Hammerjack

This game is such an oddity. Depending on how you count it, this is Hideo Kojima's second game (after Metal Gear for the NES). And it's basically Blade Runner but legally distinct enough to not get sued. Yet they also decided to make one character look exactly like Sting from the 1984 Dune movie for some reason:

And the game was later re-released as 'SD Snatcher' with the Chibi "super deformed" look:

It's all just so weird.

The game was ported to a bunch of different systems so I'm curious for those who have already played the game... does the version matter? Is the PS1 version good enough or do I need an MSX2 emulator to get the "best" version of the game? Also, have any of you played SD Snatcher? Is it worth playing?

Here's the intro to the game if you've never heard of it.

Thin Air feels like a Takeshi Kovacs knock-off but given that it's written by the same author, I guess that's ok. Just like Altered Carbon, Thin Air is about a ridiculously overpowered ex-soldier trying to solve a crime in a cyberpunk city and ends up digging deeper and deeper into unraveling a conspiracy. But this time, it takes place on Mars.

To be fair, this is a totally different universe than the Takeshi Kovacs series and has its own unique new technologies. It actually takes place in the same universe as another of Morgan's books, Thirteen, but Thirteen takes place on Earth and Thin Air takes place on Mars so the only overlap is in the names of some governemnt organizations. But if you enjoyed Altered Carbon, I think you'll enjoy Thin Air. They both have a similar sci-fi hard-boiled detective noir feel.

I stumbled upon a list of the (supposedly) best cyberpunk comics. The list started out with the expected well-known manga like Ghost in the Shell and Akira, but then they listed Shatter and Hard-Boiled. And I'd never heard of either of them. So I'm curious if anyone here has read and would recommend either of these comics.

I guess Shatter was the first commercially available comic fully illustrated on a computer (rather than drawing by hand and scanning into a computer). So it was created on one of the first Apple computers, back when there were maybe 3 fonts to choose from. All that doesn't really matter to me though, I only care if it has a good story and is cyberpunk.

Hard-Boiled, on the other hand, has Frank Miller's name attached to it. So I just assume it's a good, well-written story. My only question is how cyberpunk it is. I guess I could read it on Hoopla and find out for myself, but I'd like to hear other people's opinion on it before I dive in.

Last week, I tried describing what I was thinking for a new logo for this community. Here's my attempt at showing what I was thinking. Yes, it's very amateurish and I would love for someone to make it better, but it shows my intent. Also, I think it's somewhat recognizable when shrunk down:

I'm still open to the idea of others creating a new icon, but if I don't get anything else I might use my mod powers to declare that by unanimous consent everyone agrees my half-assed icon is the best.

This community currently has a banner and icon generated by AI. That's all well and good, and I like the amorphous blob of neon skyscrapers used in the banner. But I don't like the icon. My problem is that when you shrink the icon down to the size used in all apps, those two orange neon signs end up looking like flippers on a neon pinball table to me.

Unfortunately, I'm not artistic enough to make an icon on my own. So I thought maybe I could open this up to the community and see if any of you are artistic enough to make one for me. Or competent enough in photoshop to throw something together. Or maybe you can give more direct AI prompts to make something specific for this community.

I'm open to any designs you think might work, but my idea was to take the Lemmy logo and add like a pink or green mohawk on top and futuristic visor covering the eyes. Something that'd be both "cyber" and "punk" but hopefully distinctive enough to still be recognizable when shrunk down to icon size. And I'd rather avoid any references to specific cyberpunk works since this is a community for the cyberpunk genre in general, not a Blade Runner or Ghost in the Shell community.

One last thing. I didn't want to make this a separate post but I'll be on vacation all next week. I know no one really cares, but I've been trying to post something every day and if a week goes by with no new posts, I don't want anyone to think I disappeared or gave up on this community. I'll be back next week with more random nonsense to post each day. EDIT: (I'm back from vacation now)

Mute definitely takes place in a cyberpunk setting, but something about it just feels off to me. Maybe it's the fact that the main character is basically Amish, or that the plot isn't especially cyberpunk, or that I just don't like Paul Rudd's character in this movie. I guess I'm stuck wondering why they bothered to set this movie in a cyberpunk world since they didn't really utilize it in any way. I won't say it's a bad movie, but it's just not for me.

What do you think? Did you enjoy Mute? Would you consider it cyberpunk?

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

This is a total joke game but it's priced right at $5 and they totally committed to the joke. Rather than trying to teach pseudo-linux hacking commands (like in Hacknet or Uplink), this game is inspired by terrible hacking scenes in movies and TV (like having two people type on the same keyboard as fast as they can).

This game is all about mashing random keys on your keyboard as fast as you can. That's how you "hack", just like in the movies. The game does mix it up a bit by doing extra damage if you type actual words and playing basic mini-games to perform certain actions, but the main focus is on bashing your keyboard as frantically as you can so you can feel like a movie hacker.

Here's a trailer, showing how frantic everything is. It just released on Monday and is only available on Steam. It's totally ridiculous and now my hands are tired, but it's fun.

I dislike LitRPG as a genre. I won't stop anyone from reading it, but I personally think it's a lazy cop-out to world-building. I tried reading one that started talking about the character's mana points and putting items in their inventory (when the character wasn't inside a video game) and I immediately put it down. Also, I'm pretty bitter about the fact that the entire 'cyberpunk' section of the Kindle store is nothing but LitRPG. I don't consider LitRPG to be cyberpunk-by-default and it bothers me that I can't actually find cyberpunk novels because of all the LitRPG to wade through.

But, I'm a sucker for cyberpunk stories with hackers and, as I mentioned, I struggle to find new cyberpunk novels in the Kindle store as it is. So I took a chance with Underdog: Hackers of Artem.

As far as LitRPG goes, it doesn't stray too far into that genre. Any time a character gets a new augmentation, the book shows me their updated character sheet as if they were in a TTRPG. I don't care how many points are now allocated to the character's dexterity rating so I would just skip over those character sheets. And honestly, that was really the only indicator this was a LitRPG. Nothing else in the plot/story/world-building felt like LitRPG so it didn't really bother me.

As for the story, it's about a group of high-tech low-life friends who decide to work together to start a gang. They get in over their head, get attention from bigger gangs, and we're off and running.

Overall, I liked it. Each member of the gang has a role (the leader, the muscle, the hacker) and the main POV follows the hacker, which is what I wanted. My only real complaint is that the book is 740 pages long and once I reached about 70% into the book it really started to feel like I was approaching the end. They resolved the main conflict, there was a bit of a time jump, and a nice epilogue showing where each character ended up. I was starting to think the remaining 30% of the book would be like an appendix, or glossary, or, I don't know, rules to play in this world as a TTRPG or something. But no, after that resolution and epilogue there was an entirely new conflict with new antagonists and new struggles for the characters to face. It felt like the last 30% should've been book 2 in the series, or an exclusive ebook or something. It was strange. That second story wasn't bad, it was just odd to include it in the first book. Especially when the book is over 700 pages; the author didn't exactly need to pad the length.

One thing that's kind of neat about this book is a group of authors got together and decided to each write their own story within Artem, the city where this takes place. So one author might write a story about an ogre living as a weapons dealer in Artem and another author can have their characters buy weapons from that ogre. It's a nice little connected world for readers of the series without feeling like required reading (kinda like the Cosmere). Although, as far as I can tell, there's no website or grouping in the Kindle store to help you find the other connected books. I think there's just the Hackers of Artem, Pilots of Artem, and Artem Underworld series but you'd think if these authors wanted you to find more about their inter-connected world they'd... post that somewhere online or something. It's just weird that if I was a huge fan and desperately wanted to learn more, I'm not sure where I'd go.

But anyway, aside from all the other Artem books I could read, I enjoyed Hackers of Artem.

Including any movie, TV show, video game, book, anime, whatever. What's your favorite depiction of cyberspace?

Maybe Hackers?

Or Lawnmower Man?

Maybe Ready Player One?

Or the video game Rez?

Or, I don't know, Tron?

Or maybe you prefer the "consensual hallucination" of Neuromancer? Or the Metaverse from Snow Crash?

Your avatar can look any way you want it to, up to the limitations of your equipment. If you're ugly, you can make your avatar beautiful. If you've just gotten out of bed, your avatar can still be wearing beautiful clothes and professionally applied makeup. You can look like a gorilla or a dragon or a giant talking penis in the Metaverse. Spend five minutes walking down the Street and you will see all of these.

When I say "cyberspace" I'm thinking any computer-driven virtual world you can navigate through in the first person. And personally, I'm excluding any virtual worlds that look identical to the real world. So I'd exclude things like The Matrix and The Thirteenth Floor.

What do you think? Which cyberpunk work created the best cyberspace world?

The game is definitely cyberpunk but since this is just a reveal trailer with no gameplay, there's no way to tell what type of game it actually is.

The synopsis says:

Lose yourself in the dystopian world of New York in the year 2329 in Nobody Wants to Die, a new detective noir adventure where immortality comes at a price that someone has to pay. As Detective James Karra, you'll lead the investigation using advanced technology, risking it all in pursuit of a serial killer targeting the city’s elite.

"Detective noir adventure" is pretty vague so who knows what it will end up being.

Cloudpunk is a good game for people who don't want to stress out while playing a video game. This is a very low-stakes mellow gameplay. You're given the freedom to fly all over the city at your own pace. Plus you can get out of your taxi and walk around all you want. But this isn't like Crazy Taxi where you're just constantly collecting fares, there is a plot.

If you don't know the word voxel, it's a "pixel" with "volume". So while a pixel is a square, a voxel is a cube. The voxel art-style is more apparent when you get out of your taxi and walk around:

Here's a trailer. You can get it on Steam, GOG, Switch, Xbox, Playstation, anywhere you want.

Also, the developers are working on another game in this universe called Nivalis. It's supposed to be more of a life-sim where you own a noodle stand rather than driving a taxi. Here's a trailer for that one.

This is so preliminary I doubt it will actually be made, but I'd love a Watch_Dogs movie!