Cyberpunk died with Johnny Mnemonic, the Krokers said in 1995, Robert Longo killed it – and with that came the slow dissipation of wireframes and vast electronic non-spaces of either consensual hallucination or psychedelia. Tetsuya Mizuguchi had it on PS2 and he brought it back for the 360 XBLA, leaving splinters of rumours about a Rez sequel and leaving us waiting empty-handed. If you still own your PS2, dust it off and google up a store where they still sell Frequency and Amplitude – developed by Harmonix in 2001 and 2003, respectively.  

It’s all about evoking the mindless speed limit breaking into an octogonal tunnel with sides connected to tracks, each of them containing notes you have to hit in order to keep the music flowing. It’s basically a game-induced remix tool, containing songs by The Crystal Method, Curve, Orbit, Roni Size, Juno Reactor, Meat Beat Manifesto and a lot more in Frequency and the same diverse repertoire comes up in the sequel with Garbage, Herbie Hancock, Styles of Beyond or even Pink. My only heartbreak is that it’s only for the Playstation – and PC’s never really gotten far with similar music/rhythm games apart from Audiosurf.

Cyberpunk or not, The Dose HQ is all about 80s vectors revisited (think Darwinia!), abstract geometrical forms and intense finger-flicking action, when it comes to handheld games. Until the i-platforms receive their well-deserved share of Flash, here’s a brief rundown of all the apps – mostly games – we came to love in the past few months. They sometimes look like Rez, cover you like Music for Airports and they often frustrate you into an inhuman piece of shrieking Neanderthal who’s been just defied by the complexity of a cube. Grab some demonic wisdom here!
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In Japan, we had 200,000 copies, including the special package with the Trance Vibrator. I think that in the United States, it was very small. So small. I don’t know why, but I think it was too challenging at that time, for the United States market. Recently, we had a big success with Lumines on PSP in the U.S., but before that, many people said to me, there’s no market for puzzle games. So it’s changing. Now, with Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and new types of music games, I think it’s a very good timing. (via)

And if you don’t have Rez, my goodness, what you’re missing! The masterwork of maverick designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi, Rez is to shooters what Mizuguchi’s later Lumines is to falling-block puzzles. Everything flows to the beat of the game’s awesome techno soundtrack; you lock on to enemies then let go of the button to let your fire fly, they explode to the beat of the music. As you progress through the levels, the music goes from a simple back beat and a few rhythmic beeps to a dramatic multi-layered piece, and the vector-line graphics get more and more intricate as well. (via boingboing)