Retrograde Amnesia is a deep-dive video game podcast dedicated to exploring classic Japanese Role-playing Games (JRPGs), chapter by chapter, beat by beat. The show blends structured narrative analysis, humor, and immersive production to guide listeners through the worlds, characters, and themes of the genre’s most beloved and strange stories.
Praised for its thoughtful pacing, encyclopedic research, and a blend of sincerity and irreverence, Retrograde Amnesia offers a cozy look back for players who want to engage more deeply with their favorite games within the medium. Play along with the hosts or reminisce your enduring thoughts as we trek through the stories we grew up with.
Each season covers a single game in exhaustive detail, using a a meticulous scene-by-scene format to reexamine every moment. Whether it’s dissecting the political intricacies of Final Fantasy Tactics, or unraveling the existential dread of Xenogears, the show approaches every game with a balance of critical insight and deep appreciation for the medium.
Listeners have described the show as:
“One of the best out there”
“If you love retrospective type podcast this is one of the best out there. They pick great games and take their time going through them. Just the perfect type of podcast for me. It’s like getting to live through these games from my childhood again without having to play all the way through them. Great job guys, I hope there are many more episodes to come.”
— SIumlord, May 27, 2024“What a gem”
“Discovered these guys when I was searching up stuff on Xenosaga, and saw a back catalog of amazing games. Started with [Final Fantasy VIII] and am about to do the next season. Chris and Eric are hilarious, insightful, and worth your time to listen to. Also Fakenet will you marry me.”
— laser canon death sentance, January 23, 2024“Witty, smart, and highly detailed”
“Chris and Eric rock. They play off each other super well, it’s like hanging out with a couple guys with a bottle of whiskey and even though you never have a chance to get a word in, you don’t really want to. Thoughtful and interesting with hilarious in jokes they are more than happy to bring you in on.”
— alinktreetothepast, October 19, 2023
Since 2019, Retrograde Amnesia has been a destination for thoughtful JRPG fans seeking to reckon with the games they grew up loving — while learning to love the ones they missed.
Retrograde Amnesia is hosted by Eric and Chris — two old pals who have been thinking about JRPGs for multiple decades.
Identity diffusion: the eternal dilemma. Diffuse your identity with us as we’re wondering if child robots are programmed to hate a biological dad father, running like a big goober, bombing a pick-up line, discovering a gambling-addicted populace,…
Will feeling pain make me complete? Complete your own pain and listen as we’re not supplied for a gnosis attack, freaking out on the bridge, dialing up the KOSMOS contemplativeness, talkin’ bout momma, scanning transfection course, deciding it’s…
I alone can take humanity to its next natural state of evolution. Together alone, we’re inducing a tilt-shift effect, defining PS2 ladder controls, going to the mall, curing women’s diseases with herbs, softening the hardness of mother, running a…
Why? Why not joins us as we’re sleeping in our work clothes, steaming the breath, defining “ghost shit,” foreboding ominously, penetrating the space column, spreading the Hilbert Effect to Ultra Wide, estimating our 10K times, staring down a…
Are you enjoying life? We’re certainly enjoying reading the obvious signs of an apolitical game, inventing more things to haunt Cherenkov, cleaning to impress men, dunking on Allen, hiding the fish detector, threatening members of the military,…
Pierce me with your hatred. Pierce your ears as we’re referencing The Wizard of Oz, activating false memories, introducing a southern belle and a goth princess, making a sword into a spaceship, suspecting Momo’s abduction was an inside job,…
There is no need to divert more personnel to this location. At our location, we’re figuring out if Andrew Cherenkov is a character, performing sick tricks in the space column, skittering off the column wall, avoiding obligations for either a tunnel…
We have scenarios, so we have to have keys. The keys to this episode include disappointing the real human robot child, wondering where the Y Data is hidden, sealing off space, realizing there is an even higher council, hiding the map from Tony,…
Now, where does the real you exist? As we exist, we’re applying the rules of characters to our characters, sharing curry instead of a campfire, noting the lack of estrogen as applied to sexist stereotypes, sleeping with food, witnessing Allen go…
Machines like you exist to be used. Machines like us exist to talk about entering the Android Discourse with Margulis and Momo, requiring mommy to take us back to the lab, aborting any reasonable attempt at stealth, burying cult figureheads in child…