Hammerjack

Hardwired (1986) by Walter Jon Williams is a classic cyberpunk novel. It hits all the themes of cyberpunk while also taking place in the wasteland, rather than your standard cyberpunk setting of an overgrown city.

I feel like the original cover (left) totally captures what this book is. It's 80s, it's cyberpunk, it's in the wasteland. You might say it's cheesy now, but I bet It's a good visual representation of what the author was thinking.

Now look at the reprint (right) from 2006. That's just awful. I mean, sure, he's in the wasteland, but that just looks like a cheap photoshop job. Look at those sunglasses, is that a robot eye or a lens flare? What's with his puffy jacket? Ugh, I'm just so annoyed by it. Especially because the book is good, and I highly recommend it. But if you saw that cover on the right at a store, you definitely wouldn't think it was a cyberpunk classic from the 80s.

Speaking of which, check out the cover for the audiobook:

I'm not sure which is worse, the 2006 re-print or this audiobook cover. It's such a shame what they're doing to this book with these lazy covers.

Anyway, I recommend Hardwired for any cyberpunk fans who haven't read it. I just wanted to also complain about how lazy the covers are in all the reprints.

In my mind, the "Big Three" cyberpunk novels are Neuromancer, Snow Crash, and Altered Carbon. If someone is new to the genre and asks what they need to read, these are the three I recommend. But I realized the other day that each book also comes from a different decade.
1980s: Neuromancer
1990s: Snow Crash
2000s: Altered Carbon

This got me thinking about what defining cyberpunk work I would pick for the 2010s. And... I'm not sure. I think the best-selling book from the 2010s that would be considered cyberpunk is probably Ready Player One. I don't think the book aged well, but it sold like crazy at the time. On Amazon, it has almost 150k reviews.

But ignoring books, what would be the defining cyberpunk movie from each decade?
1980s: Blade Runner
1990s: Ghost in the Shell? The Matrix?
2000s: ???
2010s: ???

What do you think? What would you say defined cyberpunk in the 2010s?

Akane feels very much like an arcade game. The entire game is one screen with an unending supply of bad guys that you have to kill. Every enemy dies in one hit, but so do you.

The gameplay is really fun though. You have a sword attack and a gun with limited ammo that slowly refills. You can unlock more swords and guns by accomplishing various tasks (block 10 bullets, reach a combo of 50 attacks, etc.).

The game is available on Steam and Nintendo Switch.

Also, I don't know if there's a name for this style of game but I recently came across Kill The Crows, which has the exact same game mechanics (and artstyle?) but with a Wild West theme. It's weird how similar these two games are.

I'm not going to claim this is a fantastic movie, I'm only saying it isn't as bad as the title would suggest. Because with a name like 'iBoy' I would expect it to be much worse.

It's about a teenager who gets shot in the head while using his cellphone. The bullet lodges cellphone shrapnel into his brain and gives him magical control over all electronics. So he becomes a vigilante to stop the local gangs.

So yes, while you do have to shut off your brain and suspend all disbelief, 'iBoy' is such a stupid title I would've thought it'd be an even dumber movie. Plus, I liked the augmented reality visuals when he used his powers.

The movie is on Netflix, so you can go watch it right now!

Appleseed is a strange franchise. Made by Masamune Shirow (the creator of Ghost in the Shell), Appleseed never seemed to reach the same popularity as Ghost in the Shell so all attempts at creating Appleseed movies have always felt somewhat low-budget to me. Also, they usually feel more like military scifi than cyberpunk.

The one exception to this is Appleseed: Ex Machina. This one actually felt cyberpunk to me. One of the main plotlines is about everyone in the city using an augmented reality headset in their day-to-day lives when someone hacks the headsets, turning everyone who uses them into mindless zombies. This is the only movie in the Appleseed franchise (in my opinion) that touches on the 'dehumanization of technology' aspect that I expect/want from my cyberpunk stories. I mean, the 2004 Appleseed movie spent the second half of the movie trying to stop a giant mobile fortress and Appleseed Alpha never even left the wasteland. Having a city inhabited by both humans and cyborgs isn't enough for me to consider something cyberpunk.

I guess part of the problem is I'm expecting the American version of cyberpunk with its 'High Tech, Low Life' focus, while the Japanese version of cyberpunk seems to be focused more on police forces in the future.

What do you think? Any fans of Appleseed here? Am I being unfair by not calling the other movies cyberpunk?

No one from Tron: Legacy is returning and this new movie stars Jared Leto, so we'll see how it goes. Still, more Tron!

Deus Ex: Human Revolution and its sequel Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was a great reboot of the series, but what do you think of the original Deus Ex?

It was a Game of the Year contender in 2000, but what about in 2024? Is it still worth playing? Or are the gameplay and graphics a bit too... dated.

If it's still worth playing, are there any mods to help make the game more tolerable for today's standards?

Drop - System Breach is a hacking game like Hacknet or Uplink but rather than typing out fake hacking commands, Drop can be played with a controller (like on Steam Deck or Nintendo Switch).

The entire game is basically highlighting a box and hitting one button to hack it. But it gets extremely hectic as the game goes on because it gives you more and more things to worry about. Like you have to keep your firewall's health high while also clearing the network's log server to prevent it from detecting you. By the end of the game, you have like 6 progress bars you have to manage to avoid a getting a game over. It sounds simple but it's actually really fun. I recommend it!

This series just started airing on Crunchyroll. It looks like your standard Blade Runner setup with androids co-existing with humans until some androids go rogue and need to be stopped. And yet the trailer has random shots of like mech suits fighting (or whatever it's called when it's just scifi armor). So I really don't know if this show is cyberpunk or just generic scifi.

I'm not sure if I'll watch it but I wanted to share in case others are interested.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2111190/MULLET_MAD_JACK/

Honestly, it looks pretty ridiculous. If you go more than 10 seconds without killing a robot, you get a game over. So it's constant, non-stop action. The game isn't out yet but the linked video is a playthrough of the intro and first two levels.