It is 1995. You are in a cramped apartment in Tokyo. You have a Super Famicom, a floppy disk drive attachment called the Magicicom, and a burning desire to offend absolutely everyone. This is the origin story of the Hong Kong 97 video game, a piece of software so spectacularly broken and culturally bizarre that it basically invented the "kusoge" (crap game) obsession for the Western internet decades later. Honestly, calling it a "game" feels like a stretch. It’s more like a digital fever dream captured on a 3.5-inch floppy disk.
Most people who stumble across snippets of the game on YouTube or TikTok think it’s a modern creepypasta. It isn’t. It’s a very real, very unlicensed product created by Yoshihisa "Kowloon" Kurosawa. He didn't want to make a masterpiece. He wanted to make the worst game possible, a middle finger to the polished, corporate world of Nintendo and Sega. He succeeded. He succeeded so well that, for years, people thought the game was a myth or a snuff film in disguise.
The Chaotic Birth of a Legend
Kurosawa was a bit of a rebel. He was a journalist and a traveler who found himself fascinated by the gritty underbelly of Hong Kong. In the mid-90s, the upcoming 1997 handover of Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule was a massive geopolitical anxiety. Kurosawa decided to turn that anxiety into a shooting game. He didn't have any coding skills, so he asked a friend who worked at a "real" game company to help him out. They cobbled the thing together in about two days. Think about that. Most games take years. This took a weekend and probably a lot of caffeine.
The game was sold via mail-order and in underground hobby shops. It cost about 2,000 to 2,500 yen at the time. Because it wasn't an official Nintendo-sanctioned product, you couldn't just pop it into a standard Super Nintendo. You needed a copier—a device that sat on top of the console and read pirated games from floppy disks. This made the Hong Kong 97 video game an immediate cult item. It was illegal, it was weird, and it was rare. For a long time, only a handful of copies were known to exist in the wild.
What Actually Happens in the Game?
The "plot" is a chaotic mess of political satire and sheer nonsense. The year is 1997. A "herd of fuckin' ugly reds" (the game’s literal words) is descending upon Hong Kong. The government hires Chin, a "killer" and relative of Bruce Lee, to wipe out all 1.2 billion people in China. Yes, you read that right. The goal of the game is to commit mass genocide against the entire population of mainland China.
The gameplay is... well, it's bad. You control Chin, who looks like a grainy, digitized sprite of Jackie Chan from a movie poster. You move him around the screen and shoot projectiles at enemies that look like floating heads or generic soldiers. If you get hit once, you die. There are no power-ups that matter. There is no level progression. You just dodge and shoot until the boss appears. The boss is a giant, disembodied head of Tong Shau-ping (a misspelling of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping).
Everything about the presentation is designed to grate on your nerves.
- The background is a rotating series of low-quality photographs, including Mao Zedong and Coca-Cola advertisements.
- The music is a five-second loop of a Chinese children's song, "I Love Beijing Tiananmen." It never stops. It just loops. Over and over.
- When you die, the "Game Over" screen is a photograph of an actual dead body.
That last part is what fueled the internet rumors for years. For a long time, people argued over whether the photo was real. It turns out, it was. Kurosawa later admitted he took it from a "mook" (a Japanese magazine/book hybrid) about the Bosnian War. It’s a grim, jarring reality check in a game that otherwise feels like a middle-schooler's prank.
The Viral Resurrection
The Hong Kong 97 video game would have stayed buried in the bargain bins of Akihabara if not for the Angry Video Game Nerd (James Rolfe). In 2015, he did a video on it. That was the explosion. Suddenly, millions of people were introduced to the looping music and the bizarre premise. It became the gold standard for "weird retro gaming."
But what’s more interesting than the game itself is the creator's reaction to its fame. In 2018, Kurosawa finally broke his silence. He told the South China Morning Post that he was surprised people were still talking about it. He basically apologized for the game being so shitty, but also seemed amused that his two-day project had become a global phenomenon. He didn't make any money off the recent fame—most people just play it on emulators.
There's a specific kind of honesty in Hong Kong 97. It represents a time when the internet wasn't quite "The Internet" yet. Information didn't travel instantly. You could make a weird, offensive game in your bedroom, sell a few hundred copies, and disappear into the shadows. It was the ultimate "indie" game before indie games were a billion-dollar industry. It was raw, unfiltered, and deeply cynical.
Why We Can't Stop Talking About It
You might wonder why a game that is objectively terrible to play holds such a grip on gaming culture. It’s the "so bad it's good" factor, sure, but it’s deeper than that. The Hong Kong 97 video game is a time capsule. It captures a very specific moment of political tension and the "Wild West" era of home computing.
It also challenges our idea of what a game should be. We expect games to be fun, or at least functional. This game is neither. It’s an endurance test. It’s art, in a weird, gross way. It’s a provocation. When you play it, you aren't looking for a high score. You're looking for the bottom of the rabbit hole.
Myths vs. Reality
Let's clear some stuff up because the internet loves to lie.
Myth: The game was banned by the Chinese government.
Reality: They probably didn't even know it existed until the 2010s. It was a fringe product sold in tiny quantities in Japan. It was never "officially" released anywhere, so there was nothing to ban.
Myth: The game contains a secret ending if you kill 1.2 billion enemies.
Reality: The game just loops. Forever. There is no ending. There is no reward for your suffering.
Myth: Jackie Chan sued the creators.
Reality: The sprite is definitely Jackie Chan (from the film Wheels on Meals), but the creators were so under the radar that a lawsuit would have been a waste of time. They just stole the image and moved on.
What You Can Learn From Hong Kong 97
If you’re a developer or a creator, there’s actually a weirdly positive lesson here. You don’t need a massive budget or a team of 500 people to make something that people will remember for 30 years. You just need a strong (or extremely strange) vision and the willingness to put it out there.
That said, please don't use real photos of dead people. That’s a line Kurosawa himself says he regrets crossing.
How to Experience It Today
If you're curious, don't go looking for an original floppy disk. They are incredibly rare and will cost you a fortune. Most collectors who claim to have one are actually holding "repro" (reproduction) copies.
- Emulation: This is the easiest way. Any Super Nintendo emulator can run the ROM file, which is easily found on archive sites.
- YouTube: Honestly? This is the best way to "play" it. Watch someone else suffer through the looping music so you don't have to.
- Fan Remakes: There are several "HD" fan remakes and even a version for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive created by enthusiasts.
The Hong Kong 97 video game remains a bizarre monument to human creativity and tastelessness. It’s a reminder that the history of gaming isn't just made of masterpieces like Super Mario World or The Legend of Zelda. It’s also made of the weird, the broken, and the slightly offensive experiments that happened in the dark corners of the industry.
If you decide to dive into the world of kusoge, start here. But maybe turn the volume down. That song will stay in your head for a week.
Actionable Next Steps:
- Search for the "Hong Kong 97" soundtrack on YouTube only if you want a permanent earworm.
- Look up Yoshihisa Kurosawa's 2018 interview for a fascinating look at the "punk rock" side of 90s Japanese game development.
- Explore the "Kusoge" subgenre on sites like Hardcore Gaming 101 to find other fascinatingly terrible titles from the 16-bit era.