Synthwave is not really a cyberpunk sub-genre — it is a parallel universe that shares the same street corner. It started in the mid-2000s as a music movement: French producers like Kavinsky and College were making electronic music that sounded like 1980s John Carpenter scores, filtered through memory and regret. The aesthetic followed naturally.

Retrowave — the visual half of synthwave — borrowed from things that defined 1980s futurism: the sunset grid of the "outrun" look, VHS color bleeding, the chrome serifs of movie posters that promised flying cars by the year 2000.

The grid floor with a vanishing point is the signature artifact. Its common label, "outrun," comes from Outrun (1986), a Sega arcade racing game known for its 1980s aesthetic; the term later came to cover retro visuals like magenta neon and gridlines. That image — flat perspective grid, glowing horizon line, palm trees optional — became the visual shorthand for "retro future" that designers still deploy today.