Cyberpunk

https://xcancel.com/HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN/status/1903929693885317480#m

Fulfils the cyberpunk aesthetic, does it not? Because the musicians come from the Demoscene. Even when the game is mostly about giant robots beating themselves up. (Ok maybe that's a bit cyberpunk too.)

Very accessible dark cyberpunk music. All the tracks I've heard are instrumental. I'm enjoying it a lot so far.

Featuring a sequel to the USS Callister episode from series 4.

In my last post a couple people mentioned that the Neuromancer novel is a pretty dense read and tough to follow. If you agree, I recommend listening to the BBC radio drama from 2002. It's only 2 hours long but it follows the plot of the story really well and has great production.

Definitely check it out if you've got 2 hours and struggled with the novel, or if it's just been awhile since you read it. This is a great adaptation.

There isn't much in this article, other than a reminder that Neuromancer is currently filming in Tokyo. Also, I don't think it's been announced what role Emma Laird has so I don't know if it really hurts things for her to not have read the book. We'll see how well this quote ages though:

It’s a very confusing book, but I think somehow bringing that onto the screen helps tell that story maybe a bit more clearly.

I've read quite a bit of (what I consider to be) the main classic cyberpunk novels. Stuff like The Sprawl trilogy, Hardwired, Snow Crash. I've also read some proto-cyberpunk novels like The Stars My Destination, The Machine Stops, and various Philip K Dick stories.

So I decided to delve a bit deeper into some lesser-known "classic" cyberpunk novels. And I'm struggling. I tried reading Synners, The Shockwave Rider, and Headcrash and I haven't really enjoyed any of them. But I don't want to turn this into a negative post where I just whine and complain about these books, so instead I'd like to ask: for those of you who have read and enjoyed these books, what did you like about them? Were they just products of their time and "you had to be there" to appreciate it? Or is there something more I'm missing?

Again, I'll try not to get too negative here, but I think my main complaint with Headcrash can be summed up by this statement on its wikipedia page:

mixed reviews (often centering around whether the reviewer saw it as satire or a failed attempt at sincere comedy)

As I read it, it felt like a failed attempt at sincere comedy. The jokes are so constant and not funny that I found the writing style irritating. This isn't like Douglas Adams going off on wild silly tangents; Headcrash has the main character reading through a pile of junk mail where each item is some ridiculous hyper-exaggerated take on modern life. It's exhausting. Compare that to Snow Crash, which was also a cyberpunk satire, yet the world-building felt cohesive and consistent. Sure, burbclaves might be ridiculous, along with the idea of a mob-boss pizza owner having too much power, but in-universe these things were treated seriously. Headcrash comes across as the author telling the reader how ridiculous his ideas are.

Shockwave Rider was probably just too much a product of its time for me. Being written in 1975, it has some interesting ideas about computers and the internet, yet so much of the story feels too "near future" with the author extrapolating from life in the 1970s and missing the mark. There are too many items which the author didn't think would change or didn't take a pessimistic/nihilistic enough view of how people would actually use the technology.

Synners I think has the most interesting story, yet the writing style is so strange to me that I'm having trouble following exactly what's happening. I feel like I should like this one, yet I just can't stay focused on it while reading. It's a shame because I think there are some good ideas here. Unfortunately, I tend to read one chapter, get disinterested, put it down for six months, then attempt to read one more chapter with no memory of what happened in the previous chapter. So it's probably more of a problem with me than the book, but each time I finish a chapter I don't exactly feel compelled to keep going.

So those of you who have read any of these books, what did you like about them? What made them special/unique? I'm fully willing to accept that these books were revolutionary at the time but maybe their predictions were so far off that with hindsight, they don't feel very prescient.

Veiled Edge is in early access right now, but there's a demo available and I really enjoyed it so I'm hoping they'll be able to finish the game. The gameplay reminds me a lot of Sanabi but instead of a grappling hook for movement, Veiled Edge uses a teleportation mechanic.

The game currently has a Kickstarter active but it looks like they're pretty terrible at marketing their own game so I don't think many people will find it. I'm not too optimistic about the kickstarter succeeding but I hope they'll still be able to finish the game even if it fails.

Anyway, if you like 2D platformers like Sanabi, I highly recommend at least trying the demo.

I had posted a first look at this anime a couple months ago. The video didn't explain anything but what it did show looked vaguely cyberpunk.

Now with this new trailer explaining the plot... I'm not sure it's cyberpunk at all. Maybe it's near-future, but that's about it. Still, it's from Shinichirō Watanabe (creator of Cowboy Bebop) so maybe people here will still be interested in it.

The trailer says the show will air on Toonami starting April 5 and next day on Max.

Reignbreaker plays just like Hades except rather than being in a world of Greek mythology it's in a (sigh) "medievalpunk" world.

Now, I typically hate when people make up new -punk genres just to sound edgy, but this world does actually have a lot of neon graffiti everywhere. So it's more "punk" than most -punk genres in my opinion. I guess it's about as cyberpunk as Nimona on Netflix, which also had a cyberpunk world with a medieval aesthetic for some reason.

I don't think I'd consider this game to be truly cyberpunk, but I'd call it cyberpunk-adjacent. It definitely has a punk edge, and I'm pretty sure it takes place in the future despite its overall medieval aesthetic. So I figured people here might be interested. There's a demo available during Steam's Next Fest and I think it's at least worth trying the demo if you enjoy roguelikes like Hades.

Looks like this game could be crazy. Not a mellow cyberpunk taxi game like Cloudpunk, this one looks more like Crazy Taxi except you're driving around in the world from Escape From New York.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2927000/CyberTaxi_Lunatic_Nights/

This isn't exactly a recommendation for BloodNet, it's more of me just complaining that it's the only cyberpunk vampire property I'm aware of. And the gameplay looks really boring, with barely any vampires involved.

You'd think a filthy neon-lit undercity full of high-tech low-lifes would be perfect hunting grounds for vampires, yet I don't know of any real cyberpunk vampire stories.

I don't consider Ultraviolet to be an especially cyberpunk movie, or for hemophages to be vampires. Also the movie is bad. Are there any Shadowrun novels with vampires, maybe? Seems like that would fit pretty well.

I tried googling for other cyberpunk vampire stories just in case I was forgetting something and I guess there's a Cyberpunk 2020 expansion called Night's Edge which has vampires in it. That's cool, although I'd prefer a narrative story.

In my search I also found a new series called The Cybernetic Vampire which I'm hoping is exactly what I'm looking for. But the kindle book is only one dollar and it's 650+ pages long. I'm pretty wary if the author thinks his 650+ pages of effort are only worth one dollar, but I'll probably give it a try given my lack of any other choices.

Do you know of any other cyberpunk stories that feature vampires?

Burn Cycle (stylized as Burn:Cycle) is a 1994 point-and-click adventure video game for the CD-i that incorporates full motion video and is set in a surrealist cyberpunk world. The game follows Sol Cutter, a computer hacker and data thief, whose latest theft causes a virus named Burn Cycle to be implanted in his head. The game features a two-hour countdown timer to defuse the virus, with the player jumping back and forth between a fictional ingame virtual reality world known as the Televerse in order to destroy the Burn Cycle virus and solve the mystery of its creation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn_Cycle

Here's a walkthrough of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoLw7SEmLYk

Murderbot premieres May 16 with its first two episodes on Apple TV+. It will run 10 episodes total, with a weekly drop after the premiere through July 11.

I think I've mentioned before that rural cyberpunk is just about my favorite setting and I always enjoy it whenever we get a glimpse. Gibson books are great for that, from Turner's brother's farm and Dog Solitude in the Sprawl, to the trailer park in the Bridge books, and basically all of the stub in The Peripheral. I love the way cyberpunk (realistically) rejects clean, fresh-start architecture and instead layers new over old, and I think rural areas provide even better contrast for that than the cities, despite how old some cities are. I've done a few rural cyberpunk scenes before, mostly for a webcomic. I love looking around my hometowns and trying to capture a type of location - not a specific place, but like an amalgamation of a category like 'farmhouse,' or 'junkyard,' and then adding kludged-on tech.

I made this one as location art for a Solarpunk TTRPG campaign book I've been working on. My goal was to show a sort of old-fashioned for the setting design that used a ton of old, scrapped-together tech. The farmer who lives here was a fan-favorite with my first group of players – he does a lot of work maintaining the meshnet for the mostly-abandoned town where the campaign takes place and he became good friends with the group’s hacker character.

His farm is pretty conservative for the setting. I wanted to play with how perspectives would shift in this utopian solarpunk setting, to have a farm that would seem both futuristic and kinda crunchy-progressive by our standards that would still be pretty stodgy and conservative compared to his neighbors.

He’s relying on biochar, crop rotation, and pollarded trees providing radial chipped wood to replenish his soil instead of manufactured fertilizer, using alley cropping and a handful of other agroforestry techniques to shelter his crops. He cooks his food using a scheffler reflector, drives a woodgas truck he uses to produce his biochar, and generates his power with a mix of solar, wind, water, and woodgas.

But compared to the elaborate food forests of a nearby community, Bob’s open fields and heavy reliance on tech makes his farm look downright traditional.

One of my goals for this region of the map was to explore the different ways one can arrive at some of these practices out of necessity. The people from this abandoned, rural town aren’t likely to be solarpunk ideologues but when supply chains broke down, the infrastructure collapsed, and the population emptied out, those who remained had to adjust to keep going. They look out for each other, grow their own food and generate their own power, and adapt their lifestyles to the seasons because that’s what they had to do to get by when things were bad. Bob is a bit younger than many of the other ‘holdout’ characters, but he’s generally following their mix of goals and motivations.

I find the sort of cyberpunk mix of scavenged tech and a traditional-looking farmhouse to be both a lot of fun and pretty much in line with the farmers I’ve known and worked for, who were happy to bolt new stuff onto old if it got the job done. Bob’s farm is full of scavenged robotics, radio antennas, and other tech, mostly controlled using cybernetics linked to his brain. He’s added a drone hangar to his barn and his UAVs swarm into the skies like bats while robotic tractors and hexapod gardening robots patrol his fields and guard his goats. He bolts solar panels, vertical turbines, electrical boxes, and radio antennas to his buildings with an almost punk focus on practical results over aesthetics.

Other elements also show his involvement in his community. In addition to maintaining the local scrapped-together communications network, he plays a big role in maintaining the town’s network of trials. He’s parked an old snow groomer, of the type used by ski mountains, under a lean-to attached to the barn. He uses this each winter to pack down snow on the town’s roads and trails, as most of them are seasonal, and people here travel by cross country skis, snowshoes, snowmobiles, or use vehicles modified with skis and tracks in the winter.

edit: Also huge thanks to the ham radio subreddit and the community on lemmy for looking over the antennas for me and making suggestions!

I'm tired of hard-boiled detectives and mercenaries with augmentations. I want some cyberpunk stories with middle-finger-in-the-air, anti-authority, non-confirmist, angry punks. Can anyone give me some recommendations? Movies, games, books, whatever. Just something with a punk rock attitude... more than Johnny Silverhand.

I'm thinking things like Hackers, or Burst City, or the SINless duology, or maybe Cookie Cutter (which I haven't played). I'm annoyed that I can't think of more than that..

And I'm hoping KILLTUBE actually comes out. Although while it looks extremely punk, I'm not sure if it's angry punk. We'll see.

(cyberpunk skull picture from Mashiene11)

“I think Luc [Besson] is making some sort of spinoff of a bunch of his biggest characters, and Leeloo might be one of them. An animated, cartoon version. I think back in those days, people weren’t thinking about sequels, it was just about making the best movie you could possibly make. For me, Leeloo was one of the most important characters of my young life at that point. It’s what really introduced me to what being a real actor was about.”

So not much to go on yet, but it could be interesting...

I've been keeping my eye on Neon Inferno for a while. It's a run-and-gun game that looks a lot like Huntdown to me (which I loved), but Neon Inferno also has gallery-shooter sections. So I'm interested in giving it a try. I haven't played the demo yet but I'm downloading it now and figured I'd share while I wait for it.

NYC 2055: a city beyond salvation. Blast your way through this dense cyberpunk jungle in NEON INFERNO, an explosive fusion of 2D run-and-gun and gallery-shooter, and help the Family dominate its streets!

Here's a trailer.

Every once in a while someone uploads another copy of Akira to youtube. The latest one, from last week, looks good (Japanese audio with optional subtitles) but it's missing the last 30 seconds -- which is kind of missing the whole point of the movie. But this led me to check how many Akira uploads I could easily find from previous posts here and on [email protected]

• Japanese audio, hardcoded subtitles 1080p https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo8zOYkc-GI
• Japanese audio, optional subtitles missing last 30 seconds, subtitles are a little weird 1080p https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tqvkeskcy9g
• English dub with optional (ASR generated?) subtitles 2160p https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qujRfw4usC8
• English dub 1080p https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSBpzX8_hfo
• English dub 720p https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmjsXZjUqyM

Personally I think the first is the best. Weirdly, they all seem to be blocked in Germany and Austria. However, every previous upload I checked was still there. Not sure what that says, but as you probably know, it's an excellent film.

Akira (Japanese: アキラ) is a 1988 Japanese animated cyberpunk action film[4] directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, produced by Ryōhei Suzuki and Shunzō Katō, and written by Otomo and Izo Hashimoto, based on Otomo's 1982 manga Akira. Set in a dystopian 2019, it tells the story of Shōtarō Kaneda, the leader of a biker gang whose childhood friend, Tetsuo Shima, acquires incredible telekinetic abilities after a motorcycle accident, eventually threatening an entire military complex amid chaos and rebellion in the sprawling futuristic metropolis of Neo-Tokyo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_(1988_film)

For those of you upset that Netflix only added season 1 of Pantheon, season 2 will be added next month!

I always enjoy speedruns that use glitches and crazy tricks so this Deus Ex speedrun at AGDQ was really fun. I thought maybe others here might like to see how fast you can run through the original Deus Ex. Also, the runner does a good job of explaining what he's doing and why, which really helps to understand what you're watching.

With Blade Runner 2099, Tron: Ares, and a new GitS series all coming in 2025 I'm curious which franchise will always keep you coming back for more, even when you know each new entry is progressively worse than the last (looking at you, Terminator franchise).

Personally, I'm always ready for more Deus Ex and I'm disappointed that the next game is already cancelled. Also, I'll always come back for more Watch_Dogs. Dumb as it may be, I love that series.

So what franchise are you always excited to hear is still alive?

“In Los Angeles 2099, Cora lived her entire life on the run, a chameleon forced to adopt numerous identities. To secure a stable future for her brother, she assumes one final identity and is forced to partner with Olwen, a Replicant who’s confronting the end of her life.”

https://collider.com/blade-runner-2099-filming-wrapped/