the crank to get a visit from Richter (Man this,
guy is talkative for a homicidal maniac.
Door 1 shows the stairs that led into this r off by iron bars Door 2 leads down
a flight of stairs into a room with a chest prot y a bed of spikes. Door 3
leads up a flight of stairs into a garden Door 4 leads into a room with a
stained-glass window (Press the action button to pound on it.) Door 5 leads
into a room with suits of armor lined up against the wails, and a pit at the
far end. Go through each door and explore everything; in particular, walk
around the garden and examine the statues and the fountain. (Don’t mess around
with the statue buttons, though.) The third glowing bug is sometimes on the
edge of the fountain. If you don’t explore behind each door in order, you might
not find the third bug at all. (We only had this happen once, but it did
happen.)
When you enter Door 5 and walk to the pit at the end of the room, you’re
attacked by one of the suits of armor. When a large left-facing arrow appears
on the screen, press Left on the control pad, then press Right when the
right-facing arrow appears. Laura nearly falls into the pit, but manages to
climb back out, whereupon the armor prepares to take more whacks at her head.
Press Left on the pad when prompted, then quickly press the action button when
prompted to shove the armor into the pit and smash it into scrap metal. You
automatically take the sword. If you screw up any of these moves, you fall into
the pit, but tough-as-nails Laura just shakes it off. Climb up the ladder and
try the sequence again (and again) until you get it right.
If you didn’t find the third glowing bug at the fountain, use the crank to go
to Door 1. Open the door and examine it to find the bug.
Return to the garden (Door 3) and walk to the door in the wall. Use the sword
to unlock the door. Walk through the door and up the stairs to find a telescope
and a lever. By switching the lever, you can look at different constellations
through the telescope. Of course, you’re most interested in the two statues in
the garden: Sagittarius (the dude with the arrow) and Aquarius (the babe
pouring the jug). Set the lever to the third symbol (Aquarius) and look inside
the telescope to see the color of the stars. Set it to the fourth symbol
(Sagittarius) and look inside again. (In case you can’t tell, Aquarius is light
blue, and Sagittarius is green.)
Return to the garden and examine the statues. Press the green button on
Sagittarius and the light blue button on Aquarius. When both buttons have been
pushed, the fountain floods the spiked pit behind Door 2 with water, causing
the chest to float to the surface. Clever!
Return to Door 2 and open the floating chest to find a mighty old pistol.
Return to Door 4 (after another encounter with Richter) and use the pistol to
shoot through the glass. You auto matically climb to the top of the castle and
enter a long hallway. The doors behind you are locked, which leaves you no
alternative but to walk straight ahead.
You encounter Richter’s ghostly noggin for the last time in the game (yeah!)
and come to a stop in the middle of the hallway. Continue forward and examine
the dead end. You find the fourth glowing bug and have one final blood-drenched
flashback. Walk back to the middle of the hallway, turn right, and walk “into”
the wall to reveal a hidden room. You’re trapped in the room after you enter,
so make sure you get the fourth bug before going in.
Inside the room is a goofy device with two wheels, two levers, and a button.
The wheels spin when you press the button, hut the number of notches they spin
in either direction is deter mined by the levers. Each lever has three
settings: up, middle, and down. The object is to get the red dot on the left
wheel to appear through the round hole on the right wheel. Use this handy chart
to line up the wheels. On the chart, CW is clockwise, and CW is
counterclockwise. (For an easy solution, use the Up/Down setting once, then
the Down/Down setting until the wheels line up.)
LEFT SWITCH RIGHT SWITCH LEFT WHEEL RIGHT WHEEL
Up Up None 6 CW
Up Middle 1 CW 5 CW
Up Down 2 CW 4 CW
Middle Up 1 CCW 5 CW
Middle Middle None 4 CW
Middle Down 1 CW 3 CW
Down Up 2CCW 4CW
Down Middle 1 CCW 3 CW
Down Down None 2 CW
The device slides back to reveal one last hid den stairway. Press the action
button to examine the painting at the top of the stairs and watch a very trippy
animation. When the trip is over, you’re in a room with Richter, who’s about to
undergo a nasty transformation. After he’s done talking, you have two choices.
Use the gun to shoot Richter and get the good ending, or walk toward Richter
for the bad ending. The good ending has a longer animation sequence, pictures
of D’s programmers, and a rocking soundtrack as the credits roll.
If you get the good ending, the game shows how many of the four glowing bugs
you found. Even if you find all four bugs, the good end ing stays the same; the
only reward is the extra flashback scenes dur ing the game. No big whoop.