Category Archives: Cyberpunk

Welcome to the Nintendo Wiretap! Each day the team here at Nintendo Wire works tirelessly to bring you the best, most relevant late-breaking Nintendo news this side of the Mushroom Kingdom. To help make ingesting all these meaty stories easier than Kirby hopped up on Miracle Fruit, weve compiled

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The next wave of Shantae: Half-Genie Heros stretch goals and DLC is the focus on WayForwards latest KickStarter update. Risky Boots will be back this summer and instead of saving Sequin Land, youll be destroying it. As for how, a few key details were shared. Riskys pirate gear from Shantae

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Were only a few short weeks away from the launch of Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia and the good folks at Nintendo Minute have a fresh unboxing to hold us over. The team unboxes the sold out Fire Emblem Echoes Limited Edition and explore all of the amazing goodies

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UPDATE: According to the games developer, VA-11 Hall-A is not currently be developed for the Switch. You can check out his statement below.

Polish up those tankards and grab a seat at the bar, because VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartending Action has been rated for the Nintendo Switch in Brazil.

Released last year on Steam (and coming very soon to other consoles), VA-11 Hall-A puts players in the role of Jill Stingray, a young bartender in a cyberpunk dystopia known as Glitch City. Gameplay consists of following recipes to serve customers the correct drink as you listen in about their troubles, provide guidance, and watch as Jill and others struggle in this future world. It can all be summed up quite nicely in the games tagline: Time to mix drinks and save lives.

No release date or price point has been announced, but it will likely run a similar price to the Steam version ($14.99). Stay wired for more info on the title in the future.

Gamer, writer and devourer of pasta. Whenever not letting his daydreams run out of control, he can be found writing for Nintendo Wire, playing old JRPGs, or reading sci-fi and fantasy novels and comics.

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Cyberpunk visual novel VA-11 Hall-A rated for Switch in Brazil - Nintendo Wire

Forbes

'Ghost In The Shell 1.5: Deluxe Edition' Manga Review: A Great Collection Of Cyberpunk Short Stories Forbes With the travesty of the live-action movie adaptation of Ghost in the Shell now firmly behind us, it's worth going back to what made the series so memorable in the first place; its excellent manga. After the events in the original Ghost in the Shell ...

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'Ghost In The Shell 1.5: Deluxe Edition' Manga Review: A Great Collection Of Cyberpunk Short Stories - Forbes

(Last Updated On: April 30, 2017)

CD Projekt Red has recently posted up yet another batch of job listings, this time the company is looking for Senior Character Artists, Senior Graphics Programmers and Character Artists. This information was posted on the companys Twitter account and reflects on the company hiring for the development of Cyberpunk 2077.

E3 2017 is coming up and a significant amount of publishers and developers will be attending the event (or hosting their very own event around that time) in an attempt to build excitement for upcoming hardware and software reveals. Its rumored that CD Projekt Red will show something off at the event, and the dev team could be gearing up to do so soon.

Recently, CD Projekt Red posted up job hiring notices looking for Character Artists and Graphics Programmers. Both the GIF/tweets and their requirements sit below.

We are looking for a person who will be responsible for supporting our Graphics Programmers Team. The responsibilities cover day to day developing cutting-edge graphics and visual effects systems to create optimal, attractive solutions. If youre someone who wants to help to breathe life and realism into our games: this is the job for you!

The rest of the job listing sits below in a bulleted list that focuses on producing high quality code, debugging, bug fixes and designing solutions for large scale problems:

Next up comes the Senior Character Artists and the Character Artists job listings. Both descriptions and bulleted notes lie below.

CD PROJEKT RED is looking for an experienced, talented Senior Character Artist to join the Cyberpunk 2077 team. If your mind is full of ideas of how to create characters of highest quality possible, you are interested in cyberpunk vision and you would like to work with the best experts out there apply!

The rest of the Senior Character Artist and Character Artist listings read that workers must know high quality humanoid characters and item assets. The jobs also call for working close with Animations and Technical departments to make sure everything is in sync:

Speaking of artists and making characters, we might just receive a second trailer from CDPR seeing that the devs are looking for an Event Manager. Thanks to publication site SlimLarnaout we learn some of the process behind making Cyberpunk 2077s trailer:

Usually, working on video game cut scenes involves creating a visual story in an already established world: the animation process is very orderly, divided into classic stages, and predictable. This time around, it was markedly different. The first drafts of the screenplay and preliminary concept art was created when the game was still in initial stages of core development. In the course of our collaboration with CD Projekt RED, we approached dozens of ideas before settling on a seemingly freeze-framed setting that referenced one of the illustrations from the original game manual.

This means we could see yet another trailer while the game is still in initial stages or in core development. What is for certain is that CDPR is keeping true to its word in that more and more people are being hired to work on the Sci-Fi RPG, which seems to be aiming to be the biggest project the company has ever worked on.

Cyberpunk 2077 will release when its ready.

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CD Projekt Red Seeks More Artists For Cyberpunk 2077 - One Angry Gamer (blog)

Cyberpunk is science fiction, often set in a dystopian future, in which society is dominated, for better or worse, by computers and the internet. Rather than direct government overlords, society-at-large is usually controlled by mega-corporations who skew the balance of power away from the poor and needy, fueling tensions and inspiring revolution. The people are represented by radical groups using their soldiers or hackers to shock the system. The internet is used as a great equalizer, a weapon ofthe oppressed to even the playing field against their tormentors. Then again, the danger of computers taking over society and our daily lives is often a themein the genre.

Aesthetically, Cyberpunk often borrows from the film-noir detective genre, but with vivid splashes of electronic neons and proliferation of wildly sci-fi technologies. Cybernetically-enhanced humans coexistwith their unaugmented brethren, but a looming sense of foreboding hangs above everyone; a Cyberpunk world, if not already in full-scale urban warfare, is always on the brink of one revolution or another.Finally, Cyberpunk is empowering to outcasts, misfits, minorities, and other people who are so often characterized as less than.In Cyberpunk, anyone can be powerful, as long as their computer softwareis up to date.

The genre started out in literature, with stories by such visionary authors as William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Neal Stephenson, among so many others. Eventually the movementmade its way onto the big screen.For this list, were going to take a look at some films which not only co-opted Cyberpunks aesthetics, but also did justice to its most prominent themes and ideas. Heres Screen Rants take on the13 BestCyberpunk Movies Of All Time.

Jonny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie starred in Hackers, a gorgeous techno-pop Cyberpunk film directed by Iain Softley (K-Pax, Inkheart). The film came and went at the box office, but became a cult classic for its depiction of the image of computer hackers as akin to Wild West heroes, saving helpless people from evil corporations, as well as its striking visualization of hacking itself. The films depiction of hacking isntremotely scientifically accurate, by any stretch of the imagination, but it works excellently within the movie, which remains true to the spirit of the early hacker subculture.

The film is also notable for its techno soundtrack, which utterly dominated the club scene of the mid 1990s. In Hollywood, computer nerds are still depicted as homely and greasy losers who live in their parents basement and lack basic social skills. Hackers made computer nerds cool and trendy, and directly quoting The Hackers Manifesto, stated that a hacker exists without skin color, without nationality, and without religious bias. It also helped that theyre played by Jonny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie, two of the hottest people on the planet.

The films of David Cronenberg almost always take great pride in their ability to disturb the audience by making them see the undeniable humanity within their absurd premises and graphic imagery. Videodrome is no different. Released in 1983, before the Cyberpunk craze really began to took off, it functions as something of a pre-Cyberpunk film. Instead of internet and computers, peoples lives revolve around and are dominated by trashy television.

James Woods plays an executive of a low-rent TVstation who discovers a mysterious foreign program which consists of nothing but obscene torture-porn violence like Saw, but without the soap opera storyline. The film goes wildly off the rails in surreal and imaginative ways, all leading up to an explosive and esoteric finale. Videodrome lays bare our cultural lust for sex and violence, and many would say that the film successfully predicted that real-life would essentially be replaced with TV screens.

Some aspects of the film are notably dated, such as the hilarious use of a Betamax tape in a crucial (and disgusting) scene, but Videodrome is so wildly audacious that the anachronisms to todays world only enhance the films aesthetic, and hammer home the theme of the movie: that television, and by extension, all media, can be a dangerous tool, capable of being used to control people.

Strange Days came out in 1995, the same year as Hackers. Like Hackers, it bombed at the box office, only to become a cult hit as the years went by. Written by James Cameron and directed by Katheryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty, The Hurt Locker), Strange Days tells the story of jaded ex-cop Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes), who sells and is addicted to the drug, SQUID, which allows users to live through other peoples experiences down to the last vivid detail.

Set in the near future, 1999 (natch), Strange Days deals with traditional film noir themes through the filter of a slightly fantastical version of the real world. Its very much a Cyberpunk film, but is set in a world not too far off fromour own, compared to some of the other films on this list.

The Matrix is1999s most acclaimed action movie, and possibly its most influential.Matrix-Mania gripped Hollywood after the film became an unexpected breakout hit. In a career defining role, Keanu Reeves plays Thomas Anderson, who, as a hacker, identifies as Neo. Hediscovers that reality as we know it is a mereillusion, a simulation made to keep humanity docile while machine overlords grow and consume us, not unlike wheat or corn.

Within The Matrix, Neo and other members of The Resistance can defy the laws of physics and hack skillsets and abilities into their repertoire. Thomas Anderson was just an office drone, but upon his awakening, after peeling back the curtain on the facade of reality, he becomes The One, who works tirelessly to liberate mankind from their ignorant sleep.

The Matrix spawned two sequels which arguably pushed the first films themes too far into the realm of esoteric nonsense, which is a matter of great debate among film geeks. Without choosing sides regarding Reloaded and Revolutions, we can all agree that The Matrix is a Cyberpunk masterpiece of style, action, and storytelling.

Before there was a name for Cyberpunk, there were lots of science fiction authors whose work would be retroactively recognized as forerunners to the movement. Philip K. Dick is the most well-known of these writers, and many of his novels and short stories have been adapted for the screen: Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, and a great many others have been interpreted by Hollywood, to varying degrees of success. But one which we particularly adore, for so many different reasons, is Paul Verhoevens sci-fi odyssey, Total Recall, which was based on Dicksshort story, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale.

Arnold Schwarzenegger stars in this 1990 film, which some people view as little more than a brainless actioner because of its copious amounts of blood, bullets, and Sharon Stone fistfights. However, for those willing to take a closer look, theres a looming fear that all is not as it seems; at the films outset, hardworking everyman Douglas Quaid (Arnold) pays for an Ego Trip, false implanted memories to let people remember experiences theyve never had.Almost immediately, all hell breaks loose, and the viewer has to decide if Quaid is really on the adventure of a lifetime, of if hes just vegetating like anyone else on an Ego Trip.

What is real? What is illusion? Whats the difference?

Back to the deeply disturbing and unsettling works of David Cronenberg, we arrive at eXistenZ, which is regarded by many to be the spiritual successor to this lists other Cronenberg film, Videodrome, but somehow even weirder and more discomforting.Instead of television, eXistenZ tackles virtual reality videogames; like television, they can consume people and overtake their lives, but, when it comes to virtual reality, it can become nearly impossible to determine what is real and what is fake, with layers upon layers of non-reality stacking up to the point where, in true Cyberpunk fashion, theres no difference between reality and illusion if nobody can actually tell them apart.

Of course, the virtual reality gaming scene is only in its infancy today, and it remains to be seen if projects like Oculus Rift and Playstation VR will be able to truly break through into the mainstream. If they do, however, Cronenberg just might have the last laugh, even if we suppose hell be none too happy about foretelling the end of society as we know it.

Terry Gilliam is one of the most beloved, yet commercially under-appreciated, directors of all time. Very few of his films ever managed to break out at the box office, and his productions have often been undermined by factors outside of his control, like the death of Heath Ledger during the shoot for The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and the myriad of factors which have kept his Don Quixote film from making any meaningful progress for the better part of two decades, though that may be changing if his current plan to start shooting before the end of 2016 comes to fruition

Gilliams most overt science fiction trilogy started with Brazil and 12 Monkeys, two excellent films (but only the Directors Cut of Brazil), and concluded with The Zero Theorem, a moviewhich heightens the themes of his previous films (especially Brazil), and ratchets up the incomprehensibility to confusing, but still highly-enjoyable levels. The Zero Theorem tells the story of a man (Christoph Waltz) tasked with solving the titular math problem, while trying, in vain, to retain his sanity as his life becomes increasingly dominated by digital technology. Its weird, even by Gilliams standards, but its also a striking and thought-provoking film which everybody should see. Right now. Go!

For director Paul Verhoevens second appearance on this list, we look to 1987s Robocop, which, like Total Recall, is another intelligent film which is ostensibly about a killing machine with a big gun. In the case of Robocop, he literally is a machine, a good cop, Murphy, resurrected as a cyborg crime-fighter with nigh-indestructible armor plating. Set in a satirical black comedy version of the United States, Robocop made clever use of in-universe news broadcasts to relay the state of the awful-yet-familiar world of the film. Robocops version of Detroit, the main setting of the movie, is practically run by OCP, Omni Consumer Products, and Murphys predicament, of having a degree of consciousness within a robot body and being unable to control his actions as a corporate product, are among the films more overtlyCyberpunk themes.

Robocops dire settingbecame even more indicting when the actual city of Detroit filed for bankruptcy in 2013, leading to the increasing privatization of its police force and other departments, much like OCPs plans in Robocops sequels. Awkward.

The world of Akira is one of the most fully realized Cyberpunk settings out there, with biker gangs, a gritty and perpetually overcast urban center, and openly anti-government terrorist groups juxtaposed with wildly science-fiction elements like human experiments into psychic powers, along with copious amounts of R-rated sci-fi violence. Many children of the early 90s were scarred when an unwitting parent picked this up at Blockbuster thinking it just another cartoon. After all, if its animated, then its for kids, right?

First released as a manga in 1982, the story was loosely adapted into the anime classic which totally eclipsed the popularity of its source material. For decades, a live-action version of the story has languished in development hell; depending on how the Ghost in the Shell film turns out (more on that in a bit), we are bracing ourselves for its inevitable resurgence.

Tron is definitely a Cyberpunk film, with its stunning (for the time) special effects which conveyed the idea of a computer as a world inhabited by programs. However, the distant sequel, 2010s Tron: Legacy, really runs with the Cyberpunk themes, to excellent effect.

Jeff Bridges returns as Kevin Flynn, the rock star programmer who is locked away within his computer world for twenty years before being discovered by his son, Sam. Flynns major discovery is computer life. Despite literally being God of The Grid, Kevin Flynn hadnt anticipated the development of the ISOs. Not merely programs, or even artificial intelligence, these unforeseen entities are legitimate digital life.

Then, of course, theres the aesthetic, which takes the original films legendary blue lines, mixes in a little bit of Blade Runners techno-city, and includes Michael Sheen as a Ziggy Stardust-esque nightclub owner. Tron: Legacy is often dismissed as not having a story, but we disagree; its all there, multi-layered and rich in themes, but, like Total Recall, it never spells things out, demanding that the viewer seek out the films messages for themselves.

Before The Matrix, there was Ghost in the Shell. This 1995 anime film (based on the manga series, which debuted in 1989) is often calledpost-Cyberpunk, in that artificial cyborg bodies are so commonplace, they are considered the norm. Their faint remnant of humanity, the soul within them, is referred to as their ghost. In the future, humans are out, and nearly 100% synthetics are in. Major Motoko Kusanagi is the leader of an elite squad tasked to fight techno-crime, which leads her down a rabbit hole of existentialism and mind control.

Ghost in the Shell is iconic for being (after Akira) another huge step for anime into the mainstream culture ofthe West. The film was highly influenced by Blade Runner, and in turn, served as a keyinspiration for The Matrix. For better or worse, GitSis getting a big-budget Hollywood adaptation, to be directed by Rubert Sanders and starring Scarlett Johansson, who is decidedly lacking in Japanese heritage.

Pierce Brosnan plays a gifted scientist working on a project to enhance intelligence when he comes across Jobe Smith (Jeff Fahey), a mentally challenged young man who lives under the watchful eye of a seriously creepy sadistic priest. Despite the dubious ethics, Professor 007 conducts his Virtual Reality experiments on young Jobe and quickly enhances his intelligence. However, the project was initially intended to create weapons, and Jobes newfound power quickly leads to disaster.

The Lawnmower Man is notable for its then-impressive CGI effects, which impressed 1992 audiences, but are painfully dated by 2016 standards. Still, the films numerous scenes set within Virtual Reality, rendered entirely using computer graphics,still hold up due to their dramatic impact, if not for their visual fidelity.

There is a sequel, but it is awful and should never be watched by anyone, ever. The film also inspired a video game for Super Nintendo, which, against all odds, is way better than it sounds.

Of course, there was no other choice for the top spot; of courseBlade Runneris the number one pick on this list. Ridley Scotts 1982 magnum opus is a science-fiction masterpiece about what makes us human or artificial, and whether or not theres any difference between the two to begin with.Harrison Ford plays the neo-noir detective, a Blade Runner, tasked with hunting down Replicants, artificial humans. Drama ensues.

Based on the Philip K. Dick novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Blade Runner is credited for establishing the Cyberpunk aesthetic on film, a dark and sun-deprived cityscape with entire buildings co-opted by animated consumer billboards.

The films theatrical release was followed by a Directors Cut in 1992, but the definitive version of the film came in 2007, with The Final Cut, which is readily available on Blu Ray. A long-awaited sequel, produced by Ridley Scott and directed by Denis Villenueve (Sicario, Prisoners), is in development. Blade Runner 2 will star Ryan Gosling alongside Harrison Ford, and is currently on target for an October 2017 release date.

What are your favorite Cyberpunk films? Are you excited for the upcoming Ghost in the Shell remake, or should they just have left well enough alone? Sound off in the comments below!

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13 Best Cyberpunk Movies Of All Time | Screen Rant

Like dystopian sci-fi cyberpunk tales? Like virtual reality? Check outHarsh Reality!

This short film has already begun production, but the cyberpunk thriller needs your help for completion funds. The story is abouta professional gamer whos been kidnapped and subjected to a mind-altering VR program. It reminds me a little of a certain Black Mirror episode (and even A Clockwork Orangea touch)in both theme and content.Harsh Realityisabout how technology separates us from the consequences of our actions, and on the flip side of the coin, how that same technology connects us to others.

To prep for the film including the commercial writer/director Iain Marcks researched VR, EMDR, media theory, and the political roots of cyber culture. He also consulted Dr. Douglas Rushkoff, an early advocate of open source culture and an influential author, teacher, and documentarian who is associated with the beginnings of cyberpunk. (Dr. Rushkoff has donated some campaign perks and makes a cameo appearance in the film).

Harsh Realityasks: What happens when technology designed to help us is used against us?

Let's find out.ScreenAnarchy has the exclusive on the commercial for the the NSYS-EX, the therapeutic device which serves as the basis of the narrative for the film. (You can see it below.) In the universe ofHarsh Reality, the NSYS-EX is the latest in enhanced psychotherapeutic rehabilitation in a nutshell, its psychotherapy via virtual reality.

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Crowdfund This: Watch the Cyberpunk VR Film HARSH REALITY ... - ScreenAnarchy (blog)

The drama class at St. Tim's is taking a different approach with their spring performance, bringing a student led production to the stage that was worked out between them using different movies to create the cyberpunk 00 Hustle premiering Tuesday May 2.

The basic premise sets 00 Hustle in a peaceful future run by a government that has, for the most part, pacified the populace to the point that they are now called Drones.

They are told they're happy so they're happy, said Shayla Bryant, who plays Jane Bond, a former government agent who left for a less controlled existence only to be reeled back in for a mission to find Ruby Goldberg, a psychotic scientist exiled by the government and now living in the underground society of the Scraps.

From this point the students tell a story of sociological conflict that questions which side is right, or at the very least less wrong, in deciding how a society should be run.

The question is is the government really that bad since it's peaceful, said Bryant, with Ruby's actress Ashlee Rocliffe jumping in to point out the Drones exist without freedom of thought.

If people come in with a clear mind it will make it so much more interesting, added Rocliffe, adding that they all really enjoyed the process of creating a unique story with undertones from so many disparate films.

There's Demolition Man, Inside Out and Batman, said Rocliffe, as well as other films, more Shakespeare than you would expect from a student play and enough swing music and dancing to make up their fight scenes.

It was different because we didn't know where we were going to get to and kept writing, said Rocliffe as everyone wrote different scenes, back stories and characters that got shifted around constantly until their teacher, Kevin McGregor came up with a good ending and they were able to slip everything into place.

For us, it's the experimental learning we get through the program that we enjoy, said Bryant, with the students coming up with quirks for their characters, tragic origins for seemingly one dimensional characters and a couple twists they really hope will take the audience by surprise.

We wanted something new and something [audiences] haven't seen before, said Rocliffe, something they would have accomplished if they stuck with James Bond in a cryber/steampunk world but that promises to be a memorable experience by putting in the effort to make it something that will stick with people after the curtains close.

After doing a show for the kids at Holy Spirit, 00 Hustle will open at 7 p.m. Tuesday May 2 at St. Tim's school and have their final call Friday night. Tickets are available for $10 at the school for the first two shows since they will be serving tacos on Tuesday and wine and presecco on Wednesday, but they will be available at the door for the Thursday and Friday shows.

Dfeil@postmedia.com

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00 Hustle brings cyberpunk to St. Tim's stage - Cochrane Times

Tampere, Finland, April 27th 2017 - The top-down cyberpunk shooter Neon Chrome is now available for Android devices in Google Play. The game is priced $9.99 USD.

Neon Chrome has proven to be a solidly performing flagship title for us. Im happy the game is now available for Android gamers as well. says Tero Alatalo, CEO of 10tons.

Neon Chrome is an infinite twin-stick top-down shooter with procedurally generated levels and destructible environment. Choose your character, enter the elevator and try to bring down the Overseer - again and again. Neon Chrome is an endless symphony of fight, die, improve and repeat.

Features:

Neon Chrome in Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.the10tons.neonchrome

Neon Chrome mobile trailer: https://youtu.be/YPnDdVvliv0

For more information and assets, see http://neonchromegame.com/ and http://www.10tons.com/Game/neon_chrome.html

Neon Chrome is also available in Steam and for Playstation 4, Playstation Vita, Xbox One, and iOS.

Games Press is the leading online resource for games journalists. Used daily by magazines, newspapers, TV, radio, online media and retailers worldwide, it offers a vast, constantly updated archive of press releases and assets, and is the simplest and most cost-effective way for PR professionals to reach the widest possible audience. Registration for the site and the Games Press email digest is available, to the trade only, at http://www.gamespress.com

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Androids Get a Dose of Neon Chrome as Cyberpunk Shooter ... - Develop

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To start off with, let me clarify that trying to define Cyberpunk is a difficult task. In short, however, Cyberpunk refers to both a culture and a genre.

Cyberpunk is a sub-genre of science fiction that features advanced science and technology in an urban, dystopian future. On one side you have powerful megacorporations and private security forces, and on the other you have the dark and gritty underworld of illegal trade, gangs, drugs, and vice. In between all of this is politics, corruption, and social upheaval.

Cyberpunk is also a culture with attitude and a distinct style. Anti-authoritarian, brandaverse, tech-literate; these are just some of the qualities you may find in a cyberpunk.

Cyberpunk began as a literary movement but has become a subcultural organism. What is Cyberpunk? is a complex and multi-layered question, whose answer is ever-changing as the subculture and our perception of the future changes. The tendrils, that began in the written word, have infiltrated beyond movies to all forms of art, fashion and philosophy generating an all-encompassing and evergrowing subculture.

There are number of ways to examine the origins of the cyberpunk movement. The term cyberpunk itself can be traced to the short story Cyberpunk by Bruce Bethke. Then of course, there are the core cyberpunk authors that are generally accepted to have laid the ground work of the cyberpunk movement William Gibson (Gibson is considered the founder of Cyberpunk), Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, Rudy Rucker, John Shirley and Lewis Shiner. There are also a number of precursor novels that had strong themes and imagery that would be later associated with the cyberpunk genre such as The Demolished Man (1953) and The Stars My Destination (1956) by Alfred Bester, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) by Phillip K. Dick, Dr. Adder (Written in 1972, but not published until 1984) by K.W. Jeter, Gravitys Rainbow (1973) by Thomas Pynchon, The Shockwave Rider (1975) by John Brunner, and True Names (1981) by Vernor Vinge. More recently Neal Stephenson, author of Snow Crash (1992), is largely credited with bringing cyberpunk into the post-cyberpunk era.

Blade Runner and Neuromancer were a convergence event that created the filmological and literary birth of a movement. Blade Runner influenced, and still does, all cyberpunk that would come after it visually, the same way that Neuromancer influenced, and still does, all cyberpunk literature. Cyberpunk never was just a literary genre.

We can break down a basic definition of cyberpunk by dissecting the word itself. Cyber refers to technology, and is most often associated with cyberspace (this word was originally coined by William Gibson himself), and cybernetic enhancements to the body. But this can also refer to other technologies suchas biotechnology and nanotechnology for instance.

Punk, on the other hand, refers to the people and the attitude that cyberpunk has. Protagonists in cyberpunk tend to be outsiders, anti-heros, outcasts, criminals, visionaries, dissenters, and misfits. The underlying aspect that applies to all of these groups is their subversive nature. To subvert is to overthrow or undermine something. The cyberpunk genre itself subverted science fiction, and we never looked back. To be punk is to question authority, and to actively subvert any of that authority you dont agree with. Different people do this in different ways, just as our cyberpunk protagonists do. An example is Motoko Kusanagi from the Ghost in the Shell franchise. On the surface she seems to be a tool and agent for the Japanese government. This is true, but this is not what defines her, nor how she defines herself. Throughout the series she is not afraid to go rogue and take things into her own hands if it will get her closer to what she thinks is right fuck the politicians. She is a subversive element within the government.

There are a number of quotes that help to illustrate the essence of cyberpunk:

The future is already here its just not very evenly distributed. William Gibson This quote puts the cyber/punk and the High Tech, Low Life, dichotomy into context. There exists today high technology, but this technology has failed to erode away social divisions leaving a disparity between the classes which leads to social strife. In addition, although this technology exists the low class does not have the means by which to benefit from it, thus widening the divide as the rich elite get richer and thus have more access to technology.

Anything that can be done to a rat can be done to a human being. Bruce Sterling This is an important concept. We do terrible things to rats in the pursuit of progress, and we are not impervious to any of them. Many cyberpunk plots resolve around some sort of drug effect or brain tampering that we have, in reality, already done to rats. Its just a matter of time before we start tampering with ourselves in the same ways. Rats are just the preview.

The street finds its own use for things. William Gibson This gets down to the punk/low life aspect of cyberpunk and puts it into the context of the open source, maker, and DIY movements. The rate of technological development is so fast that we generate a lot of stuff that is just there, and obsolete. These things lose their perceived value and are discarded, but then this refuse can be repurposed and used in ways that the original creators never would have imagined. Like using a DVD player to test for HIV.

Biopunk is a subgenre of cyberpunk, that focuses more on the biological technologies such as genetic manipulation. Often cited examples are Gattaca, and Dark Angel.

These can be considered cyberpunk because although Biopunk tends to lack the cyberspace and cybernetic aspects that cyberpunk sports, it is faithful to the High Tech, Low Life, aspects. It is a different visualization of the same ideas.

Post-Cyberpunk is a modern reaction to the now antiquated visual qualities of 80s inspired cyberpunk. PostCyberpunk tends to have a greater focus on Transhumanism, space travel, and emerging technologies that werent imagined at the time of the 80s.

A cyberpunk has attitude. This attitude is culturally and socially aware, just like the fiction from which they take their name. They question everything and anyone and decide for themselves what they believe is true. This path to understanding yields different world views and opinions, but diversity is key to a successful population. A cyberpunk knows that the system isnt in your favor, and the deck is stacked against you. A cyberpunk knows how to hack the system so that doesnt matter. Dont fuck with a cyberpunk.

A cyberpunk has style. This style can be different for each person. It can be practical (Mil-Tec) or flashy (Cybergoth). The style often mirrors the cyberpunk personal philosophy and thus can vary drastically. There are recurring themes such as traditional punk, Blade Runnerinspired, Matrix-inspired, CPUs, Mil-Tec, and Cybergoth.

Cyberpunk is now. Many of the things that were predicted in cyberpunk are coming to pass today. Improvements in prosthetics and brain computer interface have resulted in brain controlled prosthetics, a mainstay of cyberpunk. Corporations increasing dominate global politics, and influence culture creating a situation ripe for subversion. The poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer, creating a larger and larger divide.

The cyberworld is ever merging with the real world through things such as the Internet of Things, social media, mobile technology, virtual reality, and augmented reality. Hackers have brought gangs, corporations, governments, and individuals to their knees. We have entered the cyberpunk agewelcome.

Cyberpunk has spread to all forms of media, creating a subculture rather a simple genre. There are cyberpunk movies, television, comics, music, and art everywhere. All you have to do is look. Cyberpunk has influenced fashion, architecture, and philosophy. Cyberpunk has become much more than what it was when it began. And it will continue to evolve and become more relevant as we move further from the Cyberpunk Now into the Cyberpunk Future. Keep watching

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Cyberpunk - All that we know and you should know - TheTechy

In The Overlook, A.V. Club film critic Ignatiy Vishnevetsky examines the misfits, underappreciated gems, and underseen classics of film history.

The information highway is leading straight to hell Abel Ferrara

The films of Abel Ferrara are probably too anguished and tragic to be called hangout movies. To an extent, they wallow in states of sin, doom, and moral disrepair: a personal hell in Bad Lieutenant, the Lower East Side as it faces the end of time in 4:44 Last Day On Earth, a grueling film shoot in Dangerous Game. To the circles of Ferraras inferno, one can also add the indistinct cyberpunk future of his 1998 William Gibson adaption, New Rose Hotel. Its a shame that Ferraras forays into the fantasticsuch as Body Snatchers and the vampire film The Addictionare more obscure than his crime films and psychodramas, as they interpret well-worn sci-fi and horror tropes in very personal and unsettling ways. But New Rose Hotel is a strange movie. It might be the only film of its time to portray a connected, information-economy digital future more or less accuratelynot as an eclectic, visor-wearing, multicultural smorgasbord ( la Until The End Of The World or Johnny Mnemonic, the former indebted to Gibson, the latter loosely based on one of his early stories), but as a global nowhere of small screens, where the day-to-day reliance on data and video draws basic facts into question. By definition, a virtual reality isnt a reality at all.

So call it a prescient or prophetic film. Its a languorous, trip-hop movie, very in its own head, and it pushes the limits of how much of a narrative can remain invisible, as though it were taking the old adage that science fiction is the literature of ideas very literally. Its set almost entirely indoors, in hotel suites and lobbies. And though futuristic technology is central to the plot, its never seen. In fact, at least half of the plot occurs off screen, as Ferrara never leaves the point of view of an unnamed corporate mercenary (Willem Dafoe, sporting a very of-its-time soul patch) and his philosophizing colleague Fox (Christopher Walken), who have been hired to pull off a corporate defection involving a scientist they never see face-to-face. As low-budget anti-spectacle, its pretty brazen. The perverse faithfulness of the script (by Ferrara and the splendidly named Christ Zois) to Gibsons original short story only highlights the intangibility of New Rose Hotel. The dialogue often mimics the father of cyberpunks early prose. Its that hyper-materialist composite quality in which the object of every third sentence is a speculative trend, kink, or technology. A man looks a woman up and down and says to her, The outfit is Chinese. Knockoffs, not Tokyo originals. Its good, but the accessories dont do it justice.

Screenshot: New Rose Hotel

I think of it as akin to the low-budget sci-fi and horror B-movies of a much earlier generation, whose blank spaces asked for some kind of leap from the audience to facilitate a point. But New Rose Hotel is part of a tradition of alienated sci-fi that rarely makes it to the screenthe sort that deals not with how basic tenets of the human experience might endure, but how they could be irreparably damaged. And its future, in theory, is a lot like our present. The impression of not being set anywhere in particular is boosted by the fact that Ferrara and his longtime director of photography, Ken Kelsch, shot a lot of the film in close-up, sometimes with long lenses that confuse space. Its another thing that makes New Rose Hotel so unusual: Its mise-en-scne is basically all faces, even in the grainy videos through which Dafoes character (and thus the audience) sees much of the plot unfold. So of course its about how people relate to one another. The first major scene is one of my favorites in the filma perfect example of a Ferrara hangout scene, lit in extreme chiaroscuro and blocks of red. It features some of Ferraras most ambitious sound design, basking in the din of languages, chatter, and music. The whole sequence is a sardine can of stylized conversation and sex.

In order to pull off their scheme, Fox and the nameless protagonist hire a prostitute named Sandii (Asia Argento) to seduce the scientist in question in exchange for $1 million. In typical noir fashion, our nameless protagonist falls for her just as the plan is starting to come together. But suspense is not the films goal. The caperfinanced by a Japanese corporation, targeted at a German rival, and involving a hotel in Austria and a research laboratory in Moroccois a sequence of virtual transactions that the movie makes no attempt to visualize, creating an intentional emptiness at its center. Almost everything that happens is as real as money in a bank account: Its there because it says so on a screen. But what we actually see in the film, besides the protagonist waiting around and talking to Fox, is his relationship with Sandii, the femme fatale. In both a literal and a figurative way, the film is very murky, but it has a sort of conceptual purity. The unnamed man is always is always clothed in black, Fox in off-white, and Sandii in red. There is a repeat of the iconic image of Ferraras gangster film King Of New York, the city pressed in glass. And there are all those anonymous hotel rooms. A hotel room is a contradiction, at once private and impersonal, in equal parts a symbol of hedonism and banality.

New Rose Hotel is imperfect in its strangeness; its vague, indirect minimalism can be hypnotic or off-putting. But these are the kind of imperfections that make a point. The metaphor of art and sex work always seems less tired in Ferraras hands, in part because his films tend to portray art as something that is both intimate and exploitative and because he never seems to begrudge his characters for either paying or being paid for sex and skin. (Its telling that his most warm-hearted film, Go Go Tales, is set around a strip club.) Hotels are just another example of something very personal being commoditized. The title itself is the name of the derelict Tokyo capsule hotel where the unnamed man hides out in the final third of the moviean ersatz, but oddly poignant metaphor for the dark night of the soul. His phony relationship with Sandii is the most tangible thing in the film. Its where New Rose Hotel retreats. In a world where everything has become somewhat virtual, whats to keep a person from disappearing into their memories? Why leave the hotel?

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The director of Bad Lieutenant takes on the prescient cyberpunk of William Gibson - A.V. Club (blog)

When revered Witcher 3developer CD Projekt RED announced their plans to trademark CYBERPUNK, they were met with skepticism and worry. Anyone who sought to establish a creative projectusing the name felt stifled. Others believed the move a bit imperious. And then we have someone like Bruce Bethke who actually coined the term back in 1980. Naturally, he felt compelled to respond to the trademark attempt.

Bethke had coined Cyberpunk the term for his short story of the same name. Since then, hes witnessed numerous trademark attempts fail. In speaking to World Trademark Review, a website dedicated to trademark news, he mentioned oneattempt by a comic book creator:

My understanding of American trademark law is that trademark depends on context.While you can trademark a logotype or a unique variation eg, as I recall, R. Talsorian Games trademark was specifically for a role-playing game named Cyberpunk 2020 you cant just trademark a word for all purposes everywhere. Hence when some company back in the 1980s tried to claim a trademark on the word cyberpunk because they were publishing a Cyberpunk comic book, well, tough it didnt hold up.

Keep in mind, CD Projekt REDs sole purpose, allegedly, is keeping external projects from associating their names with that ofCyberpunk 2077 and future games created by the developer. At the same time, they hope to avoid any legal disputesas a result of other trademarks. You can read all about their claims here.

Nevertheless, Bethke is worried because he is a working author and, like so many artists, wishes to avoid conflict on the basis of what is now a widely-used term. Its better to operate without notions of trademark breaches.I do rather wish someone from CD Projekt RED would contact me, though, to clarify a few of my concerns, he said.Most of all, I wish people all over the internet would pay a tiny percentage of their attention to what Im doing now, as opposed to something I did 37 years ago. I really wish that just once, someone would offer me an enormous fucking pile of money to lay hands upon them and pronounce them the one true purveyor of cyberpunk.

Too bad for Bethke he didnt trademark the term when he had the chance. However, credit where credit is due; if he is the man behind the name, other creators owe him some recognition.

CD Projekt REDs highly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 is currently slated for an Its ready when its ready release date. Expect to hear more news from COGconnected as it comes. For now, do let us know your thoughts on this trademark attempt and writer Bethkes response. Have a glorious day.

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Cyberpunk Namer Seeks Word from CD Projekt RED over Trademark - COGconnected (press release)