Hammerjack

Lemmy needs more content that isn't about US politics right now so I'm making a random post.

What's the most obscure cyberpunk movie you've seen? Name a cyberpunk movie you don't think anyone else has heard of.

I'm not saying you have to think it's a good movie (or that you even like it), I just want to discuss obscure, unknown cyberpunk movies. Come on, let's talk about something other than politics here.

Aside from the unfortunate name of "Virgin Punk" (which I think is a terrible name), this looks like a fairly standard anime about bounty hunters in a cyberpunk world. It could be fun.

New Netflix original starring Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt, and Ke Huy Quan and the trailer has a slowed-down rock song. Perfect recipe for success, right??

I'll admit I don't know anything about The Electric State but I guess it's based on a graphic novel. From this trailer, it looks mostly post-apocalyptic but there's a shot of people wearing VR helmets so who knows, maybe there's some cyberpunk buried in there too.

I have no idea what this anime is about other than it appears to take place in a cyberpunk world and the main character seems to do parkour for... reasons. But it's from the creator of Cowboy Bebop (Shinichiro Watanabe) and I guess they got the director of the John Wick movies (Chad Stahleski) to choreograph the action sequences. So it'll probably be good.

I can't find any info about when it'll actually release, but sometime in 2025.

Finally a new action game based on Tron. Nothing against Tron: Identity but I'm not really a fan of visual novels. So I'm looking forward to this one.

If you like podcasts and cyberpunk then I think the HTLL podcast is pretty enjoyable. It's just two guys re-watching/re-reading various cyberpunk works and then cracking open some beers and discussing it. They aren't experts and don't provide any real new insight, they just talk about what they liked and didn't like. Also, they'll recap the plot as part of their discussion so you don't need to have seen/read the works recently.

As someone who doesn't have anyone in real life that cares about cyberpunk, it's nice listening to a couple friends just informally chatting about the genre. And as far as a cyberpunk podcast goes, I'm not sure what else I'd want. Plus, it's fun listening to them trying to make sense of the plot of various terrible cyberpunk movies from the 90s.

You can listen to it anywhere that hosts podcasts, but I'm linking to their linktree here as a simple starting point.

Transform yourself through grafting as you escape a vast, dying space station in this thrilling post-cyberpunk survival horror RPG from the makers of BATTLETECH and the Shadowrun Trilogy.

When I saw this game was being made by Harebrained, I knew I recognized the name and the gameplay made me think this was the group that made RUINER. But no, this is the group that made Shadowrun Returns, Shadowrun: Dragonfall, and Shadowrun: Hong Kong. So they have a history of making cyberpunk games and they refer to this one as "post-cyberpunk". It could be interesting.

Altered Alma is a cyberpunk metroidvania. The kickstarter is currently active but it's already funded at 250%. Anyway, the reason I wanted to mention it is because there's a demo available on Steam and I think it's really fun (and very cyberpunk). If you're a fan of metroidvanias, I think it's got great movement, great combat, and great sprite work. And with it also being cyberpunk, I'm very interested.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2awesomestudio/altered-alma

It seems ridiculous to me to make a board game based on a video game based on a TTRPG... but this is really just a kickstarter (er, gamefound) so it isn't real just yet. The funding goal was hit within 10 min and has already made over a million dollars though, so I guess it'll be real soon enough...

https://gamefound.com/en/projects/go-on-board/cyberpunk-2077-the-board-game

A couple months ago, I shamelessly posted a darksynth recommendation guide someone on reddit made and a lot of people here on Lemmy seemed to like it. Well, the creator of that guide just posted a new version so I'm shamelessly sharing it here again.

You can see the full-sized, zoomable version here. Once again, this was created by khroshan over on reddit, not by me.

Let me get this out of the way first: this is a mindless pulp cyberpunk novel. It isn't high art. But it also isn't as bad as I would expect a book titled "Jack: Into the Beanstalk" to be. This isn't a bland re-telling of Jack And The Beanstalk with some human augmentations slapped on top. It's primarily a cyberpunk world first and any references to the fairy tale feel more like easter eggs than core story elements. So in that way, I was pleasantly surprised. With that said, this post is more about me trying to keep this community alive than a strong recommendation. It's a fun mindless story, not a "must read".

Both Astro Boy and Battle Angel Alita have the concept of a rich city in the clouds above the poor working class living on the ground. Even the Deus Ex reboot had Hengsha as a city on top of another city. So when this book has a rich city being held up above the poor city, I see that more as a cyberpunk trope than a "castle in the clouds" from the fairy tale. But maybe I'm being too generous. Anyway, the story is about a girl (named Jack) who has cybernetic limbs. She has a neurological implant in her spine which helps control these limbs. At the beginning of the story, she's doing odd jobs for a gang in the hopes of paying off the debt she incurred when purchasing the limbs. The implant in her spine gets damaged and suddenly she can see a glowing green line reaching from the ground to the rich city above. That green line is The Beanstalk. Her goal is to figure out why only she can see it and what exactly it is. No magic beans, no giants in the sky, nothing else that I would consider a reference to the fairy tale.

In the process of trying to figure out what The Beanstalk is, she joins up with a group of freedom fighters. And this is really my main complaint with the story. This may be a nuance of the cyberpunk genre that only I care about, but I don't think cyberpunk stories should have rebellions. I'm good with a group of mercenaries teaming up to take down a megacorp, but I don't want a group of rebels attempting to make systemic change. I think an aspect of the cyberpunk genre is in trying to find your place in the world, not trying to change it. But that really is just a nitpick regarding my own enjoyment of the story; and if that's the worst I can come up with, it's not bad. The characters all have distinct personalities, the world is fleshed-out, the story is good; it's a fun romp.

There are two books in the series so far and both are less than 300 pages. Both end on a cliffhanger though. I jumped right into book 2 to see the resolution of the first book's cliffhanger and now I'm left with another cliffhanger waiting for book 3. Also, I'm not a huge fan of where the story went in book 2. It's introducing too much "magic" for my taste. The book pretends it's based on quantum computing but as far as the world-building is concerned, it's magic. There's a lot of "oh, I guess she can do that now" in the second book. And while you might argue it's stupid for me to complain about magic in a re-telling of a fairy tale, it really has not felt like a fantasy or fairy tale at any other point in the story so it's pretty jarring to me.

So as I said before, overall, a fun pulp cyberpunk novel but mostly me showing this community is still active.

https://linktr.ee/CyberPriest7