Hong Kong 97 is a 1995 multidirectional shooter video game made in Japan for the Super Famicom in disk drive format by HappySoft Ltd., a homebrew game company. The game was designed by the Japanese game journalist Kowloon Kurosawa (クーロン黒沢), who said the game was made in about a week. The game has gained a cult following in Japan and Taiwan for its notoriously poor quality — it has been ranked as a kusoge, which literally means "shitty game", a game considered "so bad that it's good". It has since been given multiple parody treatments. The game also achieved Number One "Wacky Japanese Game of All Time" in the XLEAGUE.TV video game TV show Wez and Larry's Top Tens and was featured in an episode of the Angry Video Game Nerd.
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WHY IS THIS SHIT SO HARD
The most kusoge, starring Brocco-Li, sponsored by COCA COLA!
And why 97 when it's made in 1995? xD
And why 97 when it's made in 1995? xD
fuck nintendo
hell yeah.
or, alternatively:
i've always had an admiration for kusoge. when i was 12 and i played spelunker, something unearthed in me. a realization that, games don't need to have smooth controls to be fun. games don't even need to be fun to be fun. games don't even need to be good to be good.
i don't remember if i was 12 or 13 when i decided that, somehow, hong kong '97 was my favorite game of all time. i had not played it at that point but all of its parts combined formed a very compelling case for it in my head. the mind-numblingly repetitive song, the backgrounds, the politics. it was a bad game that didn't take itself seriously but at the same time did with its political theme that was by no means Metal Gear Solid levels of complex but even so, somewhat noble for the time.
the idea gets across very easily. capitalism vs. socialism. coca cola vs. deng xiaoping and, you, supposedly jackie chan but with a sprite that resembles much more a normal chinese citizen, vs. an army of "ugly fuckin' reds", who much more resemble normal chinese businessmen.
the game leaves a lot up to your interpretation due to its lack of context. just because a point isn't directly told to you, doesn't mean it isn't there, and just because the creators didn't think of it, doesn't mean it can't be real.
the song that plays repeatedly, I Love Beijing Tianamen is the most obvious political jab here. it literally sounds like endoctrination, and it might as well be somewhere. i like the song though! i don't mind its endless repetiton as someone who defends and enjoys reptition in music fiercely. it has a vibe.
gameplay-wise, the only difficult thing is honestly getting insta-killed and booted back to the title screen, which can be easily routed around with save states. but no one really cares about the gameplay in HK97 because sure, that's what makes it a kusoge, but that's not what it makes it HK97.
HK97 is as much of an art game as it is a shitty game. and, maybe there are art games that try to be deep and fail miserably, but the funny thing is that HK97 doesn't really try to be deep but ends up being somehow. and sure, kusoge are a form of art in and of themselves, but this is different. it's not "the art of kusoge", it's "the art kusoge".
or, alternatively:
i've always had an admiration for kusoge. when i was 12 and i played spelunker, something unearthed in me. a realization that, games don't need to have smooth controls to be fun. games don't even need to be fun to be fun. games don't even need to be good to be good.
i don't remember if i was 12 or 13 when i decided that, somehow, hong kong '97 was my favorite game of all time. i had not played it at that point but all of its parts combined formed a very compelling case for it in my head. the mind-numblingly repetitive song, the backgrounds, the politics. it was a bad game that didn't take itself seriously but at the same time did with its political theme that was by no means Metal Gear Solid levels of complex but even so, somewhat noble for the time.
the idea gets across very easily. capitalism vs. socialism. coca cola vs. deng xiaoping and, you, supposedly jackie chan but with a sprite that resembles much more a normal chinese citizen, vs. an army of "ugly fuckin' reds", who much more resemble normal chinese businessmen.
the game leaves a lot up to your interpretation due to its lack of context. just because a point isn't directly told to you, doesn't mean it isn't there, and just because the creators didn't think of it, doesn't mean it can't be real.
the song that plays repeatedly, I Love Beijing Tianamen is the most obvious political jab here. it literally sounds like endoctrination, and it might as well be somewhere. i like the song though! i don't mind its endless repetiton as someone who defends and enjoys reptition in music fiercely. it has a vibe.
gameplay-wise, the only difficult thing is honestly getting insta-killed and booted back to the title screen, which can be easily routed around with save states. but no one really cares about the gameplay in HK97 because sure, that's what makes it a kusoge, but that's not what it makes it HK97.
HK97 is as much of an art game as it is a shitty game. and, maybe there are art games that try to be deep and fail miserably, but the funny thing is that HK97 doesn't really try to be deep but ends up being somehow. and sure, kusoge are a form of art in and of themselves, but this is different. it's not "the art of kusoge", it's "the art kusoge".
genuinely one of the funniest pieces of interactive software one can witness. Hong Kong 97 was made in two days by two video game pirates in 1995 and you can tell because as a game it's barely functional, and everything about it is complete and utter madness. to the 6 seconds loop of I Love Beijing Tiananmen to the explosion sprites being photos of a mushroom cloud, to the game over screen being a real life dead body, to the objective of killing the 1.2 billion of "ugly fucking reds" and their super weapon being the floating severed head of a deceased Deng Xiaoping, who was alive when the game was made but died in 1997, this is a game that only could've been made by shitposters wanting to take the piss out of the Chinese government and I absolutely love it.
Em uma madrugada por volta das 2:30,lembrei da existência deste fatídico jogo e quis lhe experimentar por conta própria, é horrível porém consegue ser funny principalmente pelos background.