Chex Quest — A RetRose Tinted Review
January, 2021. It finally arrived, after eight months of preorder anticipation: the first light of the new year. My Limited Run Chex Quest Chex Warrior Edition box o’ stuff. Stickers, keychain, pins, coin, figures, posters, floppy-style USB, jewel-cased CD, T-shirt, and my main reason for buying it: a full-sized Zorcher.
This was an impulse buy in April of 2020. It was probably to help to take my mind off of how hard COVID-19 was hitting, but more than that, the mere thought of this box of stuff sent me on a bullet train back to memory lane. Chex Quest, the 1996 computer-game-in-a-box-of-Chex, was my jam as a kid. A life-size Zorcher sits triumphantly on my bookshelf, making game-appropriate noises at the push of a button; a high-point of what four-year-old Mike thought being a grown-up meant. Chex Quest lives on largely through my memories. I’ve revisited it a few times over the nearly twenty years since I first played it, but always just to dive back into memories and nostalgia.
Recall — “I’m from Chex Squadron, and I volunteer!”
The computer was a hot commodity when I was young. Old desktop model, Windows 95, off-white/cream colored. I loved that thing. My parents, in hindsight, were kind enough to feed my fascination with it, hooking me up with My First Encyclopedia, JumpStart, Lenny’s Music Toons, How Things Work in BusyTown, and so on. For young me, they were great, and helped feed my growing understanding of…you know, stuff. But they weren’t games in the traditional sense. There was something called DOOM hidden somewhere in the house that I didn’t understand, and nobody really talked about. But one day, the next-best thing for a kid would come popping out of a specially-marked box of Corn Chex (the green box is a vivid memory).
The plot was very simple, and conveyed through a hype-inducing intro movie: gotta go save some people on the planet Bazoik from Flemoids, and zorch the Flemoids back to their own dimension! As a young’un with very little “gaming” experience, I was kind of at a loss of what to do in Chex Quest. Luckily, my dad (with the yet-forbidden knowledge of DOOM behind him) was around to help me. It was a team effort: I would operate the Space Bar (opening doors, pulling levers, etc.) and the Control Button (the Zorch trigger!), and Dad would use the arrow keys to move around. We were a tag-team extraordinaire, as far as I knew!
One of our runs stands out in particular: we made it to the fifth level, the Caverns of Bazoik, and were fighting like heck, but still managed to get defeated. And as our Chex Warrior spun over into submission, a wall of slime and gunk stared back at us with a vile, snotty face. By kid standards, I lost my shit, and wondered if I had to beat this literal wall of slime next time.
In time, my younger brother grew into my ride-or-die, and Dad would be busier, leaving less time for games. It was easier for me to take over the mantle of Leader and teach my brother how to be the Trigger. We would burn through the levels at a sprint (I hadn’t realized the Shift button had such power before!), but always seemed to stop short of that final confrontation. I can’t remember the first time we beat the Flembrane, that wall of slime that so riled me, but I know we did; the dazzling effect of a Zorch blast sending it back to its home dimension, larger than the lesser Flemoids, is scorched into my memory. We had finally earned that end cutscene that played, win or lose, when we closed Chex Quest.
I remember the not-so-secret room in the Landing Zone, where we could immediately get a better Zorcher than our starter. I remember barreling through the Storage Facility, Rapid Zorcher firing wildly as we bobbed and weaved through towering crates. The intimidating requirements of all three colored keys and the pitch-black rooms in the Laboratory. The ending maze in the Arboretum. The genuine thrill and fear of the unknown in the Caverns of Bazoik. The joy of finding a new Zorcher, even if we had their locations memorized. The mystery of the secret room in the Storage Facility. It meant worlds when I was young, made me feel like a superhero for this little world, whether as a sidekick with my dad, or as a tag-team with my brother.
Chex Quest was formative in many ways. It brought me closer to family, taught me about teamwork and cooperation, and was a time to have fun without any overt educational leaning.
Revisit — Hold the Party Mix
I had access to the intro movie and gave it a watch before kicking on the game (back in the day, the movie would automatically come on before loading up the game), to really help get in the zone. Needless to say, the cinematography and animation is peak free-game-from-a-cereal-box-in-the-90s: resolution and animation are noticeably blockier and stiffer than they were in the rose-tinted past. But also, it is still hype, and I can admit that’s nostalgia working its charm. With a quick glance at a ReadMe, a download of GZDoom (a wonderful program that helps port the old DOOM engine for modern hardware), and a remapping of controls to EXACTLY how I remember it being in the old days, I was off to Bazoik again!
The strangest part was honestly getting the controls remapped, both in-game and in my head. My hands immediately went for the WASD layout and mouse before I realized it. But before I had properly settled in, right hand on the arrow keys, left snaked on the spacebar, Control, and shift, I was off, letting muscle memory basically take the reins. Hidden doors, old routes, familiar architecture, it never left.
And it felt exactly like the old days. The Zorchers still have that old “oomph” to them (except the Mini Zorcher. Heck with the Mini Zorcher). Chex Warrior still rockets around the world when you’re holding Shift. Flemoids squelch and screech with all manner of horror and terror, depending on if they’re on the slimy offensive or the receiving end of a Zorcher.
Some things I’d long since forgotten about, but brought me unnecessary amounts of joy: the squishing, squelching “Nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh” Flemoid noises throughout the stage, adding just the right amount of tension and dread to a stage. Chex Warrior grunting “EENGH EENGH EENGH” as I send him running, full tilt, down a long set of stairs. His disappointed “Unh” as he tries to open a wall in search of a secret. The map-containing pedestal in the Labs that, for whatever reason, did damage to you if you stood on it for any amount of time.
Even twenty-five years after its release, Chex Quest was still revealing little secrets to me. The most salient example is the secret route to the final fight in the Caverns of Bazoik. I was just having a grand old time, exploring dark passages, popped open a door, and hello, final boss and entourage! Plus, a secret room in the final boss chamber that held the LEGENDARY ultra-weapon, the L.A.Z.! For as long as I’ve known the weapon existed, I’ve genuinely thought you had to find the secret tunnel to get it.
Each stage has its own soundtrack, and they still hold up, MIDI format and all. From the foreboding yet confident Landing Zone, the more playful Storage Facility, the jazzy synths of the Labs, the heavy percussion behind the Arboretum, to the triumphant and daunting Caverns of Bazoik, each of them lends the perfect, looped ambience to the quest at hand. Andrew Benon did timeless work with the music.
Having now played through the once-forbidden DOOM, I can see and feel more of the similarities between that and Chex Quest, but Chex Quest still plays so uniquely on its own. Enemies are slow and, save for the Armored Flemoid and the Flembrane final boss, have to be right on top of you to attack and do damage. Even so, the slime projectiles from the Armored Flemoid and Flembrane are visible and can be dodged with enough dexterity, even from less-experienced players. Even MORE so, there are health and armor pickups all over the place (at least on my recent playthrough on “Gobs of Goo” difficulty, the third of five difficulties) to keep players trucking along. This is a game designed for fun and maximizing audiences, both in its marketing (free game with a well-established cereal) and design (multiple levels of difficulty, non-violence, never too far from health or armor).
The length of the game is noticeable, as well; the five maps are not sprawling by any means, and even a newcomer can probably burn through them all in under an hour. It was a fun little excursion in my advanced age, but as a kid? Time was so different back then. Time meant more by simply not having lived as much of it. An hour, sometimes less, of playing the same five levels in this cereal-themed adventure was thrilling. Getting better at the same stages over time, learning the ins, the outs, the secrets…five levels was manageable, arguably perfect. All this to say that the length holds up, regardless of when in one’s life they play it.
I am, by nature, upbringing, and choice, a nostalgic person. I love to look back fondly on older times, on easier days, and of what I loved back in those same points in my life. Sometimes, I’m disappointed that something, be it an experience, a place, or even a person, doesn’t hold up to my memory of it. But to make the entire experience go full-circle, after beating the Flembrane and completing the fifth level, I exited the game and pulled up the ending cinematic. “Cinematic” might be pushing it, with its series of still images being stretched and squashed all over the screen, but still. Credit where credit’s due for a free Chex CD-ROM in 1996. It was just as a recalled: a fun, victorious little send-off, whether you beat the game or not. And then…“Thank you, Commander. But hold the party mix…because we haven’t seen the last of the Flemoids.”
The music swells, Chex Warrior glowers down at you, daring you to keep up the fight. And the music just KEEPS GOING. I don’t think we ever skipped this part when we were younger. The music, Chex Warrior’s challenge, the allure of more Chex Quest…it brought me right back to the office chair in front of the computer, still so many sizes too big for me, but excited and hungry for more. That’s when it hit me: Chex Quest meant a lot to me when I was younger, and still means so much to me now that I’m older. It still makes me feel as great as I did back in the 90s. It still excites me from a gameplay lens, not just a nostalgic lens. Chex Quest holds up remarkably well, yes, but it’s more than that. This weird, beautiful game that, by dictionary definition, simply should not have worked, has not only worked, but has endured for years and years after its distribution.
If you’re interested, you can find a download of all three Chex Quest titles at Charles Jacobi’s website (Jacobi was the Art Director and Lead Artist for Chex Quest and Chex Quest 2), and a free download of GZDoom at its namesake website! Just place the WAD file (chex3.wad) in the same folder as GZDoom, double click on GZDoom to run it, and go Zorching!
