Chex Quest

Chex Quest is one of gaming's great oddities: a full total conversion of Doom that arrived not through a store, but inside boxes of Chex breakfast cereal in 1996. Ralston, the cereal's maker, commissioned developer Digital Café to build a family-friendly promotional game on id Software's engine, and the result was surprisingly polished. Instead of demons and shotguns, you play a green-armored Chex Warrior fighting off slimy aliens called Flemoids, whom you don't kill but rather 'zorch' back to their own dimension with goo-firing weapons. It was one of the first games ever distributed free in a cereal promotion, and it won marketing awards for exactly that reason.

Under the hood it is unmistakably Doom, running on the same engine that powered the shareware revolution, so the movement, level design logic and secret-hunting all feel immediately familiar to anyone who grew up with id's shooters. The bright, cartoonish art direction and the cheerful sound effects give it a completely different personality, though, and the whole first episode spans five levels that can be cleared in an afternoon. It remains a fascinating time capsule of an era when a cereal brand could ship a genuine 3D shooter to millions of kids, and the small modding community that later produced sequels keeps it alive. As a curiosity it is well worth firing up today.