Hong Kong 97: Сатира и Ужас на Super Famicom

1995 video game

Hong Kong 97 is an unlicensed shoot 'em up video game developed and published by HappySoft, a doujin game developer, for the Super Famicom. It was released in Japan in 1995, being sold as floppy disks. Designed by the Japanese game journalist Kowloon Kurosawa, who said the game is a satire of the video game industry, Hong Kong 97 was made in seven days with the help of his friend. The game takes place in China in 1997, during the handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom. Facing an increased crime rate due to immigration from Mainland China, the Hong Kong government hires Chin, a super powerful relative of Bruce Lee, to kill the entire population of China. At the same time, the deceased Tong Shau Ping is resurrected by a secret project conducted by the Chinese government as an "ultimate weapon". After defeating Tong Shau Ping, the game is repeated indefinitely until Chin dies. Hong Kong 97 sold around 30 copies due to its underground bootleg release, and it has since gained a cult following for its notoriously poor quality. In retrospect, it is considered by critics and journalists to be among the worst games ever made.

The player controls Chin, who must shoot and evade the Chinese populace moving downwards from the top of the screen. When shot, the enemies explode in mushroom clouds, leaving behind a flashing corpse and items for instant death or temporary invincibility. After a while, cars start appearing from the sides, moving horizontally across the screen as obstacles. After thirty enemies have been defeated by the player, the final boss, the "ultimate weapon" Tong Shau Ping appears. He is depicted as a large, severed, floating head that will attempt to land on top of the player. Once he is defeated, the game repeats itself. The game shows static photos as the background, which alternate between pictures of Maoist propaganda, Guilin, the logo for Asia Television, the logo for Chinese Coca Cola, or Mao Zedong in monochrome. Sporadically, a syringe appears as a power up, which grants Chin temporary invincibility. Rotating green disks will also appear that can instantly kill Chin. The player has no health points: if Chin is hit by anything other than the syringe, the game is immediately over, unless he is under invincibility. The game over screen contains the superimposed words "Chin IS DEAD!!" in English and grammatically incorrect Chinese "陳死亡" over a still graphic image of an unknown corpse, dated to 1992.) started immigrating to Hong Kong, causing a large increase in the crime rate. As a countermeasure, the Hong Kong government (represented in game by Governor Chris Patten) hires Chin (portrayed by Jackie Chan), an unspecified relative of Bruce Lee, to "wipe out" all 1.2 billion of the "red communists" in China. Meanwhile, a secret project in Mainland China has succeeded in resurrecting Tong Shau Ping as the "ultimate weapon". The Chinese translation of the game refers to Chin as "Mister Chan" , alluding to the fact that a picture of Jackie Chan, taken from the 1984 film Wheels on Meals, was used to depict the character. The back of the insert of the game notes that Chin is a heroin addict.

In January 2018, Kowloon Kurosawa finally broke his silence on the development of the game to the South China Morning Post. With the game completed, Kurosawa used a game backup device that could copy Super Famicom games onto floppy disks, which he found whilst wandering through the computer malls of Sham Shui Po. Due to game backup devices being illegal in Japan at the time, Kurosawa could only advertise his game through articles written under pseudonyms for underground gaming magazines. He set up a mail order service to sell the game on floppy discs and cartridges, for ¥2,000 – ¥2,500 ($20–$25 in USD). It sold only about 30 copies, despite him having printed several hundred copies of the insert, which he later threw away. He eventually forgot about the game, until he became aware that it was gaining some unwanted attention in the late 2000s. Eventually, his Facebook account was discovered and was bombarded with questions about the game.

In an advertisement in the underground magazine Game Urara for another HappySoft title, The Story of Kamikuishiki Village, Hong Kong 97s poor quality is acknowledged, with the advert referring to the game as "dreadful" and "incomprehensible". It also claims that bootleg copies of the game were widely sold in Hong Kong and Bangkok. In retrospective reviews, Hong Kong 97 was met with overwhelmingly negative reception, with many calling it one of the worst video games ever made. The game has garnered a "so bad, it's good" cult following in Japan, Thailand and Taiwan, and in the West after it became the subject of an Angry Video Game Nerd YouTube video.