Hong Kong 97 (video Game) - Gameplay

Gameplay

Immediately after the introduction above (which follows some ads and the title screen), the game starts without any warning. (What usually follows is an instant game over.) The player controls Chin, who tries to shoot and evade the Chinese populace and police officers moving about and spitting randomly on the screen. When shot, the enemies explode in a rectangle with a mushroom cloud, leaving behind a flashing corpse and items for instant death or temporary invincibility. After a while, cars appear from the sides and, after three cars, the final boss appears. The final boss is actually Deng Xiaoping's head from the title screen, and once he is defeated, the game repeats itself. All these happen with a stagnant photo as the background; it is random and might be pictures of Maoist propaganda, Guilin, the logo for Asia Television Limited, the logo for the Chinese Coca-Cola or even Mao Zedong in monochrome.

If Chin is hit by anything other than the invincibility item the game is immediately over (unless Chin is under invincibility), and a gruesome image of a corpse appears as the game over screen, with the words "CHIN IS DEAD!" in English and in a badly toned Chinese "Chén sǐ wáng" (陳死亡), can be interpreted as either "Chin is dead", or as a proper name "Dead Chin") superimposed on the screen. Then the game goes to the credits and back to the title screen and repeats again. The game is noted for its difficulty, one of the factors that made the game a kuso-ge.

The game can be played in English, Japanese, or Traditional Chinese. The first two sentences of the introduction in English mode are: "The year 1997 has arrived. A herd of fuckin' ugly reds. are rushing from the mainland."