Hammerjack

I've mentioned this before, but I'm a fan of the Watch_Dogs series. And I can't believe they're actually making a movie for it. I have no doubt this movie will be terrible but that won't stop me from seeing it in the theater. Can't wait!

Released in 1995 (the same year as Hackers and The Net!) and I've never heard of this movie. I think it was direct-to-video though, and there are plenty of terrible direct-to-video movies from that time.

Here's a description of the movie from someone's review on imdb:

An evil billionaire develops a weapon that will entrap its victims in a catatonic state of virtual reality. His girlfriend steals the disk (back when DVD discs were considered a big deal) that creates the software for the weapon and amazingly, it's the only copy. She makes friends with a sailor who helps her escape, and they put the software in a tattoo on his back.

Here's a trailer. If you think you can stomach it, the entire movie has been posted to youtube. For what it's worth, one of the reviews says there's a lot of nudity in the movie but I guess it isn't enough to trigger youtube's algorithm for removal. I think it's a little too low-budget even for my tastes so I haven't tried watching but maybe someone here might be interested.

I happened to stumble upon this today and wanted to talk about it. Bujji & Bhairava is an animated 2-episode mini-series (15 minutes each) prelude to one of the most expensive Indian movies ever made, Kalki 2898 AD.

Now, as far as I can tell from the trailer, Kalki 2898 AD doesn't actually look cyberpunk to me. It looks more like Stargate or Gods of Egypt, where "the gods" have glowy futuristic technology but the humans are just living regular (non-scifi) lives. Yet this 2-episode animated prelude absolutely takes place in an Indian version of a cyberpunk city. The main character is a high-tech low-life bounty hunter who finds an android head and installs into a car to help him capture bounties. He's trying to make enough money so he can enter The Complex. Although I can't tell if The Complex is where all the rich people live (which would be even more cyberpunk) or if it's where "the gods" live (which I'd call less cyberpunk).

Anyway, these two 15-minute episodes are available on Amazon Prime. And the movie they're leading up to, Kalki 2898 AD, releases on June 27.

Nivalis is a life sim set to be released in spring of 2025, from the makers of Cloudpunk.

I posted the reveal trailer for this game a couple months ago but at that time all you could tell was that the game was set in a cyberpunk world. Now there's a gameplay trailer and it looks a lot like Observer to me. That is, as far as I can tell, it's a walking simulator (no combat) about a detective investigating a crime.

I don't think the original Perfect Dark was cyberpunk (it was mostly about aliens, right?) and this new Perfect Dark doesn't really look cyberpunk either so I probably shouldn't be posting it here. But something about the gameplay/setting looks like a solarpunk version of the Adam Jensen Deus Ex games so I still wanted to share it with this group.

I don't know. I'm not sold on this new reboot, but I'm intrigued.

I've always been intrigued by WH40k. I like how over-the-top everything is and how they'll shamelessly steal ideas from from Lovecraft, Dune, Star Wars, or any other franchise they want and somehow make it all work. But, personally, I've never been a fan of military sci-fi. So stories about the Astartes never really interested me and as a result, I only had a passing interest in WH40k. And then I discovered Necromunda.

To be fair, I only discovered the video game Necromunda: Hired Gun and while it looked like a cyberpunk game set in the WH40k universe, I thought Necromunda was just the name of this specific game (like how Darktide is just one game). But I recently learned that Necromunda is the name for an entire WH40k spin-off and Hired Gun is just one game set in that world. And my mind was blown.

From what little I know, Necromunda is absolutely cyberpunk. It takes place in a giant Hive City where the elite/rich live near the top in opulence while the poor live below the Hive City in ruins. And the story is basically about various gangs living in these ruins fighting with each other. With cyborgs, augmented humans, high tech gadgets, and whatever else they can shove into the story. It's over-the-top cyberpunk.

Of course, anyone familiar with WH40k is probably already aware of Necromunda, but it's all completely new to me. And while I don't play TTRPGs, I'm curious to learn more about this world. I found there are 28 books set in the Necromunda universe but I wouldn't know where to start. So for anyone who was already aware of Necromunda, can you recommend any books to me? Are any of them good?