I have a serious love of these early movies that created a computer look when the graphics were too crappy for computers to actually do graphics. There’s something about them that is like a love letter to digital media.
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that,s because the designers could imagine an ideal, rather than being constraiined by existing technology. Some of the graphics used in 2001 aren’t dated, and some of the graphics used in 2010 are limited by the state of the art at the time the movie was made.
It’s been a long time simce I saw Outland, but it’s an accidental parody of what SF was at the time.
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Reminds me of how cyberpunk fiction envisioned computers and networks at a time when the authors knew little or nothing about them but neither did the readers. It was imaginative and creative and wide open. A short time later, people were trying to describe them more like real-world computers but unfortunately that came with the risk of Moore’s Law making their book obsolete by the time you left the bookstore.
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A 1200 baud modem! 
Mentioned in an sf book whose author shall remain nameless.
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Because in 2020, everyone’s going to want a suitcase sized 48mHz computer with a built-in mini-fax! A real bargain at only 8000 bucks!
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Is that from some sort of RPG source book?
I took it as a real ad, at first glance.
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" Cyberpunk has all the cool stuff that’s sorely missing from Shadowrun"
right?
Well, no longer!
This Plastic Warriors book converts 99.9% of all items in the three Chromebooks
to Shadowrun!
You can now equip your characters with loads more goodies than possible ever before! Ranging from must have to completely useless, the gear, cyberware, vehicles, chips, and whatever else you care to name that are in here are sure to give that extra touch to any Shadowrun character.
so, the illustration was probably taken from a Chromebook— whatever that might be
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Yes! From Cyberpunk 2020. There were a number of expansion books called Chromebooks that detailed additional equipment, cyberware, fashion, etc., as it would be advertised in 2020.
Also, I still have at least one of the Plastic Warriors netbooks for Shadowrun printed out. Not even bound or stapled, just a looseleaf printout of Paranoid Animals of North America that has somehow survived all these years.
One of the fun things of Shadowrun was that bits of it were presented as characters running command line commands (as can be seen there) and/or commenting on things as if on a BBS. The books gave the game mechanics details but had comment threads interspersed where characters filled in the background fluff.
ETA: Note the Matrix was trademarked in relation to the Shadowrun game (the matrix was the VR network in-game). The movie studios bought the rights to make a Shadowrun movie so they could use the title, but instead made the Matrix movies which had nothing to do with Shadowrun. I was so disappointed.
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Ha! that’s pretty cool; looks like some sort of homebrew supplement.
I can vaguely remember Shadowrun from my pen-n-pencil role playing game days, but I don’t think I’d ever heard of Cyberpunk 2020 until that video game trailer/announcement came out a while back. It sounds like a fun game, though. They both do, actually. I never played the original Shadowrun; I was mostly a D&D kid, to start with, until I moved on to Champions.
ETA: “Paranoid Animals of North America” sounds like the bastard lovechild of a Radiohead concept album and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. That game must’ve been a hoot!
Also, that sucks about the Matrix; I had no idea.
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Never seen that, but there are a lot of C20.20 variants out there.
Some inappropriate picture choices, but a good example of the tech options: http://www.datafortress2020.com/newtech.html which may explain why people would port C20.20 tech to Shadowrun.
The original rules and adventures introduced the runners’ treadmill and the humanity loss trope. They don’t seem to have defined their setting like Shadowrun did, or have occasionally killed everyone using certain technologies, like Shadowrun killed cyborgs after 4E. There was an official authorized setting book for When Gravity Falls, and an unofficial unauthorized one for Appleseed. There weren’t any classic fantasy elements like in Shadowrun. There were a bunch of life-path character creation options, like Traveller or Central Casting.
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Hold up. Do you mean this Appleseed?
I’d totally forgotten about that book, but it was one of the first (and frankly, few) manga I ever really enjoyed. The art was quite a bit different than most of what I was reading at the time, and I can remember being particularly impressed with the robot/mecha designs and illustrations. I used to get the old Eclipse perfect-bound issues, and I remember them as being relatively pricey, but also (IIRC) it was one of the last comics I kept buying after I’d more-or-less stopped buying comics.
An RPG in that universe would have been fun, I’m sure.
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Yes. I haven’t read it, but have read Ghost in the Machine.
For C20.20: http://datafortress2020.com/shirowpunk.html
with http://datafortress2020.com/fileproject/details.php?image_id=499
For Basic-like, you could try Eclipse Phase though it has some bugs.
For Shadowrun, you could try Shadowrun without the magic and with the converted C20.20 tech.
For Savage Worlds, True 20, D20, or FATE, although Interface Zero contains slurs and turns Kurdish resistance groups into a totalitarian state, you could use whichever version of I0.
P.S. For FATE, you can probably also use the Transhumanity’s FATE module. Note that it and Eclipse Phase are a much darker setting-- rogue war AIs have taken over the earth.
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I imagine that could have been a good game under better circumstances, but when I played it we were all kids and none of us knew what we were doing. So we just used tremendous amounts of time, math, and dice rolls to simulate Mortal Kombat style duels between superheros. 
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“Disadvantages? But we’re playing superheroes, mothafucka!”, this from guys who always did the point-buy system with DnD stats.
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Champions was our go-to system in high school & college. We we’re tempted with GURPS, but the GM was invested in Hero System, so we stayed there.
So much min-maxing. But we enjoyed ourselves.
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So apparently my uncles used to take fantasy football to the next level with d20 (and d100) dice, simulating entire plays with many, many dice rolls.
So dorky. So fun. So damn brilliant.
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Fantasy football?
With wizards, and elves, and loveble Halfling rogues?
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halfling rouges? You must mean Halfling kickers!
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Certain player types have special (non- magical) abilities. Dwarves and gnomes are able to block size G players as if they themselves were giants, with no penalty for their small size. Elves are treated as size S creatures when a block or a tackle is attempted against them. Goblins and kobolds are treated as size M creatures when a block or tackle is attempted against them. Minotaurs are treated as size G creatures when used as blockers.
A hobgoblin will always cover or chase any elf on the opposing team, regardless of what the original formations looked like. (If there is more than one elf on the opposing team, the hobgoblin will go af- ter the closer one.)
Kobolds and orcs cannot be knocked out of the game because of injury; treat a result of “Injured for game” as “Injured for one play.”
Treants are treated as size G creatures when a block is attempted against them, and are treated as size G with an extra modifier of -1 to the die roll when a tackle is attempted against them.
Ettins are ferocious but stupid: Any time an ettin starts a movement phase adjacent to a teammate, the coach of the ettin’s team rolls d6. A result of “6” indi- cates that the ettin will make a block or tackle attempt against his teammate. If this attempt succeeds, the teammate can take no further action in the current movement phase.
from monsters of the midway: Dragon #65
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