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".

One of the games I will never touch. I usually write reviews of games I played.. with the exception of this one

Uh..
They put an actual dead body in the and a picture of holocaust victims.

The looping music is torturous. Can still hear it even as I’m relaxing in bed

Meu sonho é dominar o Japão através do mangá! Primeiro, minhas séries deverão aparecer em todos os gêneros de todas as revistas semanais e ser votada em 1° lugar em todas as enquetes com os leitores! E então deverão ser publicadas como coleções graphic-novel de luxo! Depois deverão ser lançadas como anime! Seguido de produtos baseados em personagens, o que me deixará bilionária! Além disso, gostaria de concorrer a um cargo público com eu eventualmente me tornando Primeiro-Ministro do Japão, e então farei lavagem cerebral em toda a população com mangás e animes e assim dominarei toda a nação! Esse é meu sonho! Apenas vencedores como eu podem dominar um mundo cada-um-por-si como este

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.

As a game it's awful, but it clearly is on purpose.

This is a hilarious piece of political satire, where Bruce Lee's relative CHIN wipes out mainland China's entire population... oh but China's secret weapon is coming to stop him: a revived Deng Xioping (he was alive when this game was made lmao).
This game is so offensive, it's like the grandfather of the many offensive newgrounds flash games.

Play it, just to experience the madness. Be careful though, you may get 我愛北京天安門, 天安門上太陽升 stuck on your head.

(Bottom 5) This game is.... One of the absolute strangest things I have ever seen. I don't even know much about it, as it was never formally released. Nintendo saw to that, thank God. Its gameplay loop is non existent. It's an endless shooter, with perhaps the worst explosion animation I have ever seen. Sprites are ripped directly from a Jackie Chan movie (who is apparently Bruce Lee's Cousin, Chin), and there may or may not be a real life dead guy on the game over screen. And don't even get me started on the theme song, if you can even call it that. It's the same 6 seconds of a song repeating over and over again with no end or breaks, even if you game over. The only reason it's getting a full star is because it is the only SNES/Super Famicom game with the word Fuck in it. Avoid at all costs.