Mike Pondsmith: The creator of the original Cyberpunk from 1988

When Cyberpunk 2077 was first unveiled all the way back in 2013 in one of the greatest cinematic trailers in the history of videogames, fans lost their collective minds.

The game's concept of a dystopian future where human cybernetic augmentation is now the rage, Cyberpunk 2077 appeared to be a brand-new IP from the creators of the Witcher franchise, CD Projekt Red.

There are many tabletop role-playing game enthusiasts who have always enjoyed the joys of playing board game RPGs. Everyone remembers Mike Pondsmith and his brilliant Cyberpunk 2020 from 1988.

Akin to games like Dungeons & Dragons, Cyberpunk was quite the success among fans of the genre. Mike Pondsmith, the creator of Cyberpunk, worked on several pen-and-paper role playing games.

After thoroughly enjoying Dungeons and Dragons, his interest would be piqued by the sci-fi role playing game called Traveller. He even went on to call 'Traveller' the best role-playing game he ever encountered.

Mike Pondsmith, Metkon, and Cyberpunk 2020

Cyberpunk 2020 from the 90s

Mike Pondsmith would go on to work in the video game industry as a graphic designer. The first game he built from the ground up was Mekton, a mecha game inspired by anime and manga, released in 1984.

After the success of Mekton, he founded R. Talsorian Games, a publisher of role-playing games. He would go on to work on several titles, before finally arriving at Cyberpunk.

It was initially titled Cyberpunk The Roleplaying Game of the Dark Future. The game later came to be known as simply Cyberpunk, or Cyberpunk 2020.

The game took heavy inspiration from the classic Blade Runner directed by Ridley Scott. The games have an expansive amount of lore, and source books in the series.

Cyberpunk Cover Art

There are nearly 44 books, with approximately 4,700 pages in total. Therefore, if you want to learn more about the Cyberpunk universe before playing the new release on the 19th of November 2020, this might just be the perfect time to do it.

Mike Pondsmith is closely working with CD Projekt Red in developing the lore and story of Cyberpunk 2077. The game already has a vast amount of lore and inspiration to draw from, and is an extremely rich universe with plenty of content.

The cover art for Cyberpunk features a quote from Johnny Silverhand, the guitarist for the punk band revolutionaries Samurai in the Cyberpunk universe. Johnny Silverhand will be played none other than Keanu Reeves in Cyberpunk 2077.

So in case you wanted to learn more about Keanu's character, Johnny Silverhand in the new Cyberpunk 2077, you can learn more from the vast lore of the universe created by Mike Pondsmith.