Cyberpunk

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?

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.

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

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 !fullmoviesonyoutube@lemm.ee

• 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/

I don't know anything about this game other than what's in the trailer, but it reminds me a lot of Anno: Mutationem with its 2.5D pixel art style and (what appears to be) "exploration" sections completely separate from the "combat" sections. Who knows, maybe this game will have random combat encounters while also exploring, but in Anno: Mutationem those two styles were almost two separate games. You would be locked in a 2d-plane during combat but had 3d movement when exploring.

Anyway, Anno: Mutationem was a Chinese-made game; this game is Brazilian-made and takes place in Sao Paulo. If that means anything to you.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3066300/Sky_Dust/

In the year 2057, a greedy CEO takes control of the Earth, and it's up to his rebellious daughter and a cyberpunk hacker to save mankind.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20918378/

• the link from above: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe88RsahSsA
• another link, this is the one I watched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fEsMHphNZc but looks like it's only available in Canada, United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, and United States of America (the other one is unrestricted)
• I think this is the link if you want to pay to watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53flivF9GNI
• some behind-the-scenes video from the moviemakers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbC_sh5McBM
• the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScbUCkG-Kuo

Does a hacker protagonist immediately make a movie cyberpunk? Can a movie be cyberpunk if it takes place in the modern day?

I had an online argument once with someone who thought Sneakers wasn't just a cyberpunk movie but essential viewing for the cyberpunk genre. I don't consider Sneakers to be cyberpunk, or even a very good movie, so that argument was crazy to me. But maybe I was being too much of a gatekeeper; maybe other people consider Sneakers to be cyberpunk.

At least WarGames had a curious high schooler hacker rather than a bunch of old guys in suits hacking, but I wouldn't really consider either movie to be cyberpunk. Are they cyberpunk-adjacent though? Are cyberpunk fans likely to enjoy WarGames or Sneakers?

Here's a trailer for WarGames. You can watch it on Max. Fun fact: when Ronald Reagan watched WarGames, he asked his staff whether something like that could actually happen. They looked into it and came back to say "The problem is much worse than you think." This led to the creation of the first National Security Directive regarding computer security.

Here's a trailer for Sneakers. I'm not aware of any presidents having watched this movie. I don't think it's streaming anywhere either.

I know I seem to be posting a lot of Netflix shows lately, but I really just post anytime I come across a new cyberpunk-looking trailer and I can't help if they've all been on Netflix lately. I swear it's just a coincidence.

Anyway, this Tomorrow And I show looks like an anthology of cyberpunk stories just like Black Mirror. The trailer looks interesting at least. Coming to Netflix on December 4.

I've seen people recommending Pantheon a lot but I've never had a chance to watch it. It's never been available for streaming on any of the services I have. But, the series will be added to Netflix tomorrow (Friday) in the US so I'll finally get a chance to see it. I figured I'd share in case there are others who haven't seen it.

As far as I know, it's about people's consciousnesses being uploaded to cyberspace. Sounds cyberpunk to me.

Fantasy/Cyberpunk anime currently ongoing in Japan and the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_Lord_2099#Anime

As far as I can tell, there isn't a trailer for this anime on youtube but there is a trailer on its Netflix page so that's what I'm linking here.

The synopsis is:

When a lonely hacker gets entangled with a group of underground couriers, they uncover the dark truth lurking beneath Tokyo's seemingly perfect facade.

That sounds perfectly cyberpunk and I'm interested. But the trailer looks.... like a kids cartoon? Yet Netflix is calling it TV-MA? I really don't know what to think of this. I'll definitely watch it (I'm a sucker for anything cyberpunk) but I've got my expectations pretty low on this one.

It'll be available on Netflix on November 21.

What was the first cyberpunk video game you played? Were you playing the point & click adventure games back on DOS? Shadowrun on SNES? Deus Ex on PC? Or did you just recently discover this thing called "cyberpunk" with Cyberpunk 2077?

I'm curious how long everyone here has been into cyberpunk.

Keep in mind this was over 30 years ago. The very first Doom was was still a year away, there were no cell phones, and the internet was still something that only geeks knew anything about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lawnmower_Man_(film)

Molli and Max in the Future is a strange movie. It's basically When Harry Met Sally but set in a cyberpunk world. So the main plot of the story is the various chance encounters between Molli and Max throughout the years and eventually realizing love was right in front of them the whole time (obviously, I mean, that's not exactly a spoiler).

While this movie doesn't really have any cyberpunk themes, the visuals are very cyberpunk.

They spend time together in cyberspace while dressed like Tron:

They have a date in their cyberpunk city:

And there's a part in the movie where Max becomes a mecha fighter and dates his mech's AI.

So even though this is primarily a movie about finding love, the visuals were cyberpunk enough to keep me interested and a lot of the comedy bits worked for me. I don't know, I won't say I loved this movie so it isn't exactly a strong recommendation, but I wanted to bring it to people's attention just in case there are others out there who are more interested in rom-coms than I am. I've complained before about Amazon's tv series Upload and how I wish it wasn't a rom-com and spent more time exploring the cyberpunk world instead. This is very similar. It's a fun (comedic) cyberpunk world but the story is focused on two people falling in love. And I'm just not a rom-com type of person. So I can't say whether this movie is good or bad, I just know it isn't for me.

But, decide for yourself. Here's a trailer, and it's currently streaming on Amazon Prime.