Awesome 1980s

The 1980s were a good decade for music, giving us bands like Tears for Fears, The Human League, and Soft Cell along the way. To celebrate his love for the new wave, pop, and rock music from the decade of big hair and Rubik’s Cubes, stone-faced pianist Vinheteiro offers up a 5-minute concert of some of the era’s best tracks.

Back in the 1980s, the demoscene was all about creating cool motion visuals and music using the computers of the day. Engineer Matthias Kramm figured out a way to create an old-school demo without a computer by hacking the output of an old Commodore 1541 floppy drive into a video signal. More details on his blog.

RareBird Games created this VR gaming oddity. The game sends players back in time to a Blockbuster-style video store to wander the shelves looking for movies to rent on VHS and DVD. In survival mode, you’ll work to make money for bills and movie rentals, and you’ll even be able to watch some movies inside of the game.

’80s kids might remember a little computer program called The Print Shop. Broderbund’s whiz-bang piece of software let users print out greeting cards, banners, and signs on dot-matrix printers. Now you can relive this classic thanks to Melody and April Ayres-Griffiths online emulation, complete with the ability to print to PDFs.

If you grew up in the ’80s, ’90s, or ’00s you saw the work of artist Gary Ciccarelli. You might not know his name, but the illustrator created airbrushed images for countless products, including action figure packages, toy boxes, board games, movie posters, trading cards, and more. His work is gradually being archived on Instagram.

Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up is closing in on a billion YouTube views, thanks in large part to its use as the world’s number one prank. Alfo Media offers a retrospective on musician Rick Astley, the music video itself, where the term “Rickroll” comes from, and the impact the meme has had on Astley’s career.

YouTuber RamsesThePidgeon proves that we have yet to hear every possible cover version of a-ha’s 1985 classic Take on Me. Ramses says he had the earworm stuck in his head, and the only way to get it out was to beat it out of himself.

What you’re looking at here is an old digital pinball game that dates back nearly four decades. TysyTube found the yellowed and badly-scratched handheld system on an auction site, and painstakingly restored it to like-new condition. Using that ice cube tray as a screw sorter is a brilliant lifehack.

We never thought that sitcoms needed laugh tracks, but apparently, some TV executives think audiences need to be told when to laugh. In this video from the 1980s, we get a look at a unique piece of equipment that used 10 tape players to add various kinds of laughter, with audio engineer Carroll Pratt at the controls.

Nearly everyone has a smartphone with a camera these days, and videoconferencing is commonplace. But back in the 1980s, it certainly was not. Techmoan shows off Sony’s PCT-15 aka “Face to Face,” a 1988 device that could send a single black-and-white image at a time, transmitting data via a phone line – like a fax machine.

Blink-182 is already the poppiest of pop-punk bands, but they sound even more bubbly in this synth pop cover version. Mick Mazz imagines what it would have been like if the band recorded All the Small Things sometime between 1985 and 1990, and used a lot more synthesizers.

We rely on food delivery services like GrubHub and DoorDash way too much these days. Can you imagine what it would have been like if tech companies tried to launch such a service back in the 1980s? Squirrel Monkey envisions a rudimentary version of GrubHub that shipped on floppy disks and ran on MS-DOS.

Finnish band Steve’n’Seagulls heads to the ski slopes to perform a rapid-fire bluegrass cover of a 1979 pop hit. Their cheeky thrash polka arrangement of The Knack’s My Sharona reminds us more than a little bit of “Weird Al’s” My Bologna.

Nintendo fans might remember the short-lived The Legend of Zelda cartoon which ran on Saturday mornings in 1989. Now, thanks to the warped mind of editor KhalidSMShahin, we can enjoy this not-so-classic video game cartoon with Beavis playing the role of Link.

Let us kick it like it’s 1986 now with this fun and delightful cover version of the Portugal. The Man tune Feel It Still. Musician Mick Mazz gives the already sweet track an added candy coating with a heaping helping of ’80s synthesizers that make it sound like something by A-Ha.

Musicians John Oates and Saxsquatch teamed up to perform this totally different arrangement of the Hall & Oates classic Maneater. Our favorite sax-playing sasquatch brings a fresh new sound to the 1982 track, along with way more body hair than Daryl Hall ever had.

Ready for a trip back to the 1980s? The guys at We Are the Mutants spotted this gem of a commercial that perfectly captures the sci-fi aesthetics of the era. This big budget ad spot that implies General Electric’s cassette tape players will free the oppressed was obviously influenced by Apple’s famous 1984 Super Bowl spot.

Imagine for a moment that the Oasis hit Wonderwall was recorded in the 1980s, and the lead vocals were performed by Jimmy Somerville instead of Liam Gallagher. Deco did a great job mashing up the track with 1984’s Smalltown Boy. Their Spice Girls / Marvin Gaye combo is a good listen too.

The Timex T80 was a staple of 1980s design. Now it’s back and updated for the 21st century. The new version is just a bit crisper looking all around, with an old-school black on grey LCD, Indiglo backlighting, alarm, date, and stopwatch functions. It’s available in a variety of metal finishes, and a Pac-Man edition.

Do you have a place in your heart for the sounds of the 1980s? Sonicware’s portable synthesizer makes FM sounds like many electronic instruments of the era, but can merge multiple sounds into one. It has a built-in 4-track sequencer, effects, filters, and more than 300 preset sounds. Their 8bit Warps synth looks nifty too.

Johan Olsson likes to take popular songs and imagine what they would have sounded like had they been made in a different decade. Here, he transform’s Green Day’s 2004 pop-punk anthem into something that could have appeared on the Flashdance soundtrack.

These days, we all carry a very capable computer in our pockets. But back in the 1980s, pocket computers looked more like glorified calculators. The 8-Bit Guy takes a look at some of these early examples of miniaturization for a look at just how far computing technology has come in the last few decades.

The talented musicians of The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain jam out on another classic rock track. This time they took on the 1983 ZZ Top tune Gimmme All Your Lovin’, minus the ridiculously long beards, hot rods, and sexy models.