Okay, so let's unpack this. Imagine you are handed
a mission. Right. You need to create a piece
of media, but your explicit undeniable goal is
to make it as fundamentally broken and absolutely
parable as humanly possible. Which goes against
basically every creative instinct. Exactly. You
want to build something so cynical that it actively
insults the medium it belongs to. You cobble
this nightmare together in 48 hours. You sell
a few copies out of the back of some shady publications.
And then you just walk away. You assume it's
buried forever. Right. You move on with your
life. Yeah. But then decades later, you wake
up to find the Internet has unearthed your garbage
masterpiece, and you are now an unwilling legend.
It's the ultimate anti -success story. It really
is. Today, we are taking a deep dive into the
strange, highly secretive world of Yoshihisa
Kurosawa, who often went by the name Kulun Kurosawa.
A fascinating figure. We are looking at the making
of what is widely considered the worst video
game ever created. a bizarre 1995 Super Famicom
release called Hong Kong 97. And the materials
we have to untack this are just as unconventional
as the game itself. So true. We've dug into archived
underground 90s gaming zines and contemporary
retrospective essays from the retro gaming community.
And most importantly, we have Kurosawa's own
highly revealing 2018 tell -all interview with
the South China Morning Post. Which is just a
goldmine. Our mission today is to understand
how a deliberate mockery of the gaming industry
accidentally became an enduring internet legend.
Because this isn't just a look at retro gaming
trivia. For you listening, this is a psychological
study of underground culture. It's about the
sheer terrifying power of internet sleuthing.
Oh, absolutely. And what actually happens when
you create a piece of anti -art that escapes
your grasp. It takes on a massive life of its
own. When you release something into the wild,
even if it is a pure joke. You completely surrender
how the world receives it. Yeah, you lose control.
So to understand how we get to a 1995 Super Famicom
disaster, we really need to look at the guy who
built it. Yoshihisa Kurosawa. Right. Kurosawa
wasn't your standard aspiring game developer.
He was born in Tokyo in 1971. But from what I'm
seeing in these retrospectives, he wasn't taking
the traditional path. No, not at all. He wasn't
going through computer science programs or aiming
for a comfortable corporate job at Nintendo.
Where does a guy like this even get his start?
In the tech scene. He started deep in the trenches
of early, highly technical computer culture.
We're talking about junior high school and he
is already running his own BBS for the Amiga
computer. A BBS, a bulletin board system. Exactly.
Running an Amiga BBS in Japan in the 1980s is
such a specific. incredibly niche space to operate
in. It takes a serious level of technical dedication.
He is building his own digital community long
before the mainstream even understands what being
online means. That technical foundation is crucial
here because he was operating heavily within
the Magicom era of the 1990s. The Magicom era,
right. He wasn't just a casual hardware enthusiast.
He leveraged his deep computer geek knowledge
to dive headfirst into the world of game console
backup devices. And more importantly, he became
an active chronicler. of it. Yes, he did. He
serialized articles in enthusiast computer game
magazines. He specifically focused on the massive,
completely unregulated pirated software scene
happening over in Hong Kong. So he is acting
as this sort of digital punk rock journalist.
That's a great way to put it. He isn't just buying
bootlegs, right? He is shining a light on this
shadow economy. He's writing about it for other
hardcore tech enthusiasts. Which tells us so
much about his mindset. He is completely comfortable
operating on the fringes. It shapes his entire
worldview. He is looking at the media landscape
at intellectual property and at the polished
retail gaming industry through a very cynical,
very practical lens. He understands how software
is copied, distributed, and monetized outside
of official channels. And his personal life reflects
that exact same restless fringe energy. He doesn't
stay in Tokyo writing magazine articles forever.
No, he moves. The sources show he relocates to
Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Which is a huge shift.
What happens when a guy who lives and breathes
the cutting edge of Tokyo's underground tech
scene suddenly uproots to 1990s Cambodia? Well,
he tries to reinvent himself as an entrepreneur,
but in spaces that were incredibly challenging.
He attempts to run a bookstore in Phnom Penh.
A bookstore? Yeah. And he also tries his hand
at publishing free business papers. Wow. Both
of those specific ventures ultimately fail. I
can only imagine the logistical nightmare of
trying to run an independent publishing venture
in Cambodia. During that era, it would have been
incredibly difficult. But those failures don't
seem to stop his output at all. Right. He just
keeps going. He remains fiercely dedicated to
his writing. He continues authoring niche computer
books and producing these very gritty underground
Asian travel journals. So he is a businessman
and a nonfiction essayist who is clearly drawn
to the raw, unpolished sides of society. Exactly.
And that sets the stage perfectly for 1995. Let's
look at the video game history happening at that.
exact moment. The Super Famicom is at its absolute
peak in Japan. The Golden Age. You have massive,
highly polished, big -budget masterpieces dominating
the culture. Games that defined a generation.
And then you have Kurosawa sitting at the intersection
of game development knowledge, hardware piracy,
and his own cynical travel experiences. How does
he react to this booming, polished industry?
absolute contempt. According to his own later
admissions, he looked at the state of the gaming
industry and wanted to create a total mockery
of it. He wasn't trying to make a hidden gem.
No, he didn't even want to make a game that fell
into the so bad it's good category. His explicit
motivation was to engineer the worst game possible.
He creates a fake company for this, right? He
established a completely fabricated homebrew
label called Happy Soft LTD specifically for
this release. It is a deliberate act of sabotage
disguised as a Super Famicom cartridge. Absolutely.
But there is a massive catch here. Despite his
deep knowledge of computers and running BBS systems,
Kurosawa actually had very little practical programming
skill. Which is a pretty big hurdle when you're
making a game. You can't just wish a Super Famicom
game into existence. Right. Especially in 1995
without modern development engines. So how does
he pull this off? He recruits an accomplice.
Okay. He enlists the help of a friend to handle
the actual coding. And this wasn't just some
random hobbyist. This friend was actually a legitimate
employee at Enix. Wait. Enix is in the powerhouse
RPG developer behind Dragon Quest the very same
That is incredible. I am just picturing this
legitimate professional developer moonlighting
over a weekend to help his friend build a digital
trash fire. Because the timeline here is absurd.
Is it right? Entirely absurd. Working together,
they built Hong Kong 97 from the ground up in
exactly two days. Two days. 48 hours to conceptualize,
assemble, and finalize a functioning Super Famicom
title. When you only have two days to make a
game, you clearly aren't composing original music
or drawing pixel art animations. Not at all.
The assets they used are a masterclass in aggressive,
scrappy copyright infringement. Where did he
even get the materials to build this thing? He
sourced them the exact same way he approached
his travel writing, by wandering the streets
and pulling from the raw culture around him.
Okay. For the audio, he didn't hire a composer.
He walked down to Shanghai Street, bought a secondhand
laser disc, and ripped the audio straight off
of it. And for anyone who has seen gameplay footage
of Hong Kong 97, that... Audio is legendary for
all wrong reasons. It really is. It is a short,
looping sample of a song that just plays endlessly,
driving the player absolutely insane. It never
stops. It never changes. It's relentless. And
the visuals. Just as chaotic. The main character,
Sprite, the pixelated hero the player controls
on screen, was blatantly stolen right off a random
movie poster. He just took it from a poster.
He just digitized it and dropped it into the
code. No original art, no cohesive design document,
just pieces of stolen pop culture glued together
with pure spite. It is the anti -art aesthetic
taken to its logical extreme. So after a frantic
48 hours, Kurosawa has this maddening copyright.
infringing game sitting on a hard drive. A completely
hostile piece of software. He obviously can't
send this to Nintendo to get official cartridges
pressed. How do you distribute something like
this in 1995? This is where his background in
the Magicom scene pays off perfectly. Oh, right.
The backup devices. Exactly. He utilizes those
exact same game backup devices he had been writing
about in his underground journalism. He goes
to the famous computer malls in Sham Shui Po,
buys the necessary backup hardware, and begins
copying his homemade game directly onto standard
floppy disks. He is literally bootlegging his
own original creation. Yes. But even with the
floppy disks ready to go, he still needs buyers.
He can't put these on store shelves next to Chrono
Trigger or Final Fantasy. So he taps into his
existing network of underground gaming and tech
magazines. The ones he wrote for. Right. He writes
articles under various pseudonyms, heavily hyping
up this bizarre, edgy creation from Happy Soft
LTD. Creating his own fake buzz. He sets up a
completely unregulated mail order service through
the back pages of these signs. It is such a fascinatingly
raw distribution model. If you were a reader
of these obscure magazines, you would read this
hyped up, probably very weird advertisement.
Put cash in an envelope and mail it off to a
phantom company. And a few weeks later, Kurosawa
mails you back a floppy disk containing the worst
game ever made. He even created some cheap merchandise
to bundle with it, right? He did. He operated
this mail order scheme for a few months, selling
to a handful of curious readers who were deep
in the underground scene. And then what? And
then, as abruptly as the two -day development
cycle began, the distribution just stopped. He
just closes up shop. Completely. He moves on.
He goes back to his travel journals, his books
and his life in Southeast Asia. Just leaves it
behind. For over a decade, Hong Kong 97 is effectively
dead. It is just a microscopic forgotten blip
in the vast history of bootleg software. Kurosawa
himself forgets all about it. But this is where
the timeline shifts and where the Internet changes
the absolute rules of legacy. The Internet always
finds a way. We jump forward to the late 2000s,
and there is this massive cultural shift happening
in online gaming communities. We see the rapid
rise of Kusoge culture. Yes, Kusoge. Literally
translating to shitty games. And that culture
thrives on digital archaeology. It became a badge
of honor for gamers, YouTubers, and internet
sleuths to seek out, play, and document the most
broken, baffling, and unplayable games ever created.
They aren't looking for hidden masterpieces.
They are actively hunting for the bottom of the
barrel. And as these sleuths are digging through
the deepest, darkest archives of obscure Super
Famicom ROMs, they eventually stumble upon the
Holy Grail. They find Hong Kong 97. Think about
what this looks like to a Kusochi fan finding
it for the first time. It has the stolen movie
poster graphics, the maddening, relentless looping
music from the Shanghai Street LaserDisc, virtually
zero functional gameplay mechanics, and this
incredibly weird, edgy lore attached to a phantom
developer called HappySoftLTD. It was absolutely
destined to explode. It really was. It became
wildly infamous across message boards and video
platforms. But crucially, that infamy was entirely
unwanted by its creator. Right, because no one
knew who made it. For years, the identity of
the person behind HappySoft was a complete mystery.
The game possessed this mythical status precisely
because nobody could figure out who would make
something so deliberately awful. But the internet
is relentless. You cannot hide forever when thousands
of people are obsessed with solving a mystery.
How do they finally crack the case? They connect
the pseudonyms, the old magazine articles, and
the tech writing. Eventually, rabid fans of this
game managed to track down Yoshihisa Kurosawa's
personal Facebook account. Can you imagine the
psychological whiplash? It must have been surreal.
You are a businessman and travel writer. You
log into your personal social media account to
check in on your life, and suddenly you are staring
at an inbox overflowing with messages from thousands
of strangers. People you have never met. They
are bombarding you day and night with questions
and memes about a bootleg floppy disk you made
over a weekend 20 years ago. It is a profound
invasion of his current reality, and his initial
reaction was to just ignore it. I would too.
He maintained a vow of silence regarding Hong
Kong 97 for 23 years. He refused to acknowledge
the messages or engage with the Crusade community.
But the pressure just kept mounting. The legend
of the game grew too large to ignore. He realizes
he can't just delete his way out of this. He
had to say something. So in January of 2018...
He finally breaks his silence. He gives an exclusive
interview to the South China Morning Post. And
that interview is a remarkable piece of video
game history, primarily because of its tone.
Because he doesn't use the platform to claim
some sort of avant -garde genius, does he? No,
not at all. He doesn't try to cash in on the
viral fame or sell new merchandise. He uses the
interview to lay out the unglamorous, frustrating
truth. He details the two -day development cycle.
He outs his Enix employee friend. He explains
the Shanghai Street LaserDisc audio. He just
lays it all bare. He explicitly states his original
goal was purely to mock the game industry. But
the most striking element of the interview is
that he isn't celebrating this massive cultural
footprint. He is pleading. Yes. He literally
uses the platform of a major newspaper to beg
gamers to drop the subject. He wants nothing
more than for the world to let Hong Kong 97 die.
It is the ultimate monkey's paw wish. He set
out to make a piece of anti -art that mocked
the industry, but he executed that vision so
perfectly that the industry's most hardcore fans
immortalized him for it. His contempt became
their treasure. But what is truly fascinating
about Kurosawa's timeline is that his story in
the gaming industry doesn't actually end with
him just hiding from a bootleg floppy disk. No,
there is another chapter. If we jump back slightly
to 2005, a full decade after Hong Kong 97, but
long before the internet found him, he actually
had a legitimate career in game development.
This detail is just incredible. It blew my mind
when we were reviewing the sources. The guy who
made the worst game ever actually gets involved
in a real retail video game release. It was a
2005 title called The Miniskirt Police. Yes,
it was part of the well -known Simple Series
in Japan. The Simple Series. For you listening,
the Simple Series was a long -running line of
budget -priced video games known for their very
straightforward, often quirky and bizarre premises.
This was Kurosawa's very first actual retail
CD -ROM release. But he didn't pitch the game
from scratch. The sources show he joined the
developer, a company called Daft, right in the
middle of the game's development cycle. He steps
into the role of game designer. And here is the
absolute punchline to this entire era of his
life. He is working with a tiny team, only about
five people in total, who is sitting there in
that five -person development room. It is his
friend. The exact same Enix employee who helped
him program Hong Kong 97 a decade earlier. They
are reunited. The duo behind the worst game ever
made is back together working on a budget retail
title about miniskirt -wearing police officers.
You can't write this stuff. And the design input
that Kurosawa brings to the table for this light
-hearted, quirky budget game is just as jarring
as you would expect. He told the development
team that his design approach for the miniskirt
police was heavily influenced by Rockstar Games'
Manhunt. Manhunt. We are talking about one of
the most controversial, gritty, and ultra -violent
stealth survival games ever released. A profoundly
dark game. The psychological brutality of Manhunt
is legendary. The fact that Kurosawa was channeling
the dark, oppressive energy of Manhunt into the
design of a quirky budget game about police officers
tells you everything you need to know about Manhunt.
about his creative sensibilities. It really does.
Whether he was authoring gritty travel journals,
building bootleg floppy disks in two days, or
designing legitimate retail releases, he was
always looking to subvert expectations. He consistently
injected darkness and cynicism into the mundane.
He was always pushing the boundaries of whatever
medium he found himself working in. So what does
this all mean for you listening to this deep
dive? Why should we spend our time caring about
a guy who tried his hardest to make a terrible
game succeeded and then spent two decades running
away from his own success? It's a great question.
I think this is a brilliant, hilarious lesson
in the utter irony of human effort and the loss
of authorial control. Think about how many developers
pour their heart, soul, millions of dollars and
years of their lives into polished masterpieces.
Only to be totally forgotten by the world a month
later. And then you have Kurosawa. Right. He
puts the absolute least amount of effort possible
into a project. He actively designs it as a cynical
joke, a weapon against the very audience he is
selling it to. And that is the exact creation
the universe decides to remember him for. It
proves that once you put a creation out into
the world, it is no longer yours. The audience,
the culture, and the passage of time decide what
your work means, regardless of what you intended.
This raises an important question, one that sits
right at the heart of internet culture and the
way we consume media today. What's that? When
a creator intentionally fabricates a piece of
bad media as a sharp critique, and the public
ironically elevates it to the status of an enduring
beloved legend who actually owns legacy of that
work. Is the true historical meaning of Hong
Kong 97 defined by the artist who desperately
uses newspaper interviews to beg the world to
forget it? Or is the meaning defined by the thousands
of fans who through their shared fascination
and relentless digital archaeology refuse to
let it die.