Hong Kong 2097 Announcement Trailer – Happy Soft + Kanipro – YouTube
The game’s Steam description bluntly advertises one of its more grotesque features: “And if that wasn’t enough, Hong Kong 2097 also allows you to build your dream card collection of soiled undies. Can you collect all 20?”
Hong Kong 97 earned its infamy partly because internet sleuths highlighted the game’s disrespectful premise — which, in the developer’s own blunt phrasing, targeted “fuckin’ ugly” Chinese communists — and even discovered an in-game game-over screen that used a real photograph of a dead person. Kurosawa has previously said the original was intentionally designed to be “the worst game possible.”
Personally, while Hong Kong 2097 is undeniably offensive, I don’t see it as identical to its predecessor. With rising pressures toward political censorship, especially around creative expression, there’s a strange relief in seeing provocative, boundary-pushing works survive distribution filters and appear on platforms like Steam. That doesn’t make the content tasteful, but sometimes provocation and shock still carry a kind of truth.
“Steam removing adult games shows ‘you can even censor another country’s free speech,’” says Nier creator Yoko Taro.
Source: gamesradar.com
