Wait till you see the NEC PC Engine Supergrafx console.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Engine_SuperGrafx
Wait till you see the NEC PC Engine Supergrafx console.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Engine_SuperGrafx
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Like something that has to be played like a musical instrument, with enough practice that using it is eventually all muscle memory.
You just described a computer keyboard for most IT people.
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You can't slide your hands over a keyboard feeling it
Debatable.
In any case, the perfect Gibsonian deck is the Commodore C=64, in either its original or second forms.
Not sure. The C=64 ain't black and neon enough.
Btw you might like http://www.ffd2.com/fridge/chacking/
Not sure. The C=64 ain't black and neon enough.
Just needs a black coat of paint.
Although I would argue a red one suits the '80s futurism more.^(*)
^* Granted, this one uses a different keyboard, but it would work also with the original one.
The red works well.
The brits have that covered:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum
Though you could also try the Commodore Plus/4:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_Plus/4
I found it deeply amusing when i learned that the big brand cyberdecks in Shadowrun were real life synthesizer brands.
No wonder so much imagery showed them slung like keytars.
Even that original Neuromancer description reads like something between a microcomputer (C64 etc) and a portable synth.
Hey, neat piece of tech. I'm curious, what aspect of this says cyberpunk to you, personally? (I know it means a lot of things to different people, so would love to know)
Mostly the aesthetic to be honest. I feel like a lot of 80s design language was informed by science fiction and notions of the future, in the context of what existed at the time. This device looks kind of like a green terminal prompt, and the techy/brutalist design style is something that has persisted through cyberpunk as a genre. This thing looks like its straight out of a William Gibson novel to me.
Neat. It certainly wouldn't be the first connection I'd make, but now you've said it, I could totally see it rendered in painstaking detail in an 80's cyberpunk anime :)
I was 14 in 1986 and remember thinking audio gear was very cool. My much older brother and our neighbor were both audiophiles and had cutting edge gear. It definitely looked like it was right out of a sci-fi movie. It was right around that time that I read a book called Mindkiller by Spider Robinson which began a lifelong love of cyberpunk.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindkiller
Mindkiller is a 1982 science fiction novel by American writer Spider Robinson. The novel, set in the late 1980s (re-edited later to begin in 2006), explores the social implications of technologies to manipulate the brain, beginning with wireheading, the use of electric current to stimulate the pleasure center of the brain in order to achieve a narcotic high.
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Hi. You just mentioned Mindkiller by Spider Robinson.
I've found an audiobook of that novel on YouTube. You can listen to it here:
YouTube | Spider Robinson Mindkiller Audiobook
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This is pretty cool, I had no idea. I might check out the audiobook, it's been years since I read it.
I had one. It was pretty punk. There was no cyber.
Yeah, most old gear that looks like this tends to be digital. It's weird seeing a tape recorder with the techy aesthetic. Wouldn't look out of place next to a DX7.
Or my Ensoniq TS-10 (no longer with us, godspeed).
People think 80's tech is cyberpunk because they where never alive for it and most of the visual cyberpunk where burn in the 80' and early 90's and based on the tech around at the time.
So whenever they see old tech, it's "cyberpunk AF"
Yes and no ...
You have to consider the fact that practically all Cyberpunk art, from Cyberpunk book covers to Cyberpunk RPG sourcebooks, were heavily informed by 'technology' like what OP posted.
So, if I go look up what a 'Cyberdeck' looked like in Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020, it's going to have a lot of the same design elements. Black plastic, sharp angles, slides and knobs, etc ...
The thing is, people weren't sure what computers were really going to look like in the future, and everyone was designing '2000's technology' to be the opposite of 70's technology.
So, the had to do away with wooden cases, no more glass or tubes, no smooth curves and crunchy earth tones.
Everything had to be a sleek, shiny, black, and geometrically perfect, like someone was going to be asked to do a proof on the outline of everything they designed.
There was a design language that tried to tell the consumer 'This is high tech', and it involved the clean lines, but also lots of switches and dials. Some of my favorite examples of this design philosophy is the Sony Walkman, especially the dual tape version, with independant equalizers, and more functions than made any sense at the time.
I think part of what brings people to Cyberpunk, as an aesthetic, is that everyone is kind of bored with the Apple 'slab' design philosophy, where everything tried to become a rounded slab of metal and glass, with no buttons to scare off the user.
Technology, when Cyberpunk was being invented, was the opposite of that. It was complicated, and intimidating. It was unwelcoming and dared you to try to use it without breaking it.
So, I don't think it's any accident that this design aesthetic is still associated with Cyberpunk. The 'real' figure of technology being so baked in it is basically invisible doesn't inspire much.
That's a lot of text to say exactly what I already said...
I have a couple TASCAM cassette Portastudios. They're tons of fun. But this Yamaha one looks waaaay cooler!
I wanted one so bad as a teenager playing guitar. They were like $300 though so might as well have been a million.
Lol, they still are, there has been a resurgence of popularity with them. Lofi producers run there tracks through them for warmth. I regularly run my drums through my tascam for the warmth .
Looks like something out of Half Life Alyx
It looks modern tbh
I don't think so. Modern product design tends to be very minimal. This has a very deliberate tech aesthetic which I think was quite unique to 80s futurism.
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Most skeuomorphic audio software imitates old rack units and mixing desks which were designed long before the 80s, or vintage synths which rarely had this kind of aesthetic. Most old music hardware with this techy design style was digital, because digital was the new high tech thing. Unfortunately alongside that, hardware controls became unpopular, so knobs and sliders were replaced with lcd displays, buttons, and menus. Software emulations of that gear tend to depart from skeuomorphism as there's nothing to simulate, and they favour designs that expose those controls in a more usable way, using contemporary design patterns.
Hack into that, NSA!
Brutalist Cyberpunk
Very cool, I always imagined Case’s deck in the sprawl to look just like that 👍🏼
Yes!!!
That's a cyberdeck. You use it to surf cyberspace and hack into stuff.
It'd be even more cyberpunk if the labels were green instead of blue imo.
Pretty sure they’re aqua, ie blue green.
They were definitely more green in real life than in this image.
People need to stop coming to this subreddit with random things and calling it "peak cyberpunk!"
OK how about "very cyberpunk"? Or at least "relatively cyberpunk"?
It definitely has a Cyberpunk aesthetic visually but in terms of it's existence and purpose it has nothing to do with the cyberpunk genre.
It definitely has a Cyberpunk aesthetic visually
Yes, I know. That's why I posted it.
but in terms of it's existence and purpose it has nothing to do with the cyberpunk genre.
Yes, I know. That's not why I posted it.
gonna cry
Cry then
:o
Gatekeepers are peak cyberpunk!
Living the dream choom 😎
What's cyberpunk about it
It just looks like some technology from 1986 to me lol
Nah not enough LED
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Apparently I was thinking of the super bright type we have nowadays. My bad.
Edit: the Leds we had in the 80s sucked compared to now. The surface mounted ones are a lot better.
very cool
Looked like it was made of Lego at first!
Fuckin beautiful.
We monitor many frequencies. We listen always. Came a voice, out of the babel of tongues, speaking to us. It played us a mighty dub
I remember using one like this! It had green type so maybe a different year’s model, but wow what a memory, thanks!
I recorded lots of tapes for auditions on one of these, it's excellent.
So awesome! I had (or maybe still have lol) one of those I bought used from a music store back then. Not cheap!!
That style is what many of us thought the future was gonna be. Watch Escape from New York or Escape from San Francisco!
This was my first recorder! I found it on ebay for $40 back in 2001 or 2002. I showed my dad and was like "hey I REALLY want this. Can you buy it for me." He was like "yes..." and that was one of the first hobby things he got for me. I eventually moved to a Tascam 4 track with a whopping 40gb hard drive. I was so happy to not have to bounce tracks anymore. The cassette recorder quickly fell out if use and I have no idea where it ended up. Over the pandemic I was feeling nostalgic and MT1X popped in my head. $300 freaking dollars now as retro tech! Frig!
This looks like a Sheng Lam concept
Cyberpunk is just old tech but in epic
Oh man some of the darn old boxy tech was so cool ,but also very sturdy. So cool!
Ah, created many a fun songs during my college years using just this device.. fun memories! Great machine -
It looks like Lego to me
Never seen one before, this looks totally awesome dude!!
This is an awesome design.
Great find! Between all the sliders and knobs, it looks intimidating - like they are all settings for your hacking programs. The ports at the bottom aren’t just audio ports. They’re where you plug in your interface electrodes and network cables. I can see it hanging from Case’s hip as he goes to take on the Tessier-Ashpool ICE.
Yes! I feel like all the people who come to the comments and moan about how every post should represent "high tech, low life" and complain that things like this "aren't cyberpunk" just haven't read any William Gibson books. It could have an Ono Sendai logo on it.
Yuck see all that dust in the corners and creases?
Sleek and minimalistic seems the way to go but it’s not as cyberpunk then
It totally was a dust magnet. And finger grease.
r/cassetteculture would looooove this.
My high school punk band recorded our demo on one of these in 1996.
Early 2000s we used these in college too when I was a music major (or at least a slightly updated version of these). Learned then too that cassette tapes by being two sided and in stereo actually were four track tapes because of it, so we recorded those tracks on these. It was actually pretty fun to work with them for classes.
I learned about that when my high school band recorded 4 tracks and could only hear two when we put it in a regular cassette deck (I think?).
This was also in the early 2000s, when consumer multi-track cassette recorders had gotten pretty cheap.
Not so much that it needed to be two sided, but that it was how to get the max music duration out of it.
Similarly them reel to reels you see in old mainframe photos etc had something like 8 tracks on them.
Frankly when i think about it, the humble cassette as a data medium was horribly underutilized back in the day. With the right drive mechanism etc it could have worked far closer to a floppy or those mainframe reel to reels.
does the mixer sound decent?