Awesome 1980s

Bored at home during the 2020 lockdowns Michel + Nico, decided to make a movie with their sons Sacha + Robinson. The result is this wonderful short about kids dreaming up their own action-adventure flick. The title pays tribute to The Goonies and Lethal Weapon director Richard Donner. A must-watch for film buffs.

This colorful Artist Edition watch celebrates 50 years of Atari. The forefathers of video games and Misfit teamed up with artist JK5 (Joseph Ari Aloi) to create this collectible 42mm watch, illustrated in a vibrant pop art style incorporating classic gaming elements. Limited to 500 pieces.

(PG-13: Language) Nintendo didn’t start making arcade games. The Japanese video game juggernaut made playing cards, toys, and board games for years before getting into arcade and console gaming. Videogamedunkey offers up a brief history of Nintendo’s early days and the origins of the game that would change everything.

Since Elon Musk acquired Twitter, there’s been a newfound interest in alternative social media platforms. One of the more popular has been the decentralized Mastodon. Squirrel Monkey imagines what it might have been like if you had to install the service using 3.5″ floppy disks. Funny thing is, there’s a Mastodon DOS client.

’80s kids surely remember the Alphaville track Forever Young – as will fans of Napoleon Dynamite. Singer Marian Gold proves he’s still got it with this epic symphonic version of the track performed with the Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg for the album Eternally Yours. Now enjoy some Big in Japan.

G-SHOCK and Nintendo created this sweet Super Mario Bros. watch, inspired by the classic 8-bit game. Its bezel and dial are done up in the color of Mario’s red overalls, while the bezel is the sky blue of the Overworld stages. The band features Mario pixel art print, and the LCD screen has an EL backlight with a Mario 1up graphic.

In the 1980s, Audio-Technica sold a portable record player called the Sound Burger. Now it’s back, with Bluetooth connectivity and a USB-C charging port. It can play 33-1/3 and 45 RPM LPs and singles using a spring mechanism that maintains pressure between the stylus and the record. A 60th-anniversary limited edition.

Engineer Linus Akesson shows off his typing and musical skills with a performance of Bach’s Prelude from Partita No. 3 on old Commodore 64 computers, along with a 1541 floppy drive which makes sounds with its motors. Stick around to the end of the video or visit his blog for details on the project.

Known for its graphical and sound abilities, the Commodore 64 personal computer was home to some of the best games of the 8-bit era. Engineer Linus Åkesson took advantage of its audio capabilities to build this unique accordion which consists of two C64 computers connected by bellows made out of floppy disks and tape.

David Parke took some 1988 video footage of a drive on the 405 from Culver City to Sherman Oaks, and copied the route precisely in 2022 to see what has and hasn’t changed. He had to speed up and slow down the footage to sync the two drives at times, and left the original 1980s audio track.

1980s kids, Johnny 5 is alive! Adam Savage got to geek out over one of the original screen-used models of the friendly and inquisitive robot from Short Circuit. This particular Johnny 5 was never functional but it still looks amazing. It’s one of the many amazing props and artifacts headed to Prop Store’s 2022 London auction.

Duck Hunt is one of the OG light gun games. The NES game used a photosensor in its gun to detect its position as you aimed at the birds on screen. Atari Video Music CRT Garage rigged up the game so it could be played on the world’s smallest CRT monitor – just 0.5″ across. It looks like the zapper can’t hit anything at this size.

The Muse track Knights of Cydonia is one of our favorites. It sounds especially great as a retro video game song. 8-bit Universe created this stellar chiptune version of the 2006 track which would have been perfect as the theme music for an old school Atari game like Ballblazer or M.U.L.E.

Musician Ichika Nito got his hands on a Casio DG-20, a 1980s gadget that used guitar strings and a fretboard a MIDI controller. He then proceeded to demonstrate why this thing might just be the coolest instrument ever. Enjoy some more Casio shredding action here.

’80s kids all know Thomas Dolby’s hit song She Blinded Me with Science. During a 2018 award ceremony from synthesizer maker Roland, the synth-pop maestro explained the story behind the song, whose voice exclaims “SCIENCE!,” and performed the track live. MikesGigTV captured Dolby’s entertaining presentation. Part two here.

Here’s one for all the ’80s and ’90s kids who miss walking through the aisles of their neighborhood video store on Friday nights. Anthony Sant’Anselmo spent four years turning his basement into a retro video store and home theater. His Mondo Video store has more than 13,000 VHS tapes and Laserdiscs, and they’re all in stock.

Fans of Knight Rider will immediately recognize this murdered-out 1982 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am as K.I.T.T. Playmobil’s version plays original voice clips and activates its scanner light when you touch its hood. The set includes poseable figures of Michael Knight, Bonnie Barstow, and Devon Miles.

It’s been 38 years since Miami Vice hit the airwaves. The NBC cop drama influenced and reflected 1980s fashion, music, and pop culture. It also featured performances from dozens of celebrities who would go on to bigger things. This compilation showcases 55 stars who appeared on the show between 1984 and 1989.

rerunthe80s takes us back in the time machine to remind us of sounds most of us haven’t heard in decades. From analog televisions to VCRs to video game systems, see how many of them you can guess with your eyes closed. We scored 15 out of 19.

VCRs might be obsolete technology, but they still featured some pretty smart engineering. That’s why illustrator and educator Jared Owen put together this in-depth look at the mechanisms that lie behind the VHS cassette flap. It’s cool to see how VCRs loaded and unloaded tapes without tangling them… most of the time.

1980s and 1990s music fans will remember MTV’s 120 Minutes as the go-to show for the latest in alternative music. Thanks to fan Chris Reynolds, there’s now a YouTube playlist featuring the more than 2500 music videos that ran on the show between 1986 and 2003. We’re assuming he had a little help from this website.

Some songs lend themselves particularly well to being played on brass instruments. Musician Seb Skelly shows us just that with his wonderful arrangement and performance of the Tears for Fears track Everybody Wants to Rule the World, another track which reminds us just how great a decade the 1980s were for music.

Musician Astrophysics takes songs from various genres, and slathers them with a thick layer of 1980s electronic sounds, then complements them with appropriately retro graphics. There’s lots of great stuff to enjoy on their YouTube channel, but this synthwave remix of Outkast’s 2003 hit Hey Ya! is our favorite (so far.)