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.
What is homesickness, if not nostalgia? Between adult conversations, we’re getting roped into a knife-throwing exhibition, letting the carnies join us, trading sex for safe passage, slaying the Mist Shade, alienating my hometowns folk, learning…
Wake up, or I’ll throw you in the river again. After we survive a swan dive, we’re opening our eyes to familiar strangers, sleeping in a storeroom jai cell, performing unpaid labor, rainchecking the knowledge of sex and alcohol, meeting a kobold…
Welcome to part two of season four of Retrograde Amnesia! As we kick off our coverage of Suikoden II, we’re going over release history, development staff, contemporary reviews, modern reflections, and our personal history & expectations. Then we…
Can’t something be wrong, and priceless? On season four, part one’s final episode, we’re investigating bathing dynamics, pretending Sanchez isn’t a rat, allowing Leknaat to lore dump all over us, wasting our only resurrection spell, sending…
This is no time to be distressed, we have a job to do. As we ingest the envy of angels, we’re learning Mathiu and Humphrey were on opposite sides of a massacre, brewing our finest tea, preventing adults from having consensual sex, writing Hix off as…
I dislike myself intensely when I am fighting. As we experience classic RP Games, we’re being infiltrated by a spy, realizing it’s not just a drill, rejecting breakfast and surrender, failing an execution, contriving subterfuge, applying a ruse,…
We’ve had a rough time getting here, and we’re taking this stuff. Before that caper, we’re romanticizing a studio apartment, wondering if sleeping poison is really poison, foreshadowing the third ingredient, locating the final blacksmith,…
In this special episode, we sit down and chat with Aidan Moher on his upcoming book, Fight, Magic, Items: The History of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and the Rise of Japanese RPGs in the West. We talk about the writing process, the…
Wishy washy, aren’t we? As our glorious island fortress levels up for the final time, we’re moving Kimberly in with Tai-Ho, pondering the beef between Mathiu and Leon, explaining Plate Armor, befriending a centenarian cultist, lucking out with…
What’s wrong? Is there something on my face? After the talking sword sends us to the past, we’re meeting Ted in boy form, damning the damned, charing a village, encountering the enigmatic Yuber, cursing Ted with a sorrowful fate, accepting the…