Welcome to the 80s
Neon dreams, synth beats & 8-bit machines — your guide to the most radical decade ever.
Pick Your Adventure
From boomboxes to home computers, the 1980s reshaped how we played, watched, listened and computed. Choose a topic and dive in.
Music
The decade synthesizers took over the charts and MTV made the music video an art form.
Movies
The decade Hollywood perfected the summer blockbuster and packed multiplexes with spaceships, sports cars and one-liners.
Television
The decade cable exploded, the VCR set you free, and theme songs got stuck in your head forever.
Video Games
From quarter-munching arcades to the living-room console wars, the decade that made gaming a global pastime.
Technology
The decade that put a music player in your pocket, a movie studio in your living room and a video arcade in the palm of your hand.
Computers
The decade the computer left the lab and the office and landed on the kitchen table.
Programming
The decade when your computer booted into a blinking prompt and the obvious thing to do was write a program.
Pop Culture
The decade of neon, big hair and bigger attitudes — when the mall was the universe and everything was, like, totally tubular.
Why the 1980s Still Matter
The 1980s were a decade of bold experimentation. Color exploded off the screen, music got louder and brighter, and for the first time ever a computer could sit on the kitchen table instead of filling a whole room. It was the decade that turned technology into pop culture.
This is when MTV launched and changed music forever, when home computers put programming in the hands of millions, and when blockbusters packed cinemas. Arcades glowed on every corner, the Walkman put a soundtrack in your pocket, and neon was a perfectly reasonable color choice for absolutely everything.
Pick a topic above and start exploring — every show, album and game has its own page.