What would you say are the best old-school cyberpunk video games?

Note that I don’t actually care if it’s the “best”, I’m just looking for some fun older games to play. So give me something better than Raid 2020 and I’ll call it a win.

I’m thinking things like:

And just to prove they don’t have to be GOTY contenders…

So yeah, give me some recommendations from the NES/SNES/N64 era (I’m not convinced there’s anything worth playing from the ZX Spectrum/Commodore 64 era). Maybe some Arcade (MAME) games too? I can’t think of any cyberpunk arcade games.

I’ve never played Omikron: The Nomad Soul or BloodNet before. Not sure if they’re worth my time.

  • Joe Breuer@lemmy.mlEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    I found Omikron absolutely awesome when I played it back in the day. Also loved Outcast (1999) which - to me - has some similarities in feel, but the latter is decidedly not Cyberpunk.

    Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy (2005, same game, different name depending on region, also by Quantic Dream like Omikron) is up there as well.

    Tron 2.0 (2003) might be up your alley - look up playing it today, there’s quite a few unofficial fixes, mods and enhancements.

    Neuromancer (preferably the Amiga version, slightly better graphics) is interesting in its own way, though it certainly doesn’t feel “modern” the way your examples above do.

    Uplink (2006) could fit as well, it’s played wholly from the perspective of a hacker’s console. (Apropos that, I only just found/saw Quadrilateral Cowboy (2016) myself, gotta have a look.)

    Cyberpunk Arcade… Hm, Vivaldia…? ;-)

    • salient_one@lemmy.villa-straylight.socialEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      Ah, that brings back some memories!

      Tron 2.0 is a Monolith classic. For some reason I thought they were no longer around, but the excellent Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is also one of theirs. Another great series (not related to cyberpunk) from them is No One Lives Forever. The first one had a bonus music CD with some great 60s inspired tracks.

      I remember spending a lot of time with Uplink. It does make you feel like a movie hacker! The devs, Introversion, have a lot of interesting and original games. Defcon is inspired by the movie WarGames (with a hacker for the protagonist). Darwinia is about AI life, very original.

    • identity-disc@lemmy.villa-straylight.socialOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I loved Tron 2.0. it did such a fantastic job of extending the universe defined by the movie. Going to the Internet, a backup archive, a low-powered PDA, and fighting a virus/corruption were all great ideas. I hate that Tron: Legacy squandered those ideas by saying “oh, the grid is just a computer game Flynn wrote” rather than it being a visual representation of actual computer technology. I probably should’ve set my avatar to a Tron 2.0 disc and not a Tron: Legacy disc…

      Thanks for those other suggestions!