People often ask me what the worst video game I've ever played is, and to that I answer it depends on what kind of game you're talking about. In terms of video games I just find boring, I can list off any number of visual novels that have put me to sleep. In terms of games I find morally wrong, you can reckon the highly disturbing nature of Lolita Syndrome (by Enix, of all companies) just from the name alone. But in terms of just flat out being broken and unplayable, absolutely non-functional in every conceivable way, then look no further than Goumon Master for the PC-8801.
[The game's title screen. You can't make this up.]
For background, Goumon Master was created by the one and only Kowloon Kurosawa, who you might know for the now infamous Hong Kong 97, along with being the author of the SixSamana narrative novels. The game was released in 1990 under the handle "T. Tanaka", which may or may not have been his BBS handle at the time (he kept ownership of a fan BBS for Amiga computers). For the longest time, I thought this thing was lost media because you pretty much have to turn the Internet upside down to even obtain a ROM of the game. As it turns out, the game's unavailability is for a pretty good reason.
After you boot the game up, it gives you a prompt asking whether or not you want to use sound. Don't even bother; it doesn't matter which one you choose as no sound will play no matter what. Perhaps a good thing considering Hong Kong 97's infamous 5-second-loop, but I digress. After this you're shown the above title screen, and afterwardsgiven the following four options:
My grasp on Japanese is extremely minimal at best, but the first one says "start", the second one says "online manual", the third one says "????? and information", and I don't know what the fourth one says. Clicking two or three just displays text on screen, both of which look to be conversations Kurosawa had with other anonymous BBS users. The fourth one, however, loads and shows this:
Your guess is as good as mine.
Anyway, after this, the game restarts, and your only choice left is to go with option one. You're presented with a cutscene that starts on a goofy depiction of an evil castle, almost like a poorly-drawn Wily castle from Mega Man. After this, it zooms in to push this over-the-top depiction of violence on your screen:
I would normally recoil from a such a sight, but the lack of any music and the edgy middle-school level drawing skills prevent me from really taking it all that seriously. After that, this general dude approaches the knife guy and has a conversation with him. I am unable to translate, but if it's anything like Hong Kong 97's intro or what little in English is available from SixSamana, then it's probably a sight to behold.
After the conversation, the game states with much enthusiasm "STAGE 1 START!". The general gives some orders to the knife guy, and then we're presented with this screen, which says something along the lines of "press F10 to interrogate!". This message lingers as a countdown timer starting from 30 and the word "blue" are added.
And here's what makes this game broken as I stated earlier: pressing F10 does absolutely nothing. It doesn't matter how many times you press it, nothing will happen except that aforementioned timer ticking down from zero and giving you a game over. I've heard talk that once in a while, when all the stars and planets align, F10 will actually trigger an event, but all it ends up doing is leaving the guy with a bruise on his eye and the word "blue" changing to "yellow". You are inevitably going to get a game over at this point no matter what. It's like a cruel prank.
Hong Kong 97, despite being obviously thrown together in a short timeframe, was at least still a functional game. You could shoot the dudes and go for an unreadable high score. Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing at least let you drive your car around a track and get a trophy PNG at the end. Goumon Master is like the equivalent of a "game" made in PowerPoint, where you can't do much of anything except advance the slides. Sometimes, even that doesn't work, as the game is prone to crashing if you press too many keys! There was obviously an attempt at some kind of gameplay, but whatever that is, the world may never know. Despite all this, I'm almost thankful it exists, as it provides a poster boy example of what happens when you don't properly test your software.
Thank you, Kowloon Kurosawa. You insane weirdo.
[The game's title screen. You can't make this up.]
For background, Goumon Master was created by the one and only Kowloon Kurosawa, who you might know for the now infamous Hong Kong 97, along with being the author of the SixSamana narrative novels. The game was released in 1990 under the handle "T. Tanaka", which may or may not have been his BBS handle at the time (he kept ownership of a fan BBS for Amiga computers). For the longest time, I thought this thing was lost media because you pretty much have to turn the Internet upside down to even obtain a ROM of the game. As it turns out, the game's unavailability is for a pretty good reason.
After you boot the game up, it gives you a prompt asking whether or not you want to use sound. Don't even bother; it doesn't matter which one you choose as no sound will play no matter what. Perhaps a good thing considering Hong Kong 97's infamous 5-second-loop, but I digress. After this you're shown the above title screen, and afterwardsgiven the following four options:
My grasp on Japanese is extremely minimal at best, but the first one says "start", the second one says "online manual", the third one says "????? and information", and I don't know what the fourth one says. Clicking two or three just displays text on screen, both of which look to be conversations Kurosawa had with other anonymous BBS users. The fourth one, however, loads and shows this:
Your guess is as good as mine.
Anyway, after this, the game restarts, and your only choice left is to go with option one. You're presented with a cutscene that starts on a goofy depiction of an evil castle, almost like a poorly-drawn Wily castle from Mega Man. After this, it zooms in to push this over-the-top depiction of violence on your screen:
I would normally recoil from a such a sight, but the lack of any music and the edgy middle-school level drawing skills prevent me from really taking it all that seriously. After that, this general dude approaches the knife guy and has a conversation with him. I am unable to translate, but if it's anything like Hong Kong 97's intro or what little in English is available from SixSamana, then it's probably a sight to behold.
After the conversation, the game states with much enthusiasm "STAGE 1 START!". The general gives some orders to the knife guy, and then we're presented with this screen, which says something along the lines of "press F10 to interrogate!". This message lingers as a countdown timer starting from 30 and the word "blue" are added.
And here's what makes this game broken as I stated earlier: pressing F10 does absolutely nothing. It doesn't matter how many times you press it, nothing will happen except that aforementioned timer ticking down from zero and giving you a game over. I've heard talk that once in a while, when all the stars and planets align, F10 will actually trigger an event, but all it ends up doing is leaving the guy with a bruise on his eye and the word "blue" changing to "yellow". You are inevitably going to get a game over at this point no matter what. It's like a cruel prank.
Hong Kong 97, despite being obviously thrown together in a short timeframe, was at least still a functional game. You could shoot the dudes and go for an unreadable high score. Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing at least let you drive your car around a track and get a trophy PNG at the end. Goumon Master is like the equivalent of a "game" made in PowerPoint, where you can't do much of anything except advance the slides. Sometimes, even that doesn't work, as the game is prone to crashing if you press too many keys! There was obviously an attempt at some kind of gameplay, but whatever that is, the world may never know. Despite all this, I'm almost thankful it exists, as it provides a poster boy example of what happens when you don't properly test your software.
Thank you, Kowloon Kurosawa. You insane weirdo.
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