Made-up Cousin, Killer Doughnut - Hong Kong '97
Game = Hong Kong '97 by HappySoft
Obtained Via = Emulator cause I wasnt paying THAT for THAT!!
Video Footage = http://youtu.be/oka1XfJuSc8 (Warning : Contains Racial Slurs)
It's not often you encounter a game that makes you want to rip off your ears in a fury and destroy all trace of the Cartridge with some manner of sledgehammer. Now you may ask what manner of game could evoke such a violent response, Introducing~ Hong Kong '97 for the Super Nintendo.
Made in 1995 by ironically titled Development group "HappySoft" in the dying days of the Super Famicom, the game, set during the transfer of sovereignty to Hong Kong, places us in the role of Chin (Apparently Bruce Lee's Cousin as touted by the introduction) who has been hired by the Hong Kong Government to wipe out the entire Chinese nation's populace to halt the wave of crime striking the newly sovereign country. Yet meanwhile in China research was underway to create the worlds greatest weapon... the reanimated severed head of Deng Xiaoping (The Guy hadn't even died yet) ...when it comes to Bio-weapons.. wow even by disater movie standards that's a stupid one.
Upon switching on the game the player is bombarded by the shrill track of "I love Beijing Tiananmen" in a 3 second loop that will remain with you until you finish and haunt you for days (See ripping off your ears above) but like most horror movies the horrible music is but a prelude to what the player is about to have done to them. After the rather short and baffling intro to the story the game begins very abruptly, as Chin, who simply stands out as being the only person on screen wearing white, begins his crusade of shooting Chinese policemen, and if you figure out any of this before you get an instant game over, fair play to ya.
The game's health system is..well absent, there is none, no extra lives no continues, only a rather grusome Game Over Screen of a pixelated corpse, and here's the kicker, Everything kills you in one shot, sometimes even items that the dead folks drop that are meant to help you. So you toil away, shooting and avoiding everything for fear of death by doughnut (I'm not kidding) until after many shootouts with cars IT appears the severed head of Deng Xiaoping complete with badly drawn ms-paint blood just in case the giant head trying to squish you wasn't evidence enough that it had been detatched from its body. After a rather pointless bout with the dismembered photo, it explodes in a cheap rectangle gif of an explosion like everything else you shot with your fist and you're treated to a lavish ending sequence where all that horrible gameplay was justified by the engorging story of Chin's pursuit of happiness, except I'm totally lying and the game just starts all over again, same Maoist propaganda backdrop and all. If at this point your brain hasn't imploded in protest to the music you'll want to turn off the power, remove the cartridge and place on a burning pyre Darth Vader style just so it can't hurt anyone else.. or sell it on Ebay to some guy in Taiwan willing to shell out big bucks for an actual copy.
The game has developed a cult following over the years in some asian nations, most likely due to apparent so Bad it's Good appeal, I much rather the term So Bad it's like being violated by a Cactuar. It even prompted a Spin off, Taiwan 2001 which brought back the gameplay in its full ulcer inducing pestilence adding a bombing option for some reason. The game was distributed by HappySoft themselves since no game store wanted to touch the product, and as a byproduct is now one of the rarest games in existence and will sell for a premium online. Thus we say goodbye to this abomination as well as HappySoft who were never heard from again, and as we put this racial slur packaged as a game to a violent firey rest, I leave you with one rather baffling thought that has plagued me since I first played it so long ago... Why was the Canadian Embassy mentioned under support?
