Night City from Cyberpunk 2077 becomes a true time capsule through the work of a fan: The city can be viewed as if through a VHS recording, which not only evokes nostalgia among players but also makes the images appear real.
What kind of tool is this? The modder and Reddit user Tulired presented a clip in the Subreddit for Cyberpunk 2077 that depicts a well-known city in a completely different way. Night City looks like someone walked through the city a long time ago and recorded a vacation video with an old camcorder.
It is the same city, familiar streets, already encountered faces. However, the image quality, small disturbances, distortions, and scan lines create a feeling that you are not looking at a video game but at an old, real videotape.
Here you can see in the clip how Night City appears through the VHS optics:
It is the free ReShade mod “TapePunk” by Tulired (known as Tuliz on Nexusmods). This mod uses revised shaders to make the futuristic city of Night City, set 50 years in the future, be viewed through a lens reminiscent of the 80s.
“The goal was to break free from the clean, high-resolution look of modern games and instead celebrate the old analog imagery,” Tuliz writes in the description of his mod on Nexusmods, “a world where the future meets aging hardware.”
Mod provides hyper-realistic footage despite outdated look
What does the community praise about the mod? The clip featuring the mod has garnered great enthusiasm from the community on Reddit. They praise not only the idea itself but also the feeling it evokes. It is not just an exciting tool with a cool look, but a simulated time travel:
“My brain completely forgets that this is a game and not real footage,” writes cravex12. Also, teddehyrria adds: “This somehow makes the game look even more realistic.”
ADreamOfCrimson presents the following theory for the effect’s impact: Since the brain expects lower image quality from VHS recordings, it blurs out the video game character of the graphics and tricks the mind into filling in the remaining gaps, which makes it feel more realistic than photorealistic graphics.
What does the modder say about this feedback? The modder explains in his description on Nexusmods that he wants to capture exactly this feeling of nostalgia with his project: “That’s exactly what this project is at the moment: not a 100% perfect technical reproduction, but an idealized version – just like our memories.”
This mix of realism and nostalgia reminds many fans of another project that could provide the modder further inspiration for even more applications of his mod: the Backroom videos, including those by YouTuber Kane Pixels.
This creator also used the found-footage look in his recordings, making his environments in Blender appear as realistic as TapePunk does for Cyberpunk 2077. The modder has not only been made aware of this but also sees it as his next potential project:
“I thought about starting a YouTube channel where I assume the role of a tourist,” he explains on Reddit, “‘Vacation in Night City,’ ‘Night City Tapes,’ or something similar. Name suggestions are explicitly welcome!”
He explains that if there’s a mod that can remove all NPCs, he could record VHS footage in a deserted Night City to recreate the feeling of the so-called “Liminal Spaces” of the Backrooms. Based on the reactions on Reddit, this would be a well-received project that would generate great enthusiasm.
Who is now considered one of the masters of Liminal Spaces is the aforementioned Kane Pixels. His videos about the Backrooms were so successful that the 20-year-old YouTuber is now working with A24 on a feature film about the strange, eerily empty yellow rooms. He has also created a second project that, for MeinMMO editor Caro, should be at least as legendary: The creator of the new feature film about the legendary Backrooms worked on a second project that is even scarier
