/vr/ - Retro Games

>>9517835
>>9517819
If he means that the 80s as depicted by synthwave and vaporwave memes, with wild designer shit and neon lights everywhere, and wireframe grid visuals, you could certainly go and find it in places outside of just marketing material (typically commercial districts of urban centers, you could find some colorful neon signs here and there even in less nice and expensive places), but as a whole it really wasn't everywhere, it stood out even at the time, the entire point was a really distinct and unusual aesthetic which was cool and grabbed your attention.
However, GTA Vice City also isn't wild in this regard, there's the neon lights and colorful designer shit, and it's all urban, but you only find the stuff in some places, like at the fancy clubs, a designer mall, the beachfront with all the hotels, etc, otherwise, most of the environments you see are actually fairly grounded for the kind of game that it is.

So if he means like pic related, no, the 80s didn't look like the top image near universally, even in the biggest metropols, but Vice City doesn't depict it as such either, rather just having it in touches where you would actually expect to find it, upscale commercial establishment in a major American city. There's lots of homage to Magnum P.I, Miami Vice, and Scarface, plain as day, but those movies weren't dolled up like the top image at every turn, there's plenty of locales and characters who look really ordinary for the actual 80s. Take some random screenshots of the non-commercial urban areas and compare to photos of Miami streets and boulevards in the 1980s, and much of it is not that far off.