Chex Quest 3: The official trilogy

[MrFlibble]

After Digital Café released Chex Quest 2 in 1997, they announced plans for Chex Quest 3, but in 1999 the company was merged with several others and effectively dissolved, and the project was abandoned. The disappointed fans have attempted to make their own sequel, with rather dubious results (the game heavily relied on resources and content that was "acquired without permission" from other Doom modifications and total conversions), and there seemed to be little hope for an official continuation of the story.

However, in 2008 Charles Jacobi, who was the Art Director and Lead Artist of the original two games, announced on the Chex Quest Fan Forums that he was working on the third episode, motivated by the work of one of the fans on a project called The Ultimate Chex Quest. Jacobi created new art and an entire new episode, and also polished the levels from the original two games (there was an issue with Chex Quest 2 that due to time constraints during production, new art and monsters simply replaced the old ones from the original Chex Quest, making it impossible to combine the two games into one WAD without additional editing), and finally Chex Quest 3 was released. Andrew Benson, the Sound Design Leader and composer from Digital Café, created a few songs for the new episode as well. The game runs on the ZDoom engine (which is bundled with the release) and includes all three episodes, making it an official trilogy.

Download Chex Quest 3 from Charles Jacobi's website
Chex Quest 3 at ModDB

[leilei]

Unofficial release (not Ralston distributed). The lifted midis and sounds in the new episode destroy the chex atmosphere that was established even if it is the same artist


Was from experience years ago though, have yet to try the current version

[MrFlibble]

I'd say if it's made by the Art Director/Lead Artist from the original project, who did most if not all the concepts and graphics for the original game, it's as official as it can get, taking into account that Digital Café no longer exists. Why should it be distributed by a food company to become official? From what I've read, it's Digital Café who came up with the idea to make an advertising game, and they could have used this concept for any other product for that matter.

The lifted midis and sounds in the new episode destroy the chex atmosphere that was established even if it is the same artist


Was from experience years ago though, have yet to try the current version

Are you sure we're talking about the same thing? It is my understanding that Jacobi made his project from scratch, without using any material from the unofficial, fan-made Chex Quest 3 that indeed included third-party material without authorization from the respective authors.

[leilei]

Why should it be distributed by a food company to become official?

Chex is a reserved, protected brand trademark. It would require proper licensing in order to be legally distributed, so Chex3 is hanging on a 'hope they ignore it' thread right now, and even if it were officially licensed for distribution in its current state, it'd breach the terms for Zdoom's license (as it is a non-commercial license derivative of the original Doom source release that wasn't GPL.)


Also, there are no cutscenes.

[ThreeHeadedMonkey]

I played a fair amount of Chex Quest as a kid. This should be a fun nostalgia trip. Thanks!

[MrFlibble]

Alright, I admit I might have used the word "official" in a somewhat inappropriate way. I do not know the details of who owns the rights to what or how the license under which Digital Café produced the game worked etc., and generally the situation here is far from trivial (although I'd say the Chex company should be glad they still get free promotion of their brand thanks to the game the game), but the facts remain that this release was 100% made by the members of the original team, so it's "official" as opposed to the notorious fan-made sequel with the same title.