Cereal brand General Mills has given its official seal of approval to first-person shooter Chex Quest 3, in which space-age weapons resembling spoons, sporks, and handheld vacuum cleaners are used to repel slimy inter-dimensional beings and save "breakfastcerealkind".
It's accompanied by a seven-minute retrospective that catches up with three key people behind 1996's original Chex Quest to discover how they came up with the concept, look, and sound of an FDA-approved, family-friendly way for children to play controversial, violent shooter Doom – or something like it.
Thanks to its accessibility (affixed to the front of six million Chex cereal boxes in 1996) and its surprising origins in the Doom engine, Chex Quest became one of the most famous Doom-derived modifications; the relatively pacifist, biblically-themed Super 3D Noah's Ark achieved similar status regarding Doom predecessor Wolfenstein 3D.
This time, however, Chex Quest 3 isn't burned onto millions of CD-ROMs and affixed to the front of millions of cereal boxes. Instead, and as with 1997 sequel Chex Quest 2, this once-unofficial tribute (made by original art director Jacobi, sound designer and composer Benson, and programmer Scott Holman) is available for download through chexmix.com/chexquest.
First released in 2008, it's built using the "ZDoom" framework, which runs on Mac OS X, Windows PCs, and Linux. Both preceding games are also contained within the download.
Jacobi continues to work on a remaster of Chex Quest called Chex Quest HD with General Mills' approval. – AFP Relaxnews
