Kurosawa promoted the game through "Game Urara," a Japanese magazine specializing in "game copy" devices and illicit hardware. He used postcard-style advertisements within these niche publications to sell the game via mail order on floppy disks.
The developer of Hong Kong 97 utilized this source material to create a deliberately provocative aesthetic, capitalizing on the gritty, "underground" vibe of the Kowloon Walled City era. By scanning a low-quality image from a cheaply printed magazine, the developer achieved a specific texture—the blurry, grainy, low-fi visual style—that has become synonymous with "cursed" internet imagery today. hong kong 97 magazine
While the specific issue of the magazine has not been definitively preserved in high-quality archives, its legacy survives digitally as the source of one of the most recognizable and disturbing images in video game history. It serves as a reminder of a time when content filtering was non-existent, and independent developers could freely lift content from local tabloids to create digital artifacts that would puzzle and disturb audiences for decades to come. Kurosawa promoted the game through "Game Urara," a