Somebody’s Got the Shadowruns
There is a shit-ton of actual news I probably should be reporting, but honestly, I can’t think of anything more important for you all to watch than this old, hilarious promo video for the RPG Shadowrun. It’s like the platonic ideal of 1990 nerdery encapsulated in four and a half minutes — beefy guy with huge gun, sexy girls with smaller guns but big hair, and one of the girls casting a spell with absolutely zero special effects — although that last one makes sense as they clearly blew their budget on creating the incredible computer world of the Matrix (that’s what Shadowrun called it, if I recall). But the best part is that the other big-haired girl is a cyberhacker, who enters the Matrix by 1) lugging her own PC keyboard around and 2) attaching an old VGA cord to her head. It’s all just divine. Kids, if this video and today’s list didn’t weren’t clear enough, the late ’80s and early ’90s fucking sucked. Infinite thanks to Nicholas R. for the tip.
About The Author
Robert Bricken is one of the original co-founders of the site formerly known as Topless Robot, and its first editor-in-chief, serving from 2008-12. He brought the site to prominence with “nerd news, humor and self-loathing” as its motto, raising it from total internet obscurity to a readership in the millions, with help from his savage “FAQ” movie reviews and Fan Fiction Fridays. Under his tenure Topless Robot was covered by Gawker, Wired, Defamer, New York magazine, ABC News, and others, and his articles have been praised by Roger Ebert, Avengers actor Clark Gregg, comedian and The Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman, the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax, and others. He is currently the managing editor of io9.com. Despite decades as both an amateur and professional nerd, he continues to be completely unprepared for either the zombie apocalypse or the robot uprising.