Stranger Things 2: Mad Max is all of us

Stranger Things 2 paints an accurate portrait of what life was like back in the early 1980s for girls who played video games. Can you relate to Mad Max?

In Stranger Things 2 we see Mad Max (Sadie Sink) in an arcade. Based on the reactions of the boys, you’d think you were spying on a leprechaun or something. Girls in arcades were something of a rarity. I should know, I was there. Kind of. The cool thing is that the Duffer Brothers have a female gamer in the early 1980s, and it says a lot about how far we’ve come.

Yellow Brick Road was the premiere arcade in San Diego in the early 1980s and while I was too young to really enjoy it, I knew it was there and that it was popular because it was next to the Mann Theater and everyone who went to the movies spent their time in the arcade waiting to get into the theater. One thing was very noticeable: The only people playing arcade games were guys.

I’ll go ahead and date myself here to say that I was 5 years old in 1985 when the Nintendo Entertainment System went mainstream. That was the year I got mine, even though I didn’t really know what to do with it until I was about 7. In the span of those two years my neighbor, Nick, came over to play with my system since he didn’t have one, and I was told to watch because girls don’t play video games. (Even though it was my machine, mind you) By the time I was 7, I was proving that girls have much better focus than boys, as demonstrated by my uncanny ability to kick his butt on most games we played. (Nick didn’t like this, by the way)

Seeing Max in Stranger Things 2 brings back a lot of memories because there weren’t many girls playing games in the arcades of the 1980s, or anywhere, really. Sure, girls wandered through arcades and watched other people play games, but the boys’ reactions at seeing Max was a very real thing back then. Girls simply didn’t play video games at the arcade. The ones that did were popular with the guys, but I don’t know that from firsthand experience because those were the older kids who were at Yellow Brick Road past my bedtime.

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I’m a little late to the Stranger Things 2 party, having just started the new season fairly recently, but so far the Duffer Brothers managed to capture gaming in the early 1980s perfectly in their retro show. While I’m certainly glad things have progressed for female gamers, it’s nice taking a little walk down memory lane because it was a lot of fun as a girl video game player in the 1980s to kick the boys’ butts.

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