There's a new cyberpunk animated movie releasing today in the US... but it isn't getting a "wide" release. So maybe you'll be able to see it in theaters, maybe not.

Amazon has been trying to recommend this book to me for awhile but I've always ignored it. My main issue is the title of the book, Cyberpunk City. That's so generic the author might as well have called it "My Cyberpunk Story". And while the cover art looks great, it's also your generic "person looking out over a cyberpunk city" motif, which is everywhere. So neither the title nor cover gave me any clues as to what this book is about, other than a generic cyberpunk cash-grab.

But, I happened to stumble upon a review of this book outside of amazon and I was intrigued. So I gave it a try. And I loved it. Figures, amazon was right all along.

While this book is full of your standard cyberpunk tropes, the author fits everything together so well it doesn't feel forced. Of course, cyberpunk tropes are what I want from a cyberpunk story, it's just that usually if the author's only goal is to write "a cyberpunk story" then it turns out bland. And that isn't the case here.

So yes, this book is about a hacker getting a crew together for a heist. There's your standard megacorps, AIs, black market dealings, cyberspace, cybernetic augmentations; it checks all the boxes. But the writing is good and I enjoyed myself. Honestly, now that I've read it, the only downside is it's only 260 pages long. That's pretty short for a heist story, which means most of the planning actually goes off without a hitch. There aren't constant distractions and side-quests the characters have to resolve before getting back on track. That doesn't mean the heist is entirely what it seems, though...

There are 5 books in the series, and each book is less than 300 pages. I enjoyed the first book so much I immediately bought the second. So far the second book's plot isn't as interesting, but the writing is still good and I'm still enjoying myself. In the end, that's all I really want.

This song and video are perfectly cyberpunk, I've always enjoyed it. I really liked the first couple songs from Scandroid (Datastream and Salvation Code) but by the time he made an entire album he leaned too far into the 80s aesthetic and love songs for my taste so I stopped listening. It's a shame too, it's rare for a band to create intentionally cyberpunk songs, rather than just music that may give listeners a cyberpunk "feel".

Rez Infinite is a modern remake of the game Rez, originally on Playstation 2 and Dreamcast. Rez is about a hacker breaking through firewalls in cyberspace to reach a malfunctioning AI. The gameplay involves flying your character through cyberspace and targeting multiple AI defenses at once to chain your attacks.

The game was big on rhythm and synesthesia. So the game is trying to get you basically into a trance. And as you play, your character transcends forms the longer you last, with each form gaining more detail:

Each time you die you start out at level 1. If you get hit, you go down to level 0. So you have to level up multiple times and not get hit to see any of the later forms. I've never made it beyond the level 3 form.

Another weird thing about the original game was, in an attempt to really push for synesthesia, the game came with a "Trance Vibrator" which you could plug into the console to further enhance the haptic feedback on the controller. It was a vibrator. Even the game creator admitted it could be used for sexual stimulation. I don't know how they actually got that manufactured and claimed it was for anything else.

Here's a trailer. You can play it on Steam, Playstation, and Xbox. And it has VR support.

Also, the creator made a spiritual successor called Child of Eden but I've never played it.

While it's possible this SPINE game could be good, there's no way it'll get film and TV adaptations. That seems a bit optimistic for game that isn't released yet, has no release date, and no one has heard of.

For what it's worth, here's a gameplay trailer and a cinematic trailer. And it has a Steam page. Like I said, this game could turn out great. And since it's cyberpunk, I'm rooting for it. I'd love a great cyberpunk game. But what little I've seen so far reminds me of Wanted: Dead and that game ended up with Mixed reviews at best.

I read a lot of random cyberpunk novels from the kindle store and I'm always on the lookout for more. Cyberpunk novels are annoyingly difficult to find since the "cyberpunk" category on amazon is nothing but LitRPG, but that's a different rant altogether.

Anyway, I don't actively try to find trans characters in literature (I'm not trans) but I don't avoid books that have trans characters. I figure trans characters actually fit pretty well into cyberpunk universes. So for anyone who is interested in reading cyberpunk stories with trans characters, here are the ones I've read:

Escapology by Ren Warom - The main character is trans but is post-transition so the fact that he's trans isn't even mentioned until ~80% into the book. And it's really only revealed so the villain can make trans-based insults about the main character just to get him riled up. Given that the character is post-transition, I liked the fact that being trans didn't define who he was, it was just something from his past that he didn't really think about anymore. Of course, this also means the reveal of being trans almost felt tacked-on and an after-thought. But in the sequel, Virology, everyone's cyberspace avatars are visible in the real world and the main character has a theory that being trans affected how his avatar behaves. So being trans does eventually have an effect and doesn't feel tacked-on anymore.

The Chimera Code by Wayne Santos - This novel is about a mercenary crew where each person has their role (the leader, the hacker, the muscle, etc.). Their hacker dies so they need to recruit a new one (they even load up the old hacker's consciousness like Dixie Flatline to train the new hacker, so that's fun). Anyway, the new hacker they find is non-binary. This is handled pretty well where every time a new character meets this hacker they ask for the hacker's pronouns. The hacker tells them, and they move on with the story. So the hacker being non-binary is handled throughout the book but it's never a main theme of the story. The plot continues to drive forward regardless of the hacker's gender.

Bang Bang Bodhisattva by Aubrey Wood - This novel is about two characters trying to solve a murder mystery. One acts like he's a hard-boiled detective in a film noir while the other is trans and mid-transition. Now, given that the trans character is mid-transition I'm sure this makes sense, but being trans is a constant topic of discussion. It's like having a character who's vegan constantly telling you they're vegan. Again, I'm not trans, so I don't doubt that someone who is mid-transition constantly has it on their mind. But as a reader, yeah, I get it, she's trans. She's also pansexual and in a polyamorous relationship. I feel like this is more of the focus of the story than the murder mystery. I do like that the author changes writing styles depending on which character is the POV of the chapter. So the detective character always has short, terse sentences while the trans character has more free-flowing sentences. But this is the only novel in the list where I went "ok, this novel isn't meant for me." It feels more like a novel for trans people than just including trans people.

And that's it. Those are the cyberpunk novels I've read with trans characters. I find it interesting how it spans from "almost feels like an after-thought" to "handled, and not a factor" to "ok, I get it, stop talking about it". Honestly, I'm not sure what the "right" way is to handle trans characters so I figure it's good to cover this whole spectrum.

This was mentioned in our discussion of bad cyberpunk movies but I wanted to bring it to a wider audience. Do you consider the 1993 Super Mario Bros movie to be cyberpunk?

I'd say the movie definitely takes place in a cyberpunk city, but are there any cyberpunk themes present?

Here's a trailer. I don't think it's streaming anywhere, but if you watch it I recommend watching with the RiffTrax commentary (Mystery Science Theater 3000 guys) to make it more enjoyable.

Samurai Jack was a great show, there's no question about that. But when I watched the first episode and he arrived in that cyberpunk city, I was really excited. A samurai from the past exploring a cyberpunk future? That sounds amazing.

Of course, as anyone who watched the show knows, he spent very little time in that city. Most episodes took place in the forest or around ancient ruins, and Jack being in "the future" was really just an excuse for him to fight robots so they could make the show as violent as possible and Jack would only get splashed with "oil".

(See? There's no blood! It's safe for kids!)

Sure, there were some episodes that were more cyberpunk, like the rave episode:

And the episode with the robot who just wanted to find his lost dog (Lulu, sweet thing):

But those were exceptions.

Of course, I kept watching the show anyway, because it's great. I was just hoping for more sci-fi/cyberpunk episodes. At least we finally got that last season, which finished the story after over a decade of waiting.

Anyway, here's the intro. You can watch the entire series on Max or Adult Swim.

God Complex (2017) is a great comic. My only complaint is it was cancelled after 6 issues. But at least they've released the whole thing as a single volume to make it easy to read.

The series takes place in a cyberpunk city where the Greek Gods are real and they're the only ones who can access cyberspace. And they all look like futuristic cyborgs, for whatever reason.

The main character is a down-on-his-luck detective investigating a series of murders that seem to be linked to a new cult. This heretic cult claims to worship one single God and The Rulers (Greek Gods) want to put a stop to it. So the detective's murder investigation captures the attention of The Rulers and they get involved. I don't want to say the last issue ends on a cliffhanger, but it definitely ends on a big reveal.

You can read the entire first issue here.

What's everyone's opinion on the original fully black jacket? Panam sported this before they changed it to the red one we know today.

A couple months ago, it was rumored that Robert Pattinson might play Case in Apple TV+'s Neuromancer. It looks like that rumor fell through because it's now official, Callum Turner will play Case. I'll be honest with you, I have no idea who this guy is. But an official announcement about Neuromancer means this project is definitely moving forward!

cross-posted from !synthwave@lemmy.world

Anno: Mutationem is a weird game. First of all, it looks amazing. They totally captured the cyberpunk aesthetic. But in my opinion, the gameplay is just 'ok'. It isn't bad by any means, it's just generic.

The game has two different types of gameplay: 3d exploration, and 2d beat 'em up. And the two don't mix. When in the exploring areas, you can wander around wherever you want and talk to NPCs. But once you enter a combat level, you're locked in a 2d plane for a beat 'em up game. The entire game basically alternates between these two modes, until you reach the latter part of the game where it's all action.

Overall I enjoyed the game but I was obviously playing it for the cyberpunk aesthetic, which is where it shines. Otherwise, the exploration is limited to small regions and the combat is fairly repetitive. Neither are bad, just small in scope.

Here's a trailer. You can get it on Steam, Switch, Playstation, Xbox, wherever.

I've been thinking about Gamer for a while and I've been hesitant to post about it because it really is a bad movie. But I also think it firmly falls into the cyberpunk category. So here we are.

The movie is about a company that invents some new technology which allows you to remotely control other humans. They use this technology to make a new reality TV show where death-row inmates fight to the death for the chance at a pardon. So similar to Running Man, except here the inmates are remotely controlled by teenage video gamers. And while that makes absolutely no sense, that's the story they went with.

However, there's a subplot with a second TV show (or just video game?) run by the same company, and this game is called Society. Society is basically The Sims except you're controlling real people who get paid to be avatars. This is where the movie goes off the deep-end with social commentary and it isn't subtle.

Because this woman signs up to be a character:

And ends up being controlled by this guy:

And that goes about as well as you'd expect. So the plot points are already unsettling but the movie goes out of their way to make it as disgusting as they can.

Anyway, eventually it's revealed that the CEO of the company wants to use his technology to mind-control everyone and only Gerard Butler can stop him. It's a very strange movie and if it didn't try so hard to be gross I feel like it could've been a good movie.

Here's a trailer. You can watch it on Tubi.

I'll admit as a kid I never watched Phantom 2040 mostly due to his boring purple outfit. If he had a cooler costume I probably would've watched it because otherwise it's crime fighting in a cyberpunk city, which I'm a fan of.

So have any of you watched it? Is it any good? I worry that being a saturday morning cartoon from the 90s means it'll just be basic childish plots resolved within 20 minutes. I mean, Spider-Man Unlimited has Spider-Man getting trapped in a cyberpunk city of human/animal hybrids with a spider-suit made of nanomachines and yet the execution was mostly boring. So I expect Phantom 2040 probably isn't worth watching.

Here's the intro. I happened to notice the show because the entire series is currently streaming on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Roku, and Pluto. And there's also a SNES game which I've heard good things about.

The last webcomic I recommended was Black and Blue. This one has a lighter tone, and has got some superhero influences, though I think it still falls under cyberpunk.

I've caught up to 2022 and have enjoyed it so far. Apologies if it's better known than I realized, I just stumbled onto it a day ago.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/14131604

Source: https://wallhere.com/en/wallpaper/2228160

What are your favorite old-school cyberpunk video games? I’m not convinced there’s anything worth playing from the ZX Spectrum/Commodore 64 era, but maybe the NES/SNES/N64/PS1 eras had some good cyberpunk games?

Most of the old cyberpunk games I can think of were on PC, and most of those were point & click adventure games. But what about more action-oriented games? Like X-Kalibur 2097, Slave Zero, or Tron 2.0? Or maybe there are some arcade (MAME) games worth playing?

Also, when I say "best" I really just mean "fun". So give me something better than Raid 2020 and I’ll call it a win.

I know there probably aren't too many metalheads here, and music posts in general never do all that well on this community, but I'm going to post this anyway!

Burton C Bell had been the lead singer of Fear Factory for 30 years when he quit the band in 2020. This is his first song as a solo artist since the split. It's more industrial than Fear Factory was but the video and lyrics are definitely cyberpunk in my opinion. I hope he releases an entire album in this style.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/29811589

Runaway is a 1984 American science fiction action film written and directed by Michael Crichton, starring Tom Selleck, Gene Simmons, Cynthia Rhodes and Kirstie Alley. Selleck portrays a police officer assigned to track down dangerous robots, while Simmons is a scientist who hopes to profit from his manipulation of robots. The film was a box office disappointment and received mixed reviews.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_(1984_American_film)

I don't typically browse kickstarter looking for cyberpunk content but the Almighty Internet Algorithm shoved this video in my face and I gotta admit, it is cyberpunk.

The animation seems really smooth, kinda like the old Flashback, or more recent Lunark. But for all I know, maybe they were going for something closer to Anomaly Agent.

Anyway, this is a Kickstarter that just started and it doesn't look like it'll be a runaway success (or maybe they're just asking for too much money). They've already created a Steam page for the game though, so maybe they'll still work on it even if the kickstarter fails. Who knows, I'll probably just put it on my Steam wishlist to keep an eye on whether it ever releases.