Hong Kong 97 Magazine Updated -

Even its own advertisements were self-deprecating. An ad for another title by Kurosawa's "HappySoft" label referred to Hong Kong 97 as "dreadful" and "incomprehensible". It wasn't until the rise of internet emulation and a 2015 review by the Angry Video Game Nerd that the game reached mainstream notoriety in the West. Gameplay: A Five-Minute Loop of Absurdity

: Kurosawa enlisted a friend from Enix to program the game over two days, utilizing a base engine from a previous project. hong kong 97 magazine updated

: Players control "Chin"—a relative of Bruce Lee portrayed by an unlicensed image of Jackie Chan—tasked by the Hong Kong government to wipe out all 1.2 billion "red communists". Even its own advertisements were self-deprecating

The Legacy of Hong Kong 97 : From Underground Magazine Scraps to Modern Infamy Gameplay: A Five-Minute Loop of Absurdity : Kurosawa

: When the player dies, they are met with a digitized photo of a real corpse. In 2019, internet researchers confirmed this image was a still from a Japanese mondo film titled New Death File III , depicting a victim of the Bosnian War. Modern Updates: Hong Kong 2097

For years, the game's existence was primarily documented in obscure, underground Japanese publications. The most notable mention came from an advertisement in , a magazine catering to the "gray market" of game backup devices.

Developed in just one week by Japanese journalist Yoshihisa "Kowloon" Kurosawa, Hong Kong 97 was never intended to be a masterpiece. Kurosawa’s goal was to create the worst game possible as a mockery of the highly regulated video game industry dominated by giants like Nintendo and Sega.