cyberpunk in the 90s was a lived experience, particularly so in Eastern Europe. I read Neuromancer, watched johnny mnemonic and blade runner on pirated VHS tapes, and armitage and bubble gum crysis on pirate tv[0]. there were old grandmas selling cd releases from RAZOR 1911 and PARADOX all over the place. "ooh, little munchkin, you're into 3d modeling? here's a new cd I got lightwave 3d, 3d studio max and Maya, cracked[1], $3". there were dozens if not hundreds of BBSes, and your local friendly FIDO point administrator. there were several large markets where you would buy computer parts grand bazaar style[2], so you buy an AMD K6 (in a box? dude, it's back of the truck OEM in an anti-static bag, better pray it works when you bring it home) that runs at 166 mhz or whatever and overclock it to a whopping 300 mhz, which necessarily implies that your desktop box was in a constant state of messing around with. no amount of LEDs and glass covers of a modern gaming rig will give you the same feeling as a boring 90s beige box did, because inside the beige box you had a 3dfx voodoo 6 months after it got released, and it's the first time consumer grade 3 acceleration is within your personal reach. of course some Finn in the demoscene has already made a back of a napkin C program, that you can compile in your pirated copy of Visual Studio, that shows you how to draw a shaded rectangle using your voodoo. everybody was on the same page: scene releases, demos, themes, background pictures, music, bbs styles, nicknames and scene group names were all incorporating cyberpunk aesthetic and contributing the aesthetic at the same time. reality was providing cyberpunk, and cyberpunk authors were providing the way for us to see the reality.<p>[0]you had to buy a descrambler to watch it
[1]she would never explicitly say it was cracked, because of course everything was cracked
[2]<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjDHhdx_tGY">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjDHhdx_tGY</a>