To celebrate the month of love, SuperPod Game Club played Chex Quest - basically old-school Doom, but with spoons, Flemoids, and tons of Chex cereal. Originally released in 1997, this game was included in boxes of Chex cereal and is a non-violent, kid-friendly version of Doom.

Travel to the remote planet of Bazoik to free galactic citizens from the evil cereal-eating Flemoids! Venture deep into the caverns of Bazoik, using an array of "zorching" devices to send these nefarious foes back to their home dimension!

How many bowls of Chex can Aaron eat in one sitting? Did Tony beat this month's game? Are there any newcomers to the club this month? Answers to these questions and more in this month's edition of SuperPod Game Club.

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I came into Chex Quest with two questions: What is a Chex and why does it have a quest. I didn’t really get an answer to either question playing the game. I found out through a very quick google search that Chex is a cereal from the US, and I honestly have no idea why it has a quest and why it’s exterminating alien life.

I played the first level of Chex Quest HD, was really unimpressed by how slow and sluggish it felt so I thought that would be it, but at the insistence of the others I downloaded the DOS version, loaded it up and was…. Mildly less unimpressed, it's a Doom clone and is thankfully faster paced than the HD version, that’s about all I can say about it, I didn’t think the level design was particularly clever or the encounters that interesting, in fact the greatest enjoyment I got out of this was the fact that I played it on my SteamDeck and because of that + my complete unfamiliarity with how DOSBOX works, I was unable to switch weapons at will. On PC you need to use numpad buttons 1-7 to switch, but the SteamDeck has nothing like that. I could not figure out how to fix that conundrum so I ended up playing with whatever weapon I picked up last until its ammo ran out, and I got switched to a different one automatically. Leading to a 10 minute segment where all I had was an electric spoon drill and it was honestly the most enjoyable part of the game for me. 

It's a perfectly average 5 out of 10 experience, 4 of those points being heavily carried on it being a Doom clone. I have no cultural experience of Cereal based games, or anything other than Cereal coming out of a Cereal box so the charm was probably lost on me. I could not recommend it to anyone unless they are a hardcore fan of Chex, or they just really want to waste an hour or two of their life.

Chex Quest was a mystery to me. Who is Chex? What’s his Quest? Can there really be a Quest for Chex?????????????????????

Well, I played the HD version on Steam for free for the purposes of this review and it was aggressively mid. You can tell this was a spur of the moment lockdown project that was put out there cause we all needed something to hold off the existential dread (I’m still waiting Cleetus!). There is nothing wrong with this version of the game and since it’s free all you’ll lose is like 2 hrs of time max playing this. I didn’t quite understand what the deal was still so I pursued the Cougar Copy and learning it was just a Doom Clone put it all into perspective for me. I played a level or two of the OG and it’s so much better, it’s not even funny. If you’re reading this, go put DOSBox on your fuckin’ Retroarch on whatever you have (Pure Core specifically) and go play the original. It’s still nothing that special, but it feels like Citizen Kane on your nutsuck compared to what the HD version had to offer. 

Also Chex Mix is a bad snack, who snuck that through customs?!?!

The original Chex Quest was a freebie pack in game designed to get kids to buy Chex cereal and resulted in two sequels, as well as gaining quite a cult following it turns out. So much so that Chex Quest HD was released back in 2020 as a way to cash in on the nostalgia and I guess get the now full grown adults to buy Chex cereal, only I don’t think it hit quite the same since it was a free (on Steam at least) digital release instead and gives very little reason to run out and buy a box of Chex. 

The game itself is a generic boomer shooter by today’s standards, there are several characters you can choose from and they each have their own unique voice actor, which was more effort than I thought would be put into the game. I can’t say that I found the gameplay particularly enjoyable, the level design is pretty basic and the enemy AI is either nonexistent or stupidly aggressive. There are the usual weapons you can pick up, like the standard gun, shot gun, machine gun, rocket launcher and so on, only this is a kids game so they’re non-violent laser weapons instead. There are maybe 5 levels and in each one you find the colored keys that unlock the colored doors, kill the slimies or whatever they were called and get to the end. The final level switches things up by having you fight the big slimy bossman at the end of the level and free the other Chex heroes that were captured. I think some bonus content might unlock if you beat the game with all of the characters, but I had no desire to find out. 

There were some rumblings on the SuperPod discord about playing the original Chex Quest instead, so I went ahead and played that as well because why not. It’s not entirely different from Chex Quest HD, but it’s certainly more enjoyable to play and feels less generic despite essentially being a simple Doom WAD. So this would probably be the way to go if you want the definitive Chex Quest experience, it's easy to get a hold of and can run on DOS Box with no issues.

When I was a kid the cereal business was different. Sometimes you got prizes and they were all cheap trinkets like spoons or some such toys themed after the cereal, or something special the cereal was doing, or some kind of movie tie-in.

The enshittificiation of cereal grain is a different blog, because the best of these prizes (at least in the 90s) is easily when a Chex Quest CD ROM showed up one day. A whole ass video game where a member of this complete balanced breakfast has to “zorch”  Phlemoids. Zorch ‘em to hell with an arsenal of weapons that look suspiciously like the ones from Doom. Because they were! It used to be you could buy the source code from Id and make your own stinking video game. Lots of people did it. This one persisted to us because it was free. And spread around like hell. It even has an HD version released during lockdown!

FUCK the HD Version released during lockdown. It is worse than nothing. There's no weight to what you’re doing and no satisfaction in killing zorching those fuckers. Luckily, the original is freeware. Just load the original ROM into DosBox however you might do that and do it that way until we bully NightDive into making a proper modern port.

Chex Quest is one of my most cherished childhood games. I was 8 years old when I first noticed the “FREE CD-ROM GAME INSIDE” graphic on a cereal box when I was following my mom through our local grocery store. She saw my eyes light up. I miss those days when they included some kind of free toy or gimmick in cereal boxes. A free computer game was definitely over the top, but kudos to the Chex marketing team. My mom was a fan of freeware games too, so we bought the cereal and installed Chex Quest as soon as we got home.

I was completely enamored. I hadn’t really played a proper FPS game other than Faceball 2000 for the SNES (if that counts). I had no idea what Doom was or that Chex Quest was actually just a total conversion mod of Doom. Today, I’m convinced that Chex Quest only works because it’s “Doom for kids.” My parents were cautious about which games I was allowed to play when I was young, so most shooters were out of the question. However, Chex Quest was intentionally non-violent. Instead of killing or destroying the alien Flemoid invaders, your Zorch weapons merely teleport the Flemoids back to their own dimension.

The game itself is a solid 5-level Doom mod campaign. It’s very short, compared to Doom’s 27 levels, but that didn’t stop me from playing this game over and over again with my childhood buddy, Peter. Chex Quest also thrived because schools latched on. It’s a free and non-violent game, and Chex was stirring up a bit of marketing hype. “Yeah, that’s right, we put a VIDEO GAME in a cereal box. We’re pretty cool, aren’t we, kids? Now be a good boy and girl and eat lots of Chex cereal.” Chex Quest became a staple in school computer labs. After school, my buddy and I would race to the computer lab to see who could finish a speedrun of all 5 levels of Chex Quest first (our moms both worked at the school, so we had time to kill at the end of the school day). We knew all of the shortcuts and secret areas. We must’ve completed this game at least a few dozen times each.

The common failings of early FPS games are present here – it’s easy to get lost, there’s a lot of repeated sprites and textures, and the aged graphics will be hard for some gamers to stomach if they don’t have nostalgia for that era of gaming. But, Carmack’s Doom engine is pristine. I don’t need much convincing to play a total conversion Doom mod. Chex Quest in particular has the quirky draw of being a game about a collective of cereal people defending themselves from cereal eating slime creatures.

The animated intro included on the CD-ROM version (sorry, it’s not included in the DOS freeware version found online) is laughably primitive, but when you’re 8 years old with limited exposure to video games, it’s the coolest thing you’ve ever seen. I watched it over and over again. The game creates a surprisingly effective atmosphere. The soundtrack is a vibe (make sure you select SoundBlaster in setup.exe), and the sound effects cover a wide range. Typically the Flemoids are cute and strange, making hilarious noises, but there were a few noises that scared me a bit as a kid. The final level has an intensity to it that you won’t find in educational games from that time.

I discovered in college that Digital Cafe also made Chex Quest 2: Flemoids Take Chextropolis. It’s more Chex Quest, and there are some interesting new elements and levels, but you can tell that development was rushed. Some members of Digital Cafe also released Chex Quest 3 as a service to die hard fans, but nothing quite matches the hype of the original.

Unfortunately, I was extremely disappointed in the HD remake of Chex Quest. Maybe they’ve made improvements since I first gave the remake a spin, but I encountered far too many issues. The armor HUD takes up an absurd amount of the screen, the new cartoony art style just doesn’t match the charm of the original sprite graphics, many of the animations are clunky and awkward, and the audio mixing is all over the place (some sounds are too loud, some are too quiet). The dark sections of the game are way too dark, especially since there’s no flashlight, and many of the enemies and doors are bugged. It’s clear that Carmack’s Doom engine does the real heavy lifting for the original Chex Quest, and the HD remake lacks this polish.

Do yourself a favor. Boot up DOS Box and a free copy of Chex Quest and experience this unique slice of gaming history. Last night, I took my time and finished all five levels in about 40 minutes. After all these years, the nostalgia still runs deep, and the joy is still there.

I was not about to dick around with DOSBOX or anything like that, so I played Chex Quest HD, and what a damn mess that was. Everything about HD feels lifeless, like they just took the original game and made it modern resolution and didn't try to modernize it all - basically like that worthless Secret of Mana remake from 2016 or whatever. Chex Quest HD was just as bland as the cereal is, and I really wish I had played the original instead.

To get you caught-up on what Chex Quest HD is like, you basically just wander hallway after hallway after warehouse after hallway looking for different keys and blast enemies with your "zorcher". Sometimes you'll find a cool weapon, like the shotgun zorcher, but after pumping about 15 shells into an enemy, I started running past them and would focus entirely on finding the keys and getting the heck outta this game.

ON A MORE POSITIVE NOTE: the game is super short! If you want a quick, easy beat, play Chex Quest HD. That's about all it's good for.

I tried to play the free Chex Quest HD on Steam, but it was buggy and the controls became unresponsive after a few minutes.

I tried to play the DOS version through a browser, but the arrow keys didn't work.

I'm done trying to play Chex Quest.

Thank you for reading!

Come back next month and see what we have to say about March's game, Goof Troop!

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