The Cold Cash War is a 1977 science fiction novel by American writer Robert Asprin, an expanded version of a short story of the same title published in the August 1977 issue of Analog.
The story takes places in a dystopian near-future in which enormous corporate cartels have begun competing in the military as well as economic sphere. The protagonist is major Steve Tidwell, a veteran mercenary who is hired by a new entrant to the conflict, a conglomerate of major Japanese businesses known as the Zaibatsu, to train their own strike force to Western standards.
The setting has been noted as an early example of proto-cyberpunk: nation-states are no longer as relevant in world affairs as corporations, communications technology is of prime importance, and Japan is a rising economic power. Intercorporate conflicts are normally fought under nonlethal rules of engagement, using "killsuits" - a reverse version of powered armor, which immobilize the wearer if an on-board computer decides that a disabling hit has been sustained.
Asprin revisited the setting in 1989 with Cold Cash Warrior, a hybrid of the choose-your-adventure novel and tabletop RPG rulebook, coauthored with Bill Fawcett and using the Combat Command TRPG system. In addition to the RPG content, it included roughly a novelette's worth of prose, providing the background for a campaign in the inter-corporate wars of the setting.
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Alternate history is a genre of speculative fiction in which one or more historical events have occurred but are resolved differently than in actual history. As conjecture based upon historical fact, alternate history stories propose What if? scenarios about crucial events in human history, and present outcomes very different from the historical record. Some alternate histories are considered a subgenre of literary fiction, science fiction, or historical fiction.
Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife and high tech", featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyberware, juxtaposed with societal collapse, dystopia or decay. Much of cyberpunk is rooted in the New Wave science fiction movement of the 1960s and 1970s, when writers like Philip K. Dick, Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, John Brunner, J. G. Ballard, Philip José Farmer and Harlan Ellison examined the impact of drug culture, technology, and the sexual revolution while avoiding the utopian tendencies of earlier science fiction.
Robert Lynn Asprin was an American science fiction and fantasy author and active fan, known best for his humorous series MythAdventures and Phule's Company.
TSR, Inc. was an American game publishing company, best known as the original publisher of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). Its earliest incarnation, Tactical Studies Rules, was founded in October 1973 by Gary Gygax and Don Kaye. Gygax had been unable to find a publisher for D&D, a new type of game he and Dave Arneson were co-developing, so founded the new company with Kaye to self-publish their products. Needing financing to bring their new game to market, Gygax and Kaye brought in Brian Blume in December as an equal partner. Dungeons & Dragons is generally considered the first tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG), and established the genre. When Kaye died suddenly in 1975, the Tactical Studies Rules partnership restructured into TSR Hobbies, Inc. and accepted investment from Blume's father Melvin. With the popular D&D as its main product, TSR Hobbies became a major force in the games industry by the late 1970s. Melvin Blume eventually transferred his shares to his other son Kevin, making the two Blume brothers the largest shareholders in TSR Hobbies.
Cyberpunk is a tabletop role-playing game in the dystopian science fiction genre, written by Mike Pondsmith and first published by R. Talsorian Games in 1988. It is typically referred to by its second or fourth edition names, Cyberpunk 2020 and Cyberpunk Red, in order to distinguish it from the cyberpunk genre after which it is named.
An eroge is a Japanese genre of erotic video game. In 1982, Japan's Koei, founded by husband-and-wife team Yoichi and Keiko Erikawa, released the first erotic computer game with sexually explicit graphics, Night Life, an early graphic adventure game for the NEC PC-8801. That same year, Koei released another erotic title, Danchi Tsuma no Yuwaku, which was an early role-playing adventure game with colour graphics, owing to the eight-color palette of the NEC PC-8001 computer. It became a hit, helping Koei become a major software company. On the other hand, some writers, like Naoki Miyamoto, considered the Yakyūken (1981) produced for Sharp MZ computers by Hudson Soft to be the first Japanese adult game.
Marilyn Lorraine "Lynn" Abbey is an American fantasy author.
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Megacorporation, mega-corporation, or megacorp, a term originally coined by Alfred Eichner in his book The Megacorp and Oligopoly: Micro Foundations of Macro Dynamics but popularized by William Gibson, derives from the combination of the prefix mega- with the word corporation. It has become widespread in cyberpunk literature. It is synonymous with syndicate, globalist- or transnational capital. It refers to a corporation that is a massive conglomerate, holding monopolistic or near-monopolistic control over multiple markets. Megacorps are so powerful that they are above the government laws, possess their own heavily armed private armies, are operators of privatized police forces, hold "sovereign" territory, and even act as outright governments. They often exercise a large degree of control over their employees, taking the idea of "corporate culture" to an extreme.
Mekton is a role-playing game which centers on the conventions of mecha anime and science fiction. It has seen several editions since its introduction in 1984, the most recent, Mekton Zeta being first published in 1994.
Phantasy Star is a series of console role-playing video games and other supplementary media created by Sega. The series debuted in 1987 on the Master System with Phantasy Star, and continues into the present with Phantasy Star Online 2 and other extensions of the Phantasy Star Online sub-series. Each of the games in the series features a science fantasy setting featuring a cross-genre combination of magic and technology.
Sword World RPG is a Japanese tabletop role-playing game created by Group SNE. 10 million copies of the related books including rulebooks, novels and replays have been sold. The game was first published in 1989; the updated edition, known as the "Sword World 2.0", was published in 2008; the current edition "Sword World 2.5" was published in 2018.
RPG Maker, known in Japan as RPG Tsukūru, is a series of programs for the development of role-playing video games (RPGs) with story-driven elements, created by the Japanese group ASCII, succeeded by Enterbrain. The Japanese name, Tsukūru, is a pun mixing the Japanese word tsukuru (作る), means "make" or "create", with tsūru (ツール), the Japanese transcription of the English word "tool".
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The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel is a 2013 role-playing video game developed by Nihon Falcom. The game is a part of the Trails series, itself a part of the larger The Legend of Heroes series. It was initially released in Japan for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita before being localized in English by Xseed Games in 2015.
William B. Fawcett is an American editor, anthologist, game designer, book packager, fiction writer, and historian.
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The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II is a 2014 role-playing video game developed by Nihon Falcom. The game is a part of the Trails series, itself a part of the larger The Legend of Heroes series, and serves as a sequel to The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel.
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