Virtual Realities: A Shadowrun Sourcebook

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Summary: Nine years and a lifetime ago
Review: I know nothing of Shadowrun, and I don't play RPGs, but this is still a fascinating book. Published in 1991, it's the sourcebook for a cyberpunk universe, but it's more interesting as an extremely dated, nostalgic cultural artifact, a reminder of a time, not so long ago, when the future seemed a lot more futuristic. Amongst the primitive Amiga-ed CGI and 'System Shock'-esque descriptions of 'Black IC', 'decks' and 'frames' is the sense that people once thought the internet would be more than just a home-shopping network, the sense that Japan would inevitably dominate the business world, and the sense that, in the future, people would have dreadlocks and wear thin, slitted sunglasses.

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Summary: Scrap the old rules cause Shadowrun got a new pair of rules.
Review: Wow!!! This supplement makes the matrix worth running. No Game master should ever have to go through what the basic rules ask him to go through in order to make the matrix work. The rules are so incredibly slow and cumbersome that only a computer geek could love them. This supplement is absolutely essential if you want your gamers to appreciate the decker class as anything more than "neat, but I'll hire out the work to an NPC the GM controls". Get it. Read it. Know it. Be a Decker. It's cool.