Taiwan 2001 (found parody PC game; 2000s-early 2010s)

Title screen.

Status: Lost

Taiwan 2001 (台灣2001), abbreviated as TW2001 is a game created by 'Kuso Soft' (kuso being Japanese for crap) in Taiwan as a spoof of the 1995 homebrew shooter game Hong Kong 97 by Japanese Kowloon Kurosawa for the Super Famicom, in which the latter game has received a cult following in Japan and Taiwan because of the game's difficulty, anti-Chinese overtones, poor grammar, graphic content (namely the fact that the final slide in the intro features a photograph of Holocaust victim corpses and that the game over screen utilizes a still image of a man killed during the Bosnian War in mid-1992, which is a screenshot taken from a mondo film), and reputation as one of the worst video games ever created. The name of the company 'Kuso Soft' is most likely a made-up company as a parody of HappySoft, the company who distributed Hong Kong 97.

The gameplay of Taiwan 2001 is very similar to Hong Kong 97; however, Kuso Soft claims that it is intended to be worse than that of the original game.

Story and Content

The game can be played in three languages: Taiwanese Mandarin, Hua, and Standard Mandarin. After the title screen, the intro follows, which is a near-exact replication of Hong Kong 97's plot:

"The year 2001 has arrived. A herd of fuckin’ uglies. are rushing from the mainland. Crime rates skyrocketed![sic] Therefore, the Taiwan Government called Wang Shou En’s relative Wang Shou Min for the education plan of the mainlanders. Min is an etiquette expert. Reform all 1.2 billion people! However, in mainland China, there was a secret project in progress! A project to transform the captured Wang Shou En into an ultimate weapon!"

According to the story, the game takes place in the year 2001 in Taiwan, relating to the international recognition and political claim between the People's Republic of China (PRC, mainland China, ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)) and the Republic of China (ROC, Taiwan, initially ruled by Kuomintang (KMT)) over each other as the sole sovereign government of China with Taiwan. It also relates to the political status of Taiwan as to whether the island should be recognized as independent of mainland China under the ROC, or as a part of China whether the PRC and ROC is the ruling government as a whole.

The Republic of China is recognized as comprising the island of Taiwan as well as a few much smaller surrounding islands although it technically claims mainland China as a government-in-exile, and vice versa with the PRC claiming Taiwan as part of its territory. This is the result after the ROC and the KMT lost to the CCP during the Chinese Civil War in 1945, establishing the PRC in mainland China and exiling the ROC to Taiwan at the end of the island’s occupation by Japan. Both entities have opposing ideologies, with the PRC being under Communist one-party rule and the ROC being more democratic with a multi-party system and a capitalist economy.

Similar to the situation with Hong Kong and Macau during their transfer of sovereignty to the PRC from the UK and Portugal respectively, and the question of their political and economic autonomy under the Chinese government thereafter, there was a concern of Taiwan being taken under control by force under mainland China and be subject to the PRC’s sovereignty and system of government as a result of its political status, and should Taiwan and the ROC attempt to claim independence and sovereignty.

It is possible Wang Shou En (王小英) is based off the ancient Chinese eunuch Wang Shoucheng, and Wang Shou Min (王小明) of the Chinese actor Huang Xiaoming or Chinese paleontologist Xiaoming Wang.

Wang Shou Min is the boy shown on the title screen and in the intro as well as the protagonist and player character, and Wang Shou En is the head of the girl and the antagonist and main boss. Both characters apparently originated from photocopies of Taiwanese textbooks.

The second screen in the plot features Chen Shui-ban, who was the President of the Republic of China (Taiwan) from 2000 to 2008. Since the game took place in 2001, he was the president at the time. He happened to be the first president of Taiwan in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which overtook the Kuomintang (KMT) as the dominant party since the founding of the ROC and is noted for its support of Taiwanese nationalism, viewing Taiwan as its own independent nation distinct from China with the ROC being only the sovereign government in Taiwan and leaving the rest of China under the PRC, in contrast to the KMT’s support for Chinese unification, with the ROC taking over and being sovereign over all of China displacing the PRC. He also had a policy known as the Four Noes and One Without, in which Taiwan would not declare itself separate from China nor hold referendums over the matter.

Most of the backgrounds and graphical assets in the game were apparently taken from photocopies of Taiwanese textbooks. One of the backgrounds during gameplay features the face of the founder and first president of the Republic of China Sun Yat-sen on a $100 New Taiwan dollar banknote.

Gameplay

Little is known about the game's actual gameplay, aside from what is shown in the screenshots, other than it's similar to the gameplay of Hong Kong 97 in which you control a character named Wang Shou Min and throw projectiles at enemies such as people from mainland China and passing motorcycles while dodging them. It's possible that after defeating a certain number of enemies, the head of Wang Shou En appears and after defeating it a new wave of enemies come again and the game repeats. Additionally, the game also had an exploding 'bomb' command although it isn't known what it exactly does. There are also numbers in red that appear in addition to strings of text in Chinese on the screen during gameplay but it is unknown what those numbers represent, although it could possibly be a score or hit counter. The game over screen says "小明死亡 MinisDEAD", atop a digitized photograph of a CPR dummy, referencing the game over screen of Hong Kong 97 while omitting the use of snuff imagery.

The only evidence of the game's existence is mentions and reviews of the game from an interview between Kowloon Kurosawa (the designer of Hong Kong 97) on Six Samana and on personal blogs, as well as the screenshot of the title screen and gameplay. However, downloads and archives for this game have not been made available.

Availability and Distribution

Unlike Hong Kong 97 which was distributed and sold as a physical unlicensed game for the Super Famicom with a backup device on floppy disk, this game was made as a digital download for PC (Microsoft Windows) and is freeware, meaning the game can be obtained for free with no monetary cost and can be installed and run natively on a computer.

Although screenshots of the game exist, a download link from the official site appears to be broken: http://inxtyle.com/kakeru/other/kuso_icon.htm Direct download link was http://daisukidaisuke.hp.infoseek.co.jp/download/TW2001.zip Web Archive is also unable to download it.

Screenshots

Note: All screenshots are uploaded under fair use for educational purposes.

The language selection screen, showing “Kuso Soft” and the choice for three languages
The title screen with the copyright information and the faces of the two main characters
First story slide
Second story slide featuring former president of Taiwan Chen Shui-ban among with Wang Shou En and Wang Shou Min
Third story slide featuring Wang Shou En
Fourth story slide featuring Wang Shou Min as the ultimate weapon
Gameplay with the background featuring Sun Yat-sen, first president of the ROC
Gameplay featuring an alarm clock in the background
Game over screen
Gameplay with Wang Shou En fighting Wang Shou Min