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.
The dragons ate each other. Today we’re meeting with plot relevant characters, turning Mojo into Mojoy, questioning the nature of Maiden Faith, actualizing the Chrono Cross, preparing for time travel, freeing children from fire, obtaining button…
We are bound by fate to ingest copious amounts of lore. This time we’re egging time on, initializing wormholes, doing a phase metastasis, staring into the sea, installing memories, radically dreaming of a different life, personifying Fate, braining…
This time it’s about time. That means it’s time for ghost lore consultation, tracing the counter time effect, looking at anti annihilation energy, killing the police, controlling a sewer drone, inputting binary code, rhyming DNA with musical…
Please insert disc 2. This time we’re closing out characters with third techs, jumping on a tombstone, giving a book to a homeopathic surfer, eating children, pushing blobs for butterflies, kicking turds, visiting our doomed dimensional twin,…
We’ve got our Serge boy body back. With that we’re populating the island of misfit toys, dreaming of vegetables, resonating a sword, changing animations, divining dragon falls, industrializing Marbule, marrying mermaids, creating an iridescent…
Blushing, I walk the royal carpet. This time we’re answering riddles, introducing Orcha to himself, forgetting to save, recruiting ghosts as techs, fighting Evil Serge, learning the history of the world, absorbing reptite lore, transforming and…
Listen to the planet’s woes, humans. As we consecrate our dragon destiny, we’re also wrecking creatures of legend, watching Orlha kick ass then kicking Orlha’s ass, referencing a dimensional twin, receiving a Dragon Emblem, jumping in odor…
What powers doth thou seek? While we scour the world for relics, we’re jumping in the sand boil, breaking down the Fossicker, blowing up local wildlife, combining philosophy with destiny and violence, observing the sacred pilfering percentage,…
Aye, landlubber…!? This time we’re reforming Fargo, motivating mistreated laborers, missing metaphors, conducting a speech synthesis play, dissecting stage plays in RPG’s, exterminating all monsters in Marbule, listening across dimensions,…
Join us for a review of a brief retrospective on the original NieR and a review of NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139…