For reasons that remain unclear even to me, I spent my time recreating the legendary disaster that is Hong Kong 97 as a reusable GDevelop 5 template.
For anyone unfamiliar with it, Hong Kong 97 is a notoriously bizarre and low-budget unlicensed shooter released in 1995 for the Super Famicom. Over the years it became famous online for its strange premise, repetitive gameplay, terrible production values, and overall reputation as one of the worst video games ever made. In other words, it was the perfect candidate for a GDevelop template.
The result is a fully playable retro-style shooter project inspired by one of gaming’s most infamous titles, but rebuilt from scratch in GDevelop as a learning resource and starting point for your own projects.
Features include:
- Endless enemy spawning
- Score system
- Lives and game over mechanics
- Simple arcade shooter gameplay
- Easy-to-modify event sheets
- Beginner-friendly structure
- Ready-to-use GDevelop source project
Whether you’re looking for a retro arcade shooter template, studying how endless enemy systems work, or simply wondering what terrible life choices led to the recreation of Hong Kong 97 in 2026, this project has you covered.
You can use it as a starting point for your own parody game, retro shooter, meme game, or just as a reference for learning GDevelop 5.
You can download it here:https://late-night-tom.itch.io/hong-kong-97-gdevelop-5-template
This also isn’t my first questionable contribution to the GDevelop ecosystem. I’ve previously released:
If you decide to check out any of my projects, even leaving a star rating helps me a lot! It genuinely helps more people find these templates and motivates me to keep making weird stuff like this.