Exclusive | Developer of world’s worst video game, Hong Kong 1997, ends silence to reveal its strange genesis and beg gamers to drop it
With little money and no programming expertise, Yoshihisa Kurosawa of Japan set out to make the worst game possible; he is mystified players have taken it so seriously that, 23 years on, they bombard his Facebook page with questions
The year is 1997 and Hong Kong is the setting for what is generally regarded as the worst video game of all time.
As Britain transfers sovereignty over the territory to China and the tanks roll in, so do Chinese in huge numbers, causing the crime rate to soar. Former British governor Chris Patten engages undercover operative Chin, a long-lost relative of Bruce Lee with a striking resemblance to Jackie Chan. His mission: to kill all one billion of those “ugly reds”.
Released for the Super Nintendo system in 1995, Hong Kong 1997 is awful – a crude, ridiculously broken 16-bit shooter made in a couple of days and utilising over-the-top unlicensed visuals and music.
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“My goal was to make the worst game possible,” Hong Kong 1997 developer Yoshihisa Kurosawa told the South China Morning Post in his first interview since making the game.
“When I was young, I harboured a dream of working in the games industry, [but] I disliked Nintendo games. The settings and the characters all felt stale. In those days, all games were manufactured by [Japanese game giants] Nintendo and Sega, so it was impossible to put out your own indie game. You were subject to rules and ethical standards, and you had to pay steep royalties just to make a game.”
