Chex Quest, the total conversion Doom mod designed to sell Chex cereal back in the mid-90s, is a surprisingly enduring curio among Doom fans. Not only did it spawn a sequel, but a third instalment was created in ZDoom in 2008 to sate the series' still-existent fanbase. Evan wrote about Chex Quest a while back, claiming it to be "the most successful advergame ever". Given that it still has an active fan community, he's probably right.
To celebrate the game's 20th anniversary, Zam spoke to the game's artist Charles Jacobi. It's an interesting chat, even if you're not a Chex fanatic, but most interesting is that Jacobi is currently working on a Chex Quest HD remake in Unreal Engine 4.
Asked whether he'd ever consider making a fourth instalment, Jacobi said he'd opted to remake the original. "I've always kind of wondered about like 'Well, what would it be like if I just did a remake of the first one, but with a modern game engine?' And at my professional job, I use the new Unreal, Unreal 4, and I love it. It's a really powerful tool set, especially for content people...I don't necessarily need to be a programmer and I can build lots of functionality with it. So I've started building, basically, a high-def remake of the first one."
As with Chex Quest 3, though, Jacobi is building it after hours, so it might be a while before we can shoot at strange green blobs. "...it's really just a hobby thing that I do on the side," he said. "So, you know, progress is slow. I think I've got maybe half the monsters made, half the weapons made, and maybe two levels."
Of course, Chex Quest HD won't be using the Doom engine, but that doesn't mean there aren't hundreds of modders still building .wads for the original game.
