30 Years Later, Japan’s Provocative Cult Classic Returns — Smash Hot Dogs and Taylor Swift Tacos, and Consider My Wishlist Updated

Every now and then something so trashy and so committed to the bit barrels onto the scene that I have to look up from my usual film/TV rabbit hole. This is one of those times.

The most notorious cult game in Japan is getting a sequel — on Steam — in December

According to Automaton, which cites a brief from Japanese outlet Game*Spark, writer Yoshihisa 'Kowloon' Kurosawa is back to extend the foul legacy of his 1995 floppy-disk shoot-em-up Hong Kong 97. The sequel is called Hong Kong 2097, it is aiming for a December release, and yes, it is actually coming to Steam in the US.

So... what exactly are we dealing with here?

• The sequel leans hard into shock value. Fentanyl — the synthetic opioid driving most overdose deaths in the US — is apparently a weapon you get to use.
• You play as Chin, implied to be a distant Bruce Lee relative and a heroin addict.
• Chin also has a 'Shiofuki yokai' spray ability. Think: chaotic squirt attack as crowd control.
• The enemy roster is basically a fever dream: a trenchcoat-flashing Uncle Sam, dancing hot dogs, and what looks like America’s current royal couple, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, bundled up in taco meat.
• Your divine mission, delivered by God: wipe out the population of the fictional nation 'Amurikkka.'
• The Steam blurb also pitches a collectible card set of soiled underwear. There are 20 to collect, in case you were wondering how far this thing goes.

Why people still talk about Hong Kong 97

Hong Kong 97 didn’t just get called 'the worst' Japanese game because it was janky; it earned a kind of infamous internet afterlife. It had an openly hateful premise about killing 'fuckin' ugly' Chinese communists in Hong Kong and used a photograph of an actual corpse for its game-over screen. Kurosawa later said his aim was to make 'the worst game possible.' If you ever wondered why its legend stuck, that’s why — grotesque by design and proudly so.

This new one is gross, yes — and that’s sort of the point

Look, Hong Kong 2097 sounds irrefutably nasty. But in an era where political pressure keeps squeezing what weird, bad, or just plain confrontational art is allowed to exist, there’s something darkly energizing about a game this rancid sliding onto Steam with gun penises and a tranquilizer dart. Sometimes the thing that shocks you is also telling you something true — about taste, about culture, about what platforms think they can or can’t host.

'You can even censor another country's free speech,' says NieR creator Yoko Taro, pointing to Steam’s habit of yanking adult games.

Worth remembering where this came from

Kurosawa’s original was a one-disk provocation; Hong Kong 2097 looks like a bigger, louder escalation. The sequel’s stew of taboo weapons, celebrity caricatures, and divine-mandate mass murder is deliberately revolting and intentionally juvenile. That’s not an endorsement; it’s the context. If you’re curious how far they’ll push it this time, we’ll find out in December when it hits Steam — assuming it survives Steam’s own ever-shifting rulebook long enough to launch.