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Or at the very least aesthetics associated with the 1980s. For example the very bright neon of the 80s is a color style I'm seeing used in some modern fashions to give it a retro look, you've got many indie games nowadays adopting a look resembling an 8-bit NES game, TV shows like Moonbeam City being a spoof of 1980s sci-fi and cop drama while also incorporating that bright neon colors aesthetic for the artstyle, musicians are embracing at least some elements of an 80s asthetic (yeah notice I'm using this word a lot here) like the rapper Riff Raff with his "Neon Icon" album, Miley Cyrus with "Bangerz," and taylor Swift with "1989," the game Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon being an out-and-out love letter to 1980s action films and sci-fi cheese, and of course popular media from the 1980s such as Transformers, My Little Pony, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are enjoying a lot of renewed popularity this decade.

Now granted it also seems stuff from the 1990s is making a comeback too (Powerpuff Girls is getting a revival [though with a new cast], Nickelodeon is really catering to their older fans with nostalgic 90s centered TV blocks, Coca-Cola re-released Surge by popular demand), but for the most part it's the 80s that are really big on the "retro comeback" scene right now.

Granted it's not too hard to see why, people who grew up in the 1980s are now either in their 20s or 30s (depending on when they were born) and are probably just really nostalgic for their childhood, and because a decent amount of these 20 or 30 somethings work in the entertainment industry they can now create something that appeals to their own inner child, and the inner children of other people too. Now I was born in 1990 so I didn't get to experience the 1980s, but I was always fascinated by that decade for some reason, so this is interesting for me.

Might have something to do with that old guy, his young apprentice and their hovercar… Just saying.

I think indie games just use 8-bit or 16-bit art because it's cheap to make a good-looking product out of it. Most of them don't exactly have big budgets.

"It's a fact of life that something which portrays itself as "cutting edge" is eventually going to become mainstream, and from there passé. However, given enough time -- usually about 20 years -- what had been seen as behind the times, old hat, or just plain uncool suddenly begins to make a comeback, usually accompanied by words like "vintage," "nostalgic," and "classic." It's gone through the ups and downs of the popularity polynomial. " -TvTropes article on "Popularity Polynomial"

Okay, so 20 years isn't the same as 35 years, but this isn't an exact science.