Hong Kong 97 Cartridge Hong Kong 97 Box Art
"I Love Beijing Tiananmen."
"Wipe out all 1.ii billion of the red communists!"
Japanese box art.
There'due south not really a sense of mystery equally to "how games get fabricated" any more. On the AAA level, information technology's all pretty straightforward: A developer is tasked with producing a game, said developer develops said game, and a publisher makes sure it lands on store shelves. On the independent level present, you probably film smaller teams pouring their hearts into their passion projects, earlier selling and marketing their own wares online via itch.io or Steam or wherever else have y'all. Of course, it isn't ever quite that unproblematic. And dorsum in the days before modern distribution methods? It was never that simple.
For years, the origins of the infamous Super Famicom title Hong Kong 97 seemed to be a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, within an enigma. In that location are some who believe that information technology never actually existed in any sort of purchasable form — that it only e'er existed equally a download on ROM repositories and whatnot. Others might really believe that it was somehow stocked aslope the likes of Super Mario Earth on store shelves, left wondering how the hell it could have wound up there? Naturally, neither of these theories are quite right, every bit nosotros'll discover together over the form of this article.
This is the story of one of the crudest, most amateur video games ever sold. Just information technology'due south more just that: It's also a story almost the spirit of the indie developer, a history lesson on video game bootleggery, and a parable on how there are some bells that tin't be unrung. It's a story I'm really nigh hesitant to write, given that the man most closely associated with the game has recently been quoting as saying that he would adopt that information technology fade into obscurity in one case again (and for practiced reason). But it's also a game that mined shock value and racism for comedy, so I'k plenty content to say "heck information technology, permit's rake it over the dress-down." This is the story of Hong Kong 97.
"Wǒ ài Běijīng Tiān'ānmén."
One time upon a time, Noah paired off two of every animal on his ark and set about surviving the great overflowing with slingshot in hand and a biblical fury. These historical events were chronicled in 1994s Super 3D Noah'south Ark, as originally released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment Organisation. Unfortunately for programmer / publisher Wisdom Tree, Nintendo were not swell to put their seal of quality on any of the company'south products, meaning the creators were forced to release their game through other channels on shady-looking cartridges. Nosotros've actually told the story of Super 3D Noah's Ark on this website before, just I didn't really spend much time detailing the game's copy protection-bypassing cartridge. And then, let'southward talk about that now.
As I similar to mention wherever I can, Nintendo liked to control all the means of production and distribution for games released on their hardware. On the original NES, this resulted in the inclusion of the 10NES lockout chip in official consoles, which would scan cartridges for an additional "CIC (Checking Integrated Circuit)" bit installed inside the game cartridge, before permitting games to load. This effectively prevented homemade games on the system… for a curt while, at least. Different companies somewhen institute different ways to thwart this mensurate: Color Dreams' Dan Lawton pioneered a method which involved cartridges sending a voltage spike to the 10NES fleck on load, thus bypassing the key check. Tengen, in the production of their unofficial cartridges, referenced Nintendo's ain patent on the 10NES chip in club to produce their own "Rabbit" scrap for cartridges, serving to mimic Nintendo's own CIC. Nintendo were certainly not oblivious to these circumventions, and resolved to make the prospect of playing pirate games more than difficult in the adjacent hardware generation.
The SNES beefed up the panel's onboard security checks, as well equally preventing against measures that would try to featherbed the checks entirely (you couldn't merely try and temporarily shock the bit, for example). So, in society to finer trick the SNES into allowing a non-licensed game to play, your options as a developer were initially more than limited. Color Dreams – now transformed into Wisdom Tree – employed a "pass-through" method for their Super 3D Noah'south Ark cartridge: Requiring a licensed title to plug into a port on the top of the Noah's Ark cartridge, thus sending the key to the SNES that the attached game was "legitimate," and allowing their own game to effectively sneak through and play on the console instead. And while later pirate games for the hardware would eventually utilize cloned / mimic CIC chips in order to play a trick on the console into playing their games, this more obtuse pass-through technology is what we're going to focus on right now.
Photo of Bung Enterprises' "Professor SF" game backup device: A popular model of SNES magicom devices.
Unlicensed games weren't the only illicit utilities that consumers were plugging into their consoles: Cheat and game backup devices were also hot items among enthusiast communities, assuasive respectively for the employ of rule-altering codes and for saving cartridge ROM files to an external memory. Naturally, these devices would still require a cartridge to plug into them in lodge to tell the SNES to load them, non to mention them being designed with altering / backing upwardly your own game drove in mind to begin with. At least, that'due south the more "innocent" use case for them.
The backup devices – which came to exist known as "magicoms" in Nihon – would operate by dumping game data off the cartridge onto floppy disks, which could be easily interchanged and inserted back into the backup device. This had the benefit of assuasive you to play games saved on the deejay without having to have the original cartridge on hand. Naturally, this opened upward a black market for floppy disks containing numerous game ROM files, allowing games to be played without the original cartridge (so long every bit you lot had at least one legit cartridge on-hand to plug in). Not only that; it too immune a method for homebrew games to operate on the SNES hardware, by releasing them straight-to-floppy and bypassing the cartridge manufacture process entirely.
Enter Yoshihisa "Kowloon" Kurosawa. As a immature man, he ran a Japanese Bbs plainly dedicated to the subject area of Amiga computers, maintained archives of obscure games and books, and fancied himself as a journalist. He besides had aspirations of working in the games industry inside his native Nihon, but was confronted with a fairly major issue: It was hard to so much equally become your pes in the door without already having evolution feel, and it was difficult to become that feel without already having associated with an established developer — something similar a catch-22 state of affairs. In the case of Nintendo, who were so controlling of their brand and the games associated with it, they were reluctant to even hash out terms with developers operating on an independent level; not trusting them to develop products accounted worthy of mass manufacture and retail. Furthering this exclusionary business practice were the matter of royalties a potential developer would take to pay (if they were even granted the "privilege" of doing so), making the whole prospect of trying to break into the industry that much more than daunting.
Seeming to resent the mainstream games industry at this signal – especially Nintendo – Kurosawa steeped in his frustration over his being unable to produce his own games. That is, until a trip to Hong Kong that would serve as a turning point in his life; where he stumbled upon some unspecified magicom device while wandering near a computer mall. He was suddenly struck by the thought that he could release a game for a Nintendo console without having to deal with Nintendo at all! But this wouldn't be just any game: Information technology would be a game specifically designed to undermine what the visitor stood for, and to subvert the corporate system altogether. Kurosawa sought to produce – as he called it – "the worst game possible."
"I was ill and tired of consumer game systems and the way Nintendo were at the peak of the pyramid. I was also really influenced by the extreme games coming out of Europe. I had an idea to create a cheap, vulgar game that would brand fun of the manufacture. The emergence of game copiers finally gave me that opportunity." ~ Yoshihisa Kurosawa
Merely one more than pocket-size hurdle stood in his mode: Kurosawa had absolutely no idea how to set most programming an SNES game. So, rather than invest the time in teaching himself, he chosen upon a friend who already had some amount of technical know-how. Evidently, this friend was employed at Enix Corporation — and then-publisher of the popular Dragon Quest series, eventual merger partner with Squaresoft, and previously responsible for a number of disgusting pornographic games available for Japanese computers. He convinced his friend to dedicate two days of his fourth dimension to helping plan his game, which would ultimately serve as the full development cycle for the title. Again, in his own words: "What you encounter represents a 10th of what I intended to do. There was no fourth dimension. We didn't have money. We didn't have permission. We just sort of took a slapdash arroyo to giving it a Hong Kong-esque way, and that's the result."
Not afforded the fourth dimension needed to design assets from scratch, the game would rely largely on the unlicensed utilize of outside graphics: Crudely cropping characters from picture posters, downloaded images probable shared on BBS / Usenet groups, and compressing scans of seemingly random Chinese advertisements for use as backgrounds. Dorsum in 1995, getting your hands on decent digital images wasn't quite as accessible equally a quick Google search; just for someone as clearly tech-savvy and resourceful as Kurosawa, I tin can't imagine that sourcing these images was too much of an issue for him. His craftiness also extended to providing the game's soundtrack; recording a brief audio sample off of a laserdisc he had picked upwards on Shanghai Street, and looping it in gild to serve as groundwork music.
In that location was another piece to the puzzle: Translating it for three different languages (English, Japanese, and Chinese). Yes, in spite of the game's crudeness and cruelness, we still accept to remember that Kurosawa had the intent of selling copies, fifty-fifty to the Chinese market which the game seems to take so much pride in insulting. To this end, a Chinese exchange student was [hopefully] paid for their work in translating the game's text from its original Japanese — a process they were apparently very uncomfortable with given the nature of the game. Besides, given the fact that Kurosawa seems to still refer to China as "a earth of savages," nosotros can pretty safely presume that he was non the near pleasant taskmaster to work for.
All the game needed now was a proper noun. Nigh folk seem to assume the game borrows its name from the identically-titled 1994 film Hong Kong 97 — a direct-to-video release starring Robert Patrick. While this is possible, I'd contend as to whether or not this flick would fifty-fifty appear every bit a bleep on Kurosawa'south radar, considering it never even saw distribution in Japan (or in Hong Kong, for that matter). Rather, both titles would seem to reference the same event set up to occur in 1997: The transfer of power over the territory from the British Empire to the People's Republic of Red china. To an anti-communist / seemingly-unabashed racist like Kurosawa, this was probably seen as something like a catastrophic fate for the region; as the transfer of power meant a alter in how Hong Kong would be governed, and likely meant an influx of citizens emigrating from the Chinese mainland.
At some point, Kurosawa had to call the project "finished," and fix nigh really releasing his product to the globe. Naturally, Nintendo certainly weren't going to distribute for him, and it was unlikely he'd observe many (if any) stores fifty-fifty willing to stock information technology on their shelves. Every bit such, the game would have to be distributed largely via mail society, with Kurosawa writing the floppy disks and assembling the packaging himself earlier shipping copies off to customers. To build "hype" for the title, he used his connections to diverse surreptitious gaming magazines and wrote online posts under pseudonyms to raise awareness of the game — encouraging readers to send away for their very own copy.
The crude packaging for the game is true to the crude nature of the game itself: A cover featuring a sloppily edited photo of Bruce Lee, superimposed over a crowd of PLA soldiers and the face of Chairman Deng Xiaoping. To a higher place the title (written equally "HONGKONG1997"), the game acknowledges it is intended for play on a "SuperNES + Disk Drive;" and below, the proper noun of the fake publisher Kurosawa established for the game in "HappySoft." Though no images accept seemed to surface of the back of the case, a transcription of the game's features apparently written on it does exist online, sourced from an archaic Japanese Geocities fanpage [and roughly translated here]:
• Players must command the relative of Bruce Lee, Mr. Mentum, to kill the Chinese people.
• Mentum is fond to heroin. Take the syringe and ability up! Survive the ordeal with the power of drugs!
• Special bonus for destroying cars conveying Chinese VIPs.
• Be careful of landmines. They can also evidence a valuable marry if used correctly.
• Volition you be rewarded with an inspiring ending for murdering 1.2 billion people?
Well, those selling points are certainly… "unique," to say the least. And I must admit; they'd have gotten my attending back in the day. So, permit's see how Hong Kong 97 executes on its very particular premise.
If you hate yourself / want to learn more than about the more than sordid history of Enix, cheque out the likes of Guest Mariko Hashimoto and Lolita Syndrome for the PC-88 and FM-seven computers. Simply but do so if you are of legal age to look at pornographic material , won't be haunted by the pedophilia information technology blatantly caters to, and have a strong breadbasket for gore. In other words: Please, for the beloved of god, spare yourself and don't actually check out this atrocious garbage.
This information is patently sourced from ane of Kurosawa'south self-published books, "Microcomputer Shonen Sawayaka Taisho (マイコン少年さわやか太閤記)." Naturally, I haven't actually read the book myself, and an English translation of information technology doesn't seem to be, so I cannot cosign whether or not this matches up with the story of the game'due south development Kurosawa tells in his book.
Information technology's also worth mentioning that Kurosawa seems to have something of an obsession with Nazism. For years, he sold a CD titled "Mad Nazis," maintained a listing of web links that reference Holocaust denial conspiracies, and generally seemed to enjoy crudely drawing Adolf Hitler. It'due south very possible that his involvement in the Nazis is purely historical, just given his anti-communist sentiment and general dirtbag nature… well, allow'southward only say that I don't expect this guy to exist on "the right side of history" here.
「我愛北京天安門」
There are actually ii variations of the game's ROM bachelor online, and you can tell which one y'all've got your hands on as soon equally the game launches: The more commonly-distributed variant provides 3 languages for y'all to select from, while the less mutual ROM has a fourth option curiously titled "CM." Selecting this CM option will present ii unique advertisements to you before the game begins; one for a brand of magicom device, and some other for a Bulletin board system that I presume has long since gone defunct. After these ads, the game volition go along in Japanese, and play out identically to the other versions of the game. Picking a different language in either ROM will present y'all a text advert for a games merchandise-in service before launching into the game.
As far every bit I can tell, no i online has ever figured out why two variations of the game exist. Naturally, I accept a theory: With CM meant to stand for "Commercial Message," and with one of the ads showcasing one of the very devices y'all'd need in order to play a physical copy of the game in the first place, I'thou going to guess that this variant was not the copy sold on floppy. If I had to estimate, this version of the game was distributed online on old games piracy groups and the similar – maybe even by Kurosawa himself – in an attempt to entice pirates to help get the word out almost the game, or to mayhap even purchase a concrete copy of their own (if only for the novelty of it). We'll talk over how well this strategy may have worked later.
With the ads out of the way, you're presented with the title screen, and soon thereafter with the game'south story. Get used to seeing these screens: You'll have to look at them again after every time you dice and restart the game. They're worth paying attention to at least in one case, though, as the plot hither is absolutely wild. And by "wild," I of course mean "overtly racist" in a way that probably wasn't particularly funny for any unfortunate Chinese players who may have put coin down for the game without fully knowing what they were getting themselves into.
In the distant future of 1997, Hong Kong is formally alloyed into Chinese jurisdiction. Immediately, the "fuckin' ugly reds" begin to wreak havoc on the region, with the entire 1.2 billion person population of China deciding to movement there seemingly overnight. Conspicuously, there is but one solution to this dilemma: Send for Bruce Lee'southward relative, Jackie Chan "Chin." Naturally, being ""related"" to Bruce Lee, Chin is as well a principal of the martial arts in his ain right, and deemed capable of taking downwards the entire population of a country single-handedly. Piffling does Chin or the Hong Kong government know, though, that the dastardly commies have been working on a secret projection to revive the recently deceased Deng Xiaoping Tong Shau Ping as a powerful bioweapon! Can the "killer machine" defeat the scarlet menace?
There's a flake of historical trivia hither worth noting: At the time the game was released, the real life Deng Xiaoping was very much still alive, albeit retired from his position as an authorisation effigy within the People's Commonwealth of People's republic of china. However, he was soon to pass, and just and then happened to die before long earlier the transfer of power over Hong Kong from United kingdom to China — in 1997. Equally such, people have credited Hong Kong 97 as "predicting his decease," fifty-fifty though the game doesn't actually specify a date of death / leaves you to presume that Deng Xiaoping could've died at whatsoever signal prior to the events of the game. For an case of a game getting a prediction for a political death "on the olfactory organ," there's always Homefront; which correctly guessed that Northward Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-il would pass in 2011, and laissez passer power down unto his son Kim Jong-un.
Of grade, none of this actually matters once you arrive the game: There's no plot development or further mentions of the story to speak of. Hong Kong 97 is little more than one of the most bare-bones top-down shooters you lot'll ever play in your life. Space Invaders has more depth than this trainwreck, for crissakes. As Chin, y'all accept the total range of the screen in which to movement and shoot — though leaving the bottommost area of the screen is practically tantamount to a expiry wish. Enemies approach you from the top of the screen, making their mode downwards, with some launching projectiles at you. Occasionally, a car will drive in from stage right and exit stage left. After killing a set number of enemies, the disembodied caput of Tong Shau Ping will appear and assail you lot with an incredibly basic pattern that actually results in him being the easiest enemy in the game to bargain with. You defeat him, and the loop begins anew, until you somewhen die or finish playing. That's it. That'southward all there is to the game.
Call up when I mentioned that the game was programmed over the course of two days? Aye, I reckon this is where it sort of shows, doesn't information technology? What we have here is the skeleton of a shoot 'em upwardly — the most basic components needed to qualify a game as existence such. You tin imagine swapping out all the bitmap graphics with bones shapes / programmer fine art, and being left with something that you'd have been taught how to develop over the grade of a twenty-four hours at a children'due south computer camp. I should know: I've taught children the nuts of how to develop a video game over the course of just a few hours! Look, I'm evidently aware that you can only exercise so much with so little fourth dimension spent in evolution, simply you know what? They had the luxury of having as much time as they wanted. I don't believe there was a hard deadline in effect here being enforced by "the publisher," considering the publisher was only Kurosawa himself.
Of grade, I'm "missing the betoken" here, aren't I? The game wasn't meant to be good: It's meant to shock and offend with its content and its… well, lack of content, I suppose? It's like some crappy Flash game you're meant to play once, laugh at / feel bad for having wasted your time with it, and promptly move on with your life. The problem here is though, Wink games don't usually demand a fee or waiting for them to ship to your mailbox. Hong Kong 97 isn't simply a joke of a game: It'due south a joke that Kurosawa intended for folk to pay bodily money for. Then, bearing that in mind, I'm going to review this game under the same prepare of standards I would whatever other retail software product. If that seems unfair, it's only because charging a ""upkeep"" price of ¥3,000 (!) for a game you'll barely play for 30 seconds seems pretty unfair too, by my estimation.
When the game begins, information technology loads ane of half dozen possible backgrounds which the game will bicycle through equally y'all die and restart. During the gameplay, the backgrounds practice not motility or attempt to provide any illusion of character move: They are simply static images, all featuring heavy amounts of pinch and hideous image artifacting. When Tong Shau Ping appears, the background will transition from a shade of blue to a shade of pinkish for every bit long as he is on-screen; reverting back to the original bluish shortly after he is defeated. At the very least, the backgrounds don't blend in with any of the game's other sprites, and then discerning the foreground elements isn't as frustrating a job every bit it could have potentially been.
You're limited in how many of your own projectiles you can have on-screen simultaneously. In using a bit of hackery to override the limit (set value "7E0EC500" for a good time), it becomes credible that the reason for this limit is primarily to avoid the game slowing down to a bluntly unplayable framerate: Sprite limits on the SNES hardware could apparently amount to every bit many as 128 on-screen, but I wanna reckon you tin only really go far to about a dozen in Hong Kong 97 before the CPU can't actually keep up. Even with the unlimited bullet cheat disabled, the default game will notice means to slow down all on its own — about as if guaranteed when you accident up a car and get treated to the roughly dozen explosion graphics put on display. Fifty-fifty licensed titles in the shooter genre take never had the best reputation for running smoothly on the SNES, so it's no surprise that leaving two drunks to their own devices in development would result in something completely unoptimized for the hardware.
Speaking of those incredible special effects, the game has a whole load of 'em to display! In that location'south the animated GIF of a mushroom cloud that appears whenever you lot hit something / blow someone upward, the image of what appears to exist an actual corpse that briefly flashes later killing an enemy, and no expect I lied that'due south really all they bothered to include in the games in terms of SFX animations. Pitiful. That thumbnail-sized paradigm of a corpse, past the way, appears in larger size on the game'due south "Game Over" screen (NSFW) — complete with a VHS record timecode dated Baronial 6th, 1992. At present, there are multiple theories as to who this poor soul might be / how Kurosawa got his easily the image in the outset place. A particularly stupid creepypasta-grade conspiracy contends that Kurosawa himself committed a murder in the proper name of HappySoft, and filmed the whole morbid affair. Circumstantial evidence suggests that the trunk may be that of Polish boxer Leszek Blazynski, who reportedly committed suicide on / around that appointment, which may indicate that this is a all the same from a police force crime scene recording. Whatever the origin of the paradigm may be, information technology's most likely Kurosawa downloaded it off of some Bulletin board system or obscure 90s shock site.
Be prepared to visit that morbid game over screen more than a few times as well if you should [for whatever reason] determine to subject yourself to the game: You die in only one hit from whatsoever enemy or object, and have only one life to live. Though the enemy AI is simplistic enough – with two of the 3 enemy types approaching you in a straight line – they can easily surround you from the sides of the screen and leave you with no escape route. The only temporary reprieve you may earn yourself is grabbing a syringe off of a fallen enemy, which gives you a brief 10 seconds of invulnerability. It gives you a breather from having to constantly weave and contrivance your way through the endless enemy assault, and tin make taking on the game'due south laughably easy dominate that much more than piece of cake. All that existence said, surviving the gameplay loop is actually elementary enough: It's the monotony of it all that makes information technology challenging to stay actively invested in the game.
Past this signal, you lot may exist wondering much as I did: "What happens if you lot actually manage to kill 1.2 billion enemies?" Well, I'm here to conclusively report once for all, that… I honestly don't know. I've seen folk analyze the tilemaps within the game, and they never reported finding whatever hidden graphics in in that location that you don't see over the class of the standard gameplay loop. Every bit of nevertheless, no ane has bothered to mail a mode to hack it so that you tin can immediately earn a score of 1.2 billion and see how the game responds. Perchance most tellingly though of what the game itself presents, you lot can't actually roll the score counter into the five digits range: You'll always be stuck with a score under 10,000, rolling back to a lower score when you lot hitting that marker. This would indicate the obvious to me: Kurosawa and his friend never intended for anyone to get a score that high, allow alone accomplish 1.2 billion, and probably didn't bother to program anything in for if anyone should ever manage to. Information technology's all a joke at the player's expense — a description which can besides exist used to explain this whole game.
You know, I realize that I've so far neglected to talk over the cerise on superlative of this whole sundae: The soundtrack. Equally briefly alluded to earlier, Kurosawa claims he ripped a musical track off of a random laserdisc he seems to accept blindly purchased. It just and so happens that the song he happened to have picked is "I Love Beijing Tiananmen": One of the most popular songs written during China's Cultural Revolution, and one which children at primary schools would be made to sing every bit part of their daily routine. The original song was written by glass manufacturing plant worker Jin Yueling in 1970, with vocals performed by then-12-year old Jin Guolin. Unfortunately, without a knowledge of Chinese languages, I've institute information technology incredibly hard to decide who performs the item rendition of the song as sampled for Hong Kong 97.
What I can tell you with certainty, however, is that the roughly five-second sample is looped ad infinitum — no pause, no reprieve, no other tracks to transition to. You'll be listening to the same song from the very moment the game loads until it is somewhen closed. As if that weren't enough, there aren't even any sound effects to break upwardly the auditory monotony. If there was ever a game that begged to exist muted, this would certainly be it.
It'southward a strange instance where discussing the effectively points of the gameplay feels as if they might besides be a complete later thought. But actually, what is there to say about them in a game where the gameplay seems like the tertiary priority? The controls are responsive enough and the movement speed is adequate. Of course the game could do good from option-fashion power-ups enabling you a wider shot spread or what have you, or the ability to trigger screen-clearing bombs, or any other number of standard shooter additions that add an actress layer of strategy to the proceedings. But again, that's inappreciably the point hither: I'1000 sure Kurosawa could have fabricated the basic controls intentionally awful if he had wanted, and I can about guarantee he considered doing so at some bespeak. So, I guess we should all appreciate his "restraint" here.
When the all-time compliments yous can pay a game all amount to "at least the developer didn't deliberately sabotage this," the gimmick wears thin mighty quick. I think this is the showtime time we've gone and covered an "intentionally bad" game on this website, and let me tell you lot: I'one thousand non a fan of them. When you deliberately set out with the intent of putting out crap, it's simply about the easiest goalpost you tin clear, and it's not oft you manage to perform whatever feats of annotation in the process. There's zilch amusing nearly intentionally fumbling — pretending to autumn on your face as part of some obviously rehearsed routine. There'due south none of that same charm that comes with seeing a programmer trying and declining to execute on an thought, or trying to implement something so uniquely stupid / completely baffling that you lot find yourself entertained past the very thought of it.
I could shit out a comparable game to Hong Kong 97 in an afternoon, but I wouldn't be able to stop myself from demonstrating the common courtesy of flushing it afterwards.
For those curious / skeptical: It was as part of an after-school program on the part of a museum I was employed at. Nosotros were given a bunch of tablets to distribute amongst the kids (aged ten-15?), with some incredibly bones "drag-and-drop"-way toolkit pre-installed, allowing them to make very standard platformer fare with pixel-art graphics. Information technology was clearly meant to human activity as a sort of introduction to the concepts of programming and blueprint, and the class all seemed to have a great time with it. I tried to impart as much additional noesis as I could about concepts similar "hit detection" and what "particles" are and whatnot, and all the children seemed to be genuinely engaged past information technology!
I also mounted an attempt to attempt and accept a peek within the game, using a couple of different HEX / tile editor utilities, but I may well have been doing something wrong as all I ever managed to get out of it was jargon code and cleaved images. Absolutely, I am a rank amateur when it comes to this level of programming / coding, and so I'm not surprised that I didn't terminate upwardly existence the i to crevice this case wide open.
"I̕҉̸͜ ̵̨͠l̶̵̡͏ò̴v̨̛͏͡é͘̕͡ ̷͘͢͝P͢͠͞e҉̡k̵̶͝i̢̛͞n͝g̶̴͢ ̢͢͢͟T̛́́͜i̴̶̡̕͞a̡͢n͜͢͞a̶͜͠͏̢ǹ̷̢m̢̛͢͢͞e̢̨̢͞n̸͝͠"
You lot may be surprised to hear that Hong Kong 97 did not evidence to be a smash striking for the Super Famicom! In fairness, the odds were stacked confronting it from the start: The market for postal service-gild games was never on the same footing equally proper retail releases, and designing with a specific peripheral in listen on summit of that was only going to farther restrict your potential consumers. There was another major flaw in the business model as well — aside from setting the unreasonable price point of ¥3,000, of course. And that problem was, in releasing a game for a device primarily used for software piracy, you're gonna be dealing largely with an install base of software pirates.
"The types of people who bought Super Famicom game copiers weren't the type to spend coin on games, so it was like trying to sell something to a thief. So simply a few people were willing to wire money to my shady PO box in Tokyo. I sold the game on floppy disks for a few months, and then forgot about it entirely." ~ Yoshihisa Kurosawa
And then, the game wallowed in relative obscurity for years afterwards; maybe seeing occasional reference in Japanese corners of the web, but likely being relegated to the fringe even there. Of course, when Kurosawa says he "forgot near information technology entirely," this hardly rings true: He seemed plenty committed to continuing to advertise the game on his website, posting virtually it on message boards, and by and large trying to promote his whole brand online. By all accounts, Kurosawa was all in on trying to become a fixture of the early on net otaku culture, and dipping his toes into whatsoever sort of strange business venture might earn him some amount of infamy.
It's also worth noting at this point that Hong Kong 97 may not have actually been Kurosawa'south kickoff attempt at developing a video game. He is likewise credited on his Japanese Wikipedia entry every bit having previously released a title for PC-88 computers in 1990, by the charming moniker of Torture Master (拷問マスター). On an archive of a folio which itself was meant to annal some pieces of software for the line of Japanese computers, a brief clarification accompanies the game, roughly translating to something along these lines:
"This software was also released by Mr. Kurosawa, who is at present the male parent of a child and living happily. He laughs about the game not selling whatever copies, but I think that this software should be considered ane of the masterpieces of PC 8801 doujin game circles. […] Information technology'due south still a bit scary."
Let's non mince words hither: It is my belief that Kurosawa is an attention-seeker, and a habitual liar to boot. He's changed his story on Hong Kong 97 so many times over the years, it'due south incommunicable to make up one's mind where the lies stop and the truth begins. I day, he'll contend that the game was made in a week, and the side by side he'll tell yous he overnighted it. He'll go lengths of time where he pretends he didn't actually develop the game (he simply "supported information technology" or what take you), before taking the credit in one of his rare interviews. He'due south reportedly very flaky when it comes to coming through on conversational commitments, though some folk will tell yous that he is very diligent virtually contacting folk who he feels "misrepresent him" in articles or videos. At times he is boastful of his work, and at times he demonstrates a regret. He's a man desperate to create a sure mystique around himself — "desperate" beingness the key word hither.
I contend that Hong Kong 97 broke through into the consciousness of the outside world not thanks to Kurosawa'due south connected campaigning, simply rather every bit a naturally-occurring curiosity on the part of the emulation and games preservation communities. The file constitute its manner onto ROM repositories, some number of folk eventually stumbled on it, and at some betoken folk started asking questions. Here in the West, nosotros had to dig deeper and work harder to get our answers, leading most to merely giving up and passing the buck to someone else to figure it out. With the advent of hands accessible video uploading services and the similar, and the dawning of the era of Allow's Plays, the game seemed to finally notice the spotlight that Kurosawa seemed to have hoped for. And with none other than the Angry Video Game Nerd himself somewhen releasing an episode on the game (roofing none of its historical provenance, naturally), it's firmly cemented its place in gaming folklore.
Information technology'due south with an article for the South People's republic of china Morning Post that folk felt they finally got their answers: In his virtually formally-conducted interview to appointment, Kurosawa one time again stepped upward to take responsibility for the game and requite a simplistic overview of its development process. Aside from making sure to sneak in a few jabs at Cathay – reiterating his stance that he still sees their citizens as "savages" – he likewise claims now that he wishes that "people would forget about the game one time and for all." Of course, he also addresses points such as the identity of the dead torso featured in the game without giving any sort of answer, so it's hard not to see all this equally what I believe it is: Another opportunity to bring involvement and intrigue back to the game, making sure in that location are yet more than questions than answers.
In the commodity, he does let slip that he had a hand in developing another video game at some betoken — "a 'run-of-the-factory' […] first-person shooter for the Playstation 2." Though he obviously refused to say which game information technology was, this is actually i of the easier mysteries to solve here. The title in question, by all accounts, is 2005's Simple 2000 Series Vol. 88: The Mini Bijo Keikan (alternatively "The Miniskirt Police"), in which his name is listed in the staff gyre. It'south appropriately trashy fare for Kurosawa to lend his "talents" to a game where you play equally a policewoman or underground agent of some sort clad in completely mission-inappropriate attire, which tears and deteriorates every bit you have damage until yous're clad in nothing but a bikini. The line about the game existence a get-go-person shooter is either mistranslation or misdirection, equally it'due south really a third-person stealth action title largely centered around melee combat (though you lot can option up and shoot firearms).
Having given upwards on achieving fame through game development or selling sound recordings of the ramblings of Nazi sympathizers, Kurosawa's latest [and longest-running] business venture is penning an undercover travel guide series, as well as selling boosted documentaries and eBooks on the discipline of his travels and other miscellaneous subjects he finds interesting. He wrote an entire book on the discipline of "dry orgasms" at some point. I've non felt particularly compelled to try and interpret whatsoever of his more than recent writings: If researching his personal history and his 1995 video game has taught me anything, it's that I don't especially like this dude.
To be clear here, at that place'southward only one matter I notice especially interesting most the whole sordid affair surrounding this game, and information technology comes down entirely to the story of its struggled distribution. I don't find the game particularly amusing, the creator seems like a total effort-hard, and I take umbrage with the idea that Hong Kong 97 is "the worst game ever" — past any stretch or metric. There are mechanically worse games (both deliberate and accidental), more uncomfortable games in terms of malice and stupor value, and games that are overall more incompetent in either more frustrating or entertaining ways. As such, Hong Kong 97 actually should just get the manner of a forgotten game and fade from the public consciousness again. But of course, it's too late for that now: It has get a staple of bad games media, and a go-to for folk who like to showcase rough content.
I'm sure someone at some point will ask, "if you really want the game to exist forgotten, why write a whole article virtually it?" Well, I reckon it'due south on business relationship of my Program B scenario: If we can't erase Hong Kong 97 from history, we should at least attempt our best to demystify information technology. Let curious folk know that it was a failed money-making scheme turned successful attention-seeking plot by an asshole, and that its juvenile nature comes from a identify of seemingly genuine racial and political tension. Reveal that the score counter is a sham, and that there's no reward for wiping out the population of Cathay. Put an end to the misinformation, and provide the boring facts about this deadening game. Bury the game by busting information technology wide open up.
It's rare that we'll encompass games on this website that I genuinely loathe or despise. It'due south rarer all the same that I'll accept genuine umbrage with the developers, or disparage their endeavor. This is ane of those rare games, and Yoshihisa Kurosawa is one of those rare creators. I'll induct information technology into the Bad Game Hall of Fame, since it certainly warrants the distinction — even if it doesn't necessarily earn it, if you get what I mean. It's half-hearted, intentional trash like this that actually gets my dander up, and I'll be happy to never accept to play this game e'er again once this article goes up. It'south not worth my time, and information technology'due south not worth yours, either.
He also took credit as being part of its development on his own website for a time, before changing domains and finer attempting to hide his involvement.
b c d eastward f one thousand Shamdasani, Pavan. "Developer of world's worst video game, Hong Kong 1997 […]" Due south People's republic of china Morning Post. January xx, 2018. Spider web.
"ファミコンショップ「にちぽん（仮名）」." February i, 1995 – August 26, 1996. Spider web.
This pricing data was gleaned off of a partial translation of this folio – originally made to archive a Japanese message board dedicated to software piracy – as provided by a user named "SlickBlackCadilac" on Reddit's /r/TheCinemassacre.
Source: https://www.badgamehalloffame.com/hong-kong-97/
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