[3-1]: Chex Quest 1 [3-2]: Chex Quest 2 [3-3]: Chex Quest 3 [3-4]: The Ultimate Chex QuestCHAPTER [4]: WHAT IS REQUIRED TO RUN CHEX QUEST?
[4-1]: System Requirements [4-2]: What game controllers does Chex Quest support?SECTION TWO: HELPFUL HINTS CHAPTER [5]: HINTS AND TIPS FOR USING CHEX QUEST
[5-1]: When should I use each zorcher? [5-2]: How much do health and armor items help me? [5-3]: How powerful are the various types of zorchers against flemoids? [5-4]: How much ammo is obtained by picking up the various zorchers and recharges? [5-5]: How many shots does it take to send each type of flemoid back to its own dimension?SECTION THREE: TROUBLESHOOTING CHAPTER [6]: WHY WON'T CHEX QUEST 1 AND 2 WORK CORRECTLY?
[6-1]: Why is the Game Jerky while Sounds are Playing? [6-2]: Why Does the Sound/Music Not Play?CHAPTER [7]: WHY WON'T CHEX QUEST 3 WORK CORRECTLY? CHAPTER [8]: WHY WON'T THE ULTIMATE CHEX QUEST WORK CORRECTLY?
[8-1]: The Ultimate Chex Quest in Doom Legacy [8-1-1]: Why does a zorcher or recharge appear every time I return a flemoid? [8-1-2]: Why do I get hurt when a Commonus or Bipedicus wrinkles its nose at me across the room? [8-2]: Why does the game go very slow and/or the walls are all white?CHAPTER [9]: MISCELLANEOUS CHEX QUEST PROBLEMS
[9-1]: Chex Quest is too easy. [9-2]: Chex Quest is too hard. [9-3]: I get motion sickness when playing Chex Quest.SECTION FOUR: OTHER INFORMATION CHAPTER [10]: MISCELLANEOUS QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS INTRODUCTION
ABOUT THE "OFFICIAL" CHEX QUEST FAQ
Welcome to the "Official" Chex Quest FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). As is more thoroughly explained in Chapter [1], Chex Quest is a non-violent 3D first-person shooter, based on the Doom game engine (iD Tech 1), in full compliance with iD Software. Most of the information in this document was gathered and written by Hank Leukart, author of the "Official" Doom FAQ and other great Doom literature (see acknowledgements). This version of the FAQ has been recovered, enhanced, and updated, based on printouts from the original (now lost) web site. GETTING THE "OFFICIAL" CHEX QUEST FAQ The "Official" Chex Quest FAQ was originally available at the Chex Quest World Wide Web site at http://www.chexquest.com. Unfortunately, the web site was removed shortly after the cereal promotional ended, and most of the web site was lost. Recently, however, a Chex Quest fan found long-lost printouts of certain areas of the original web site, including the FAQ. Using those as a base, other Chex fans are attempting to re-create the web site. As part of that process, the FAQ was converted back to HTML and then enhanced, and has also been updated to include new information. This is the Enhanced and Updated Version, and all three versions as well as the original printouts can be obtained from http://dsr.rewound.net/chexweb/original/index.htm. ADDING TO THE FAQ If there is some information you would like added to the FAQ, or a question you would like answered, please e-mail me at DSRfeedback@yahoo.com. If your suggestion/request is reasonable, it will probably be included in the next version of this FAQ. Also, if you have any content, such as full-color pictures, that was on the original Chex Quest website, please send them to me to assist in the restoration process. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to thank iD Software for creating the Doom gaming engine. Without it none of this would have happened! We would also like to thank Hank Leukart for creating the "Official" Doom FAQ, which this FAQ is based on. We could not finish without thanking General Mills, WatersMolitor, Digital Café, Virtual Communications, and AOL, each for its part in the creation of the original Chex Quest. And finally, we would like to thank those who have kept Chex Quest alive through the years since its birth in 1996. Most notably, we would like to thank Mark Quinn for his work on The Ultimate Chex Quest, and Charles Jacobi for his work on Chex Quest 3. Back To Menu SECTION ONE: PRELIMINARY INFORMATION CHAPTER [1]: WHAT IS CHEX QUEST? Chex Quest is a non-violent first-person shooter originally created in 1996 for General Mills. The original game used the Doom engine ("iD Tech 1") and was distributed in cereal boxes, and Chex Quest 2 was made available for free on the internet. Chex Quest 1 and 2 were created by WatersMolitor, developed by Digital Café, and produced by Virtual Communications. The official Chex Quest 3 was recently released via the Internet, designed almost entirely by Charles Jacobi, the lead art designer for the original game, and uses ZDoom, a fan-made source port of the original Doom. In Chex Quest, you're Fred Chexter, a.k.a. the Chex Warrior. You have volunteered to fly to the caverns of Bazoik and attempt a rescue of the citizens there, who have been captured by evil mucus-like creatures from another dimension, the flemoids. Conventional weapons are useless against flemoids, so the Chex science team has designed a way to modify various zorchers to zap the evil cereal-eating creatures back to their own dimension before they have a chance to glue you to the floor with slime. THE HISTORY OF CHEX QUEST The game was released in cereal boxes in 1996, being the first free computer game available in cereal boxes. The front flap of the CD case announced a sequel called Chex Quest 2, to be made available on the official web site. It was more of an Episode 2 or an expansion pack than a sequel, because it required the original game to run, and the new flemoids were only graphically-changed versions of old flemoids. However, it was still well-accepted by fans, being as good a game as the original. Meanwhile, the Chex Quest CD-ROM, which was intended as a three-month promotion, had been entirely sold within six weeks, boosting Chex Cereal sales by 295%. The game was well-appreciated by kids and adults alike, but within time the excitement dimmed down and General Mills took down their site. But there were still plenty of dedicated fans, as time would tell. A fan-site soon appeared, www.chexmania.tripod.com, including downloads for the original two Chex Quest games. Now people could still get Chex Quest, even though the promotion had ended and the official site had been removed! For quicker download, the original game's download did not include the intro/end animations or menu, as that would have changed the download size from roughly 2 MB to about 30 MB. Then the fangames started coming. The first fangame was called Chex Quest 3, and it was another expansion pack like Chex Quest 2. It was pretty well received, but it had changed certain content in strange ways, and the added content didn't look like it had been made for Chex Quest. Recently it was discovered that that game had actually been a hodgepodge collection of Doom fan-content carelessly put together into a wad with certain Chex Quest graphics. Almost none of the content was original, and the original creators were not accredited. Because of that, it is now referred to as "CQ3-stolen," and is no longer available on Chex Quest fan sites. The next fangame was called The Return of the Chex Warrior, a very low-quality side-scrolling game with hand-drawn graphics, which was its author's first "real" game. It was made shortly after the founding of the Chex Quest Fan Forums, an online forum created by a person named Richie, in which people dicussed Chex Quest and related topics. The forum gradually amassed more fans of the years-old promotional game, and it still continues to gain new members to this day. Shortly after that another fan made Chex Quest 4 and Chex Quest Fighting, similar in quality to The Return of the Chex Warrior. The author, however, was using someone else's engine without accrediting him in both cases, and when guilt overtook him, he thoroughly removed them from circulation on the internet, claiming to simply be embarrassed over their low-quality content. He has recently confessed to his true motives, however, and would like to have them re-released with the engine's creator accredited, should anyone be able to find a copy. For several years, that was the end of the fan-creations. The fans still existed, and the Chex Quest Fan Forums still talked about the game, but nobody put work into much except for fan sites, which continued to pop up all over the web. Then one day a company (or more likely, a single person) calling itself "Scifience Studios" put a game on Tucows (a massive download site) that claimed to be a modern, 21st-century version of Chex Quest. A man named Mark Quinn, a.k.a. Boingo the Clown, saw this game and downloaded it. He had never had much interest in Chex Quest, but thought that this would be fun to see nonetheless. He was disappointed, however, to find that this "new" game was nothing more than a combination of Doom Legacy (a 21st-century enhancement of the Doom engine), the original two Chex Quest games, and a copy of the original Doom data-file. The Doom Legacy creators were not given credit, and because of the sloppy merging of Chex Quest with Doom Legacy there were missing textures and messed-up flemoids and all in all the thing was a mess. And to top it all off, inclusion of the original Doom data-file made the download pirate software, or "warez." Tucows was notified and the "game" was removed. But seeing this anger-invoking throwtogether had inspired Mark Quinn to do what Scifience Studios had claimed to do: enhance Chex Quest using newer Doom source ports, making a truly quality 21st-century game. As an experienced Doom level designer and artist, he decided to do that project himself, calling it The Ultimate Chex Quest. The project began and all the Chex Quest fans were excited. The project began using Doom Legacy, because that was the engine Boingo was most accustomed to using. Phase 1 was quickly completed, which was a merging of the first two episodes into a single game, so that you could choose your episode from the menu. Phase 2 is still in progress, and consists of "beautifying" the original ten levels of the game. The Ultimate Chex Quest, or TUCQ, inspired a lot of fans to begin making their own mods of Chex Quest, beginning with Loremaster's Chex Quest Expanded Version and Since5's Chexmaps series. And as mods started appearing, so did a handful of fangames along the line of The Return of the Chex Warrior. Chex Quest had been given new life, and the forums began to expand as more fans appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Within a matter of years countless mods came into existence, the most notable being those made by a talented artist named Strife (Strife_levelpack1 and Strife_levelpack2), and those made by a creative level designer skilled in scripting, X-Bolt (Newmaps). Meanwhile, a man named Stoney Dumples began work on a Doom 3 total conversion to be called "Chex Trek: Beyond the Quest." He had soon recruited a number of 3D modellers and level designers to help him on his task, and Chex Trek took off. Definitely a different style of gaming than TUCQ, Chex Trek uses Doom 3's cutting-edge realistic graphics rather than trying to maintain the mildly cartoony feel of the original game. Most Chex Quest fans, however, couldn't play Chex Trek because it required Doom 3 to run. Mods kept coming and going. One fan called Replica started work on his own rendition of Chex Quest 3, since CQ3-stolen was no longer considered playable. Strife lost interest in Chex Quest and ended up abandoning his great Quantum Chex project, which would have been a total conversion of Chex Quest in which the Chex Warrior battles junk food instead of flemoids. Newmaps kept moving forward, showing great cinematics and special effects that everybody loved. Someone found a way to play Chex Quest on the Nintendo DS, using Doom DS and a PC link. Then came a legendary day when a new member appeared on the forum, "Chukker," who made a topic called "A gift for the fans," in which he posted a downloadable all-new flemoid. This was not the first all-new flemod we'd seen; Strife had made several very good ones for his maps. But what made this a legendary moment was the fact that "Chukker" was actually Charles Jacobi, the lead art designer for the original Chex Quest games! He also hinted that he was making his own mod, which everyone was excited to see but wasn't finished yet. A lot of fans meanwhile pushed for TUCQ to be ported to GZDoom instead of Doom Legacy, because GZDoom had several features that Doom Legacy didn't currently have. Boingo wanted to stick with Legacy because he was accustomed to it and the said features were supposed to come out in Doom Legacy 2.0. However, Legacy 2.0 remained in the same position it had been in since several years ago, and Boingo eventually had to face the fact that if he wanted to give TUCQ high-resolution textures and 3D models, he would have to port it over to GZDoom. One day the son of Lee Snyder, another member of the Digital Café team, joined the forum. That was also a pivotal moment; not that he had anything to offer the community, but just because of who he was. Soon all the mods were being ported to GZDoom. Boingo began work on new GZDoom content for TUCQ, but the 3D sectors and other Legacy-specific content still needed to be ported to GZDoom, which would be a long and laborious process. Some mods, such as Newmaps, left old levels as Legacy-only, while making new levels for GZDoom. The Chex Quest Fan Forums, which had formerly been at www.invisionfree.com/forums/chexquestforums, were moved to www.chexquest.org. This meant a dedicated server for Chex Quest, an easier-to-remember URL, and [confirm] unlimited storage space for posts. Then came what is in my opinion the greatest moment in Chex Quest history. Chukker announced that his mod was ready to be released, and that it would be the official Chex Quest 3! Such an exciting event saw some old members come back to the forums, and the game even received a decent amount of popularity outside the scope of the Chex Quest community. The levels maintained the original style in a way that no mod had been able to imitate, not even Strife's. New flemoids and new environments were in every level, and the series finally had a grand finale! And as if that wasn't enough, the game included the first two episodes, giving accurate end-text, and he modified the source code of ZDoom to get rid of the quality-botching differences between Doom and Chex Quest, something Boingo had never conceded to doing. And not only were the original levels included as they were originally, but they were given graphical enhancements, some subtle and some not-so-subtle, not be be a 21st-century enhancement like TUCQ, but to be the way the original games could have been if they hadn't been rushed with promotional deadlines. Chex Quest 3 was very well-received, and all the fans helped find bugs to be fixed in the next release. Soon the next release came out, and within time Chukker enlisted the help of certain other Digital Café members to put some finishing touches on the game. Replica's Chex Quest 3 was renamed to Chex Quest: Journey of Legends, since it would of course make no sense to have two CQ3's available. Shortly after the release of Chex Quest 3, the forum was visited by the president of WatersMolitor, under the screen name "thecreator." He interviewed the forum on various subjects so that he could write a Chex Quest article in The Hub, a marketing magazine, regarding the game. This article was sent to General Mills, and will hopefully inspire General Mills to revive Chex Quest as more than just a three-month sales booster. But whether General Mills ever pulls Chex Quest out of its back pocket or not, it is far from dead. With Chex Quest 3, The Ultimate Chex Quest, and countless mods and fangames, there will be no end to the zorcher-toting Chex Warrior and his flemmy nemeses. ENEMIES There are various types of flemoids in Chex Quest. Here is a list: FLEMOIDUS COMMONUS (slimy goo creature with no arms or legs): These flemoids wander aimlessly about, ready to spew slime at you through their noses. FLEMOIDUS BIPEDICUS (slimy biped with floppy arms): These flemoids will slime you with both their arms and their nose at the same time, in a single debilitating blast. FLEMOIDUS BIPEDICUS WITH ARMOR (Bipedicus wearing armor): These elite Bipedici have developed the ability to hurl balls of slime over long distances. Consequently, they have also been given the privelege of wearing protective suits of armor. FLEMOIDUS CYCLOPTIS (floating bubble with cyber arms): These flemoids are tough customers. Their floating bubble armor makes them tough to zorch and fast, and when they reach you they'll plaster slime onto you at a frightening rate. THE FLEMBRANE: Deep in the caverns of Bazoik, blocking the only entrance to the room where the citizens are glued to the floor, is the Flembrane, a living wall of raw flemoidus slime. The Flembrane will let no one pass. And if you don't show common sense and run for your life, it'll start spitting slimeballs at you the size of your head... FLEMOID LARVA (creeping worm made of slime): Seen only in Chex Quest 2, these oversized larva-like flemoids slither up to you at amazing speed and start sliming you. FLEMOIDUS QUADRUMPUS (burly flemoid with four arms): Only in Chex Quest 2, these tough slimeball-hurling flemoids are nothing to mess with. Watch your backs when these guys are around! FLEMOIDUS MAXIMUS (hulking flemoid four times your size): Only in Chex Quest 2, these monolithic flemoids hurl huge and deadly slimeballs at you, and take lots of zorch energy to return to their own dimension. SUPER CYCLOPTIS (cannon-like flying contraption): Only in Chex Quest 3, these Cyclopti fly freely and launch huge, slow-moving balls of slime at you. Very tough to zorch, these flemoids mean business...and that means slime. FLEMOIDUS STRIDICUS (long-legged animal-like flemoid): Only in Chex Quest 3, these striding flemoids can move even faster than the furious Cycloptis! Before you know it they'll be right in front of you, sliming you for all they're worth. THE FLEMBOMINATION (many-eyed tentacled monstrousity): This wild, mutated flemoid is a sight you won't soon forget. Lurking deep in the sewers of Villa Chex, the Flembomination has grown and become one of the biggest, toughest flemoids you've ever seen. When you meet the Flembomination, you'd better think of nothing but aiming your zorcher. FLEM MINE (homing slimeball): These AI-driven slimeballs hover around mechanically, until they detect something living. Then they zoom up to it and plaster themselves in its face. Or should I say, into your face. LORD SNOTFOLUS: The brains behind the flemoid invasion, Lord Snotfolus was in charge of designing the comet-ships and opening the inter-dimensional rift to the cereal dimension. If you don't zorch him back where he came from, his invasion of our dimension will probably succeed... ZORCHERS Here is a list of the zorchers that are in Chex Quest. (1) Bootspoon - Used to scoop slime off your boots, you can use this against the flemoids if you're desperate. (2) Mini-Zorcher - Standard sidearm for the Intergalactic Federation of Cereals. (3) Large Zorcher - More heavy-duty zorcher that fires compressed zorch bolts. (4) Rapid Zorcher - A rapid-fire Mini-Zorcher. (5) Zorch Propulsor - Device that opens a zorch gateway to propel multiple flemoids back to their dimension at once. (6) Phasing Zorcher - Uses Advanced Zorch technology to fire a powerful stream of visible zorch bolts. (7) Large Area Zorching (LAZ) Device - A newly-developed device that uses the new Advanced Zorch to open gateways much bigger than those of the Zorch Propulsor. (8) Super Bootspork - A replacement for your bootspoon, this rotating spork is engulfed in constant zorch energy, making it very effective against the flemoids. Back To Menu CHAPTER [2]: WHERE CAN I GET CHEX QUEST, AND WHAT IS INCLUDED? The original Chex Quest CD-ROM was offered in specially-marked boxes of Chex® cereal in 1996. Now it can be downloaded for free from the internet, along with new fan-made enhancements and additional content. You can download the original game with its intro and end movies here.
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|
| Extreme Ooze Mode | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Mini | Large | Prop | Phas |
| Mini-Zorcher recharge | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mini-Zorcher pack | 50 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Rapid Zorcher | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Large Zorcher | 0 | 8 | 0 | 0 |
| Large Zorcher recharge | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 |
| Large Zorcher pack | 0 | 20 | 0 | 0 |
| Zorch Propulsor | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| Zorch Propulsor cartridge | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Zorch Propulsor pack | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Phasing Zorcher | 0 | 0 | 0 | 40 |
| Phasing Zorcher recharge | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 |
| Phasing Zorcher pack | 0 | 0 | 0 | 100 |
| LAZ Device | 0 | 0 | 0 | 40 |
| Zorchpak* | 10 | 4 | 1 | 20 |
| Extreme Ooze Mode | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flemoid/Warrior | Mini | Large | Prop | Phas | LAZ |
| The Chex Warrior* | 10 | 2 | ~2 | 5 | 1 |
| Commonus | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Bipedicus | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| Bipedicus with Armor | 6 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 |
| Quadrumpus | 6 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 |
| Cycloptis | 14 | 2 | 1 | 7 | 1 |
| Larva | 14 | 2 | 1 | 7 | 1 |
| Flem Mine | 10 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 1 |
| Super Cycloptis | 36 | 6 | 2 | 18 | 1 |
| Stridicus | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Maximus | 100 | 15 | 5 | 50 | 1 |
| The Flembomination | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Lord Snotfolus | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |