retroAM

Time of the Bonus 7: Xenogears Comic Anthology, Part I

Did you know there is a Xenogears Comic Anthology? Neither did we! We read through the first eight chapters of the anthology and talked through them like they were part of the video game, kind of. Some of the stories add flavor to the events and backstory of the game, some are dumb (but enjoyable) vignettes of people baking cakes. If you haven't read the scanlation, check it out 2020-04-22 13:42:22 +0000 UTC View Post

31: Bart vs. Bartholomew [Gate 1: Margie]

A boss battle and a plot device; let's go. We're missing glowing red buttons, observing Grahf's technology and Gate technology, noting Shakhan is a jerk and a punk, not getting it up, blessing up our Big Boy, min-maxing Elly and destroying god, crashing our PlayStation Classic, creating a republic, having sex out of sects, cultivating dread, tolerating Rico's bad ideas, de-committing from Chu-Chu, and trashing Ramsus' trash-ass. Margie's not in this chapter.

2020-04-20 11:01:01 +0000 UTC View Post

Upgrading the Studio, Getting Ready to Kill God, and Other Things

Hey everyone,

Hope you're hanging in there and staying well. 

Monthly billing is resuming as normal on 5/1. If you're out of work or in a situation where you need to penny pinch, please reach out and we'll try to work something out temporarily. 

Recording Progress. In terms of recording, we're are in the home stretch. We've recorded everything up until the final chapter, First and Last, which took 50 episodes. At times, it seemed like this podcast ...

30: Bartweiser, The King of Gears [Protect Nisan]

You're really acting absent-minded chu-day. This time we're listening to half the soundtrack, "burning ass" back to the Yggdrasil, committing to Chu-Chu, fighting on a stage set, collecting our thoughts on a bridge, not robbing an abandoned store, exploring an actual spaceship, using our ancestral eyes to open sacred doors, lamenting the mausoleum's whack-ass dungeon, deathblowing each other, bonding pilots with robots, flying saucers, suggesting clergymen should commit suicide, and controlli...

Xenogears Perfect Works 4: Social Structure

Hello! We are here with another installment of the Eric-read audiobook style reading of the Xenogears Perfect Works. Due to the nature of the translation after this point, this will be the final installment of the audiobook-style podcasts (read: the grammar is gobbledygook and we don't know Japanese). 
Here is a link to the UltimateGraphics translation.
We'll cover the remain...

29: Perfect Robot Body [Intruder Alert! + Raid of Shevat!]

Unification increases power. This time we're listening to forest music in an air shaft, thinking Maria's combat prowess might be underdeveloped, hopping windmills, conjuring alternative Big Joe truths, listening to villains reveal critical plot machinations, regretting Rico, dealing with our machine father, speculating Billy's infatuation with Boondock Saints, riding Gears instead of piloting Gears, witnessing fantastic animal transformations, practicing telepathy with children, running like ...

28: Disagreeable Squirt [Sky City Shevat]

Let's not imagine things. It's not good for your heart. What's real is spilling beverages on podcast equipment, identifying 2018 lyrics in a 1998 song, appreciating Bart carrying plot points across time, squirting, collecting different shaded rocks, encountering Shevat's assemblage of ragtag rebels, parlaying with Chu-Chu's, turning yesterday’s tears into tomorrow's smiles, receiving all of the lore at Shevat Palace, blending our fake religion with Xenogears' real legends, getting gaslit by...

Updates and other general whatnots

We hope that everyone is doing well. Here are a few notes about where we're at and where we're going.

Progress. As of today, we have recorded content for 46 episodes.  We are very close to the end of Xenogears, so we expect we'll land somewhere around 50 episodes before we wrap up season one. Our focus is finishing these up and then working on some additional bonus content that we've been planning for some time, finishing the Perfect Works series, and making prepar...

27: Lost Porpoise [Babel Tower]

We've lost our porpoise. On this episode, we're realizing the places we feared as children aren't to be feared as an adult, admiring Krelian's headgear, going over Chu-Chu composition theories, confronting the horror of 1998 physics systems, falling into dank pools, jumping over wreckage, speculating tower origins, obliterating Ramsus' weak ass (again), riding through Traffic Jams, meeting a young anime girl with pilot goggles, recognizing a familiar large Gear, and experiencing two SOL-9000 ...

Hang in there. We're not charging patrons for April.

Hey all,

In the wake of COVID-19 and the challenges that folks worldwide may face with work, childcare, and illness, we are suspending billing for the month of April. 

As many of you know, we record a lot in advance, so the podcast will continue on as normal -- you just will not be charged on 4/1/2020. New patrons will still be charged when they join, but will not be charged during the monthly billing cycle.

Stay home if you can. Take care of each other. Yes, we will ki...

26: A Wild Second Amendment Appears! [Deep Sea Girl]

Are you strong? This time we're dealing with the implications of Citan as party leader, finding Zeal in Xenogears, developing some suspicious Dan suspicions, meeting Id and wondering gosh what the heck is an Id, watching heroes come out of the rafters, LOOKING AT STONE'S FACE OR LACK THEREOF, clarifying a "fake awakening," questioning Grahf's motivations, doing bong rips with Citan, desiring a Jessie manga, laughing at Stone self-identify as an incel, noting the absurdity of suicide Gears, an...

TIME IS RUNNING OUT! Vote for Season 2!

It is -Time- to choose our -Fate-. 
This poll will run from March 13 to May 4. You've been the crew that has fueled our journey here, so you're going to decide which path we take. If you'd like to abdicate your vote, we have a "Podcaster's Choice" selection. Those votes will be applied to the game our collective heart is closest to at the time of the selection. 
When the poll closes, we will be able see who voted for what, so at that time we'll add the individual modifier...

Xenogears Perfect Works 3: Pop Quiz, Hot Sounds

As a means to wrap up and discuss our learnings from the History chapter from Perfect Works, Eric wrote a 92-question quiz to try to stump Chris and determine if he is ripe to become parts for god. Come, harvest our hot sounds into your godlike ears!

25: Yoke, Not Yolk [Ocean Floor]

Oh god. We're missing our dead friends, determining the info line on Chu-Chu, keeping pictures of our house in our house, numbing our fear of Reapers with booze, ratioing/radioing Grahf with Miang, spending a lot of time in hallways and staircases, computing some math problems, watching nanomachine colonies assume human form, organizing the hierarchy of conspirators, figuring out what "yoke" means, and meeting some new Elements. Religion can only be used for wrongdoing. Drunks love to fight. ...

24: Hacking with Friends [Burning Souls]

Burning Desire, Burning Souls, Burning Rangers. It's been exposed. We spend our time stealing our father's gun, realizing you can't have separation of church and state if the church is also the state, uncovering Solaris' global meddling, watching dying people cough up blood and plot, shattering faith, enduring Bond villain soliloquies, watching Bishop Stone overdo it, and sitting through escalations of lore and plot devices. Current Xenogears toilet count: 2.

2020-03-02 12:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post

Time of the Bonus 6: Let's Talk About Hyuga Ricdeau

We're back with another Citan episode. Special thanks to patron Seth Who Talks Too Much who gave us a lot of theory and information to chew on as it relates to Citan's aesthetic and personality. In this episode, we ponder much of this, wondering why Citan does what he does and what his aesthetic says about how his character was designed.

Initializing RealNet: Live streaming on Discord tonight

Hello everyone!

Just wanted to give everyone a heads up that we will be streaming on Discord tonight, starting around 8pm Eastern time. Details will be announced on the Discord server, and future announcements will only be blasted on Discord so we don't spam up the Patreon feed.

Hope to see you there!

23: Various, Pointless Gun Envy [Reaper's Ship]

Thank you, my good man. As we board the Transport ship, we're speculating the nature of father and son ethical considerations, telling our garbage sons to quit their bullshit jobs, embracing for sex acts with blood relatives, identifying Bishop Stone as Billy's Citan, pinpointing silence as an indicator of wisdom, selling our bodies to perverts, laughing at Bart's Sideshow Bob-ass running animation, explaining the holy man violence paradox, busting down doors at full speed, and making our mon...

Time of the Bonus 5: Xenogears, Citan, and Satan

This month, we're exploring the connection of Citan and the concept of satan. 

Why do people call Citan a "fallen angel"? Where did the term even come from? And does the connection even make any sense? What other concepts from Xenogears map to the biblical concept of the satan? We attempt to explore some of these connection as we talk about the man we love to hate (but ultimately grow to love), Citan Uzuki. We don't know everything, but we sure as hell (ha!) try to figure it out. 2020-02-21 03:34:22 +0000 UTC View Post

Audience participation! We're testing out a new patron benefit.

Hello! Several have expressed interest in listening to our recording process through Discord. This would essentially give patrons the opportunity (or dark, cruel destiny) of listening to us while we're recording our conversations. It'll be completely raw, with no sound effects or music, just dudes talking. 

At the end of each session or chapter, we'll check the chat and have a chance to respond to any comments, questions, or corrections. These discussions can be integrated into the...

22: God Tolerates Our Heathenism [A Young Priest + The Orphanage]

It's happened. We've come to value the meaningful and the meaningless information relinquished by Xenogears' localization. We're also justifying Margie as a manager, wondering why machines are gendered, watching the Ripper digest and disappear party members, identifying Ether Doubler acquisition methods, uncovering some ulterior motives at Etone H.Q., questioning Hammer's retention, referring to our biological father as "that man," expanding our nationalistic beef awareness, discovering myste...

A conversation with Wesley Schantz of Bookwarm Games

Hey everyone,

Last week, we had a great conversation with Wesley Schantz of Bookwarm Games. We discussed the origin story of our podcast and went on to talk about a few big picture topics in Xenogears. 

The podcast is not released on his feed yet, but Wesley was kind enough to encourage us to use the audio as well. Wesley has a great ongoing series on Xenogears and previously did some analysis on Earthbound. I find his work to be quite thoughtful and academic, so please be su...

Retrograde Amnesia Season 2: Building the List [Updated]

So, we've made our list. We recorded our discussion. If you'd like to hear it, please listen. If not, I'll post the list in the comments later! Thanks for your support, please enjoy us blabbering about our respective destinies. 

In the future, you (the patron) will be able to vote on our next game. More to come!

UPDATE: The voting begins on 3/15/2020 and will run through the end of April. At that time, patron modifiers will be added to the totals and we'll an...

21: Classic Protagonist Incapacitation Sequence [Ramsus' Attack]

Ramsus attacks in this chapter, but so does Dominia. And so does Jessie, but only with his words and only at Bart. We're also questioning the ethical responsibility of GameSharks, admiring pirate and salvager bonds of sea and fire, expressing rage with quick camera cuts, missing every mother fucking X attack, noting the time/space error by the Yggdrasil's depth charges, not paying attention to Ramsus' Mirror Stance, conjuring an NPC Doctor Academy FanFic, jerkin' off with Bart, outlining Nisa...

Xenogears Perfect Works: History, Part II

It's time to wrap up Eric's reading of the History section of the Perfect Works. Please enjoy his beautiful tones as you learn (or re-learn) about the fall of Zeboim, the Solaris-Shevat War, and the events leading up to Xenogears.
For this episode, we are using the translation found at GameFAQs by int (t3xt, the Perfect Works Translation Project and a scanned translation2020-02-07 20:16:14 +0000 UTC View Post

Here's what we're working on this month.

Salutations! Thanks for supporting us. Here's a quick update on how things are going behind the scenes. 

Weekly show progress: We've recorded conversations up to the final battle of disc 1. We're going to need another couple of episodes to unpack the subsequent scenes, so we suspect disc 1 will end around episode 39. We seriously have no idea how disc 2 is going to go, but we're certainly (and oddly) excited about the pace change and how it's going to impact the po...

20: Pranks in an Unknown Land [Friends Again + Betrayal]

It's true; Xenogears and Xeno-adjacent podcast may be our own dark cruel destiny. This time we're dissecting idioms, unlocking abilities through the power of narrative, expressing surprise at some casual abduction, picturing "Malibu Bart," remembering Hammer is on this blasted ship, fantasizing over non-erotic Old Maison fan art, determining the current villain tier list, continuing our adoration of portrait-less doctors, and dabbling in some hypno-programming. You shouldn't play pranks in an...

Xenogears Perfect Works: History, Part I

Here we are. You've supported us, so we're delivering something weird: the first installment of the Perfect Works Miniseries. 
We're going to experiment with a multi-faceted approach to covering the content found within the book -- a mixture of audiobook-style readings and discussion episodes. 
We'll begin with the first part of the History chapter, which discusses the origins of the Xenogears episode timeline, the creation of Deus, the events surrounding the ...

19: Do Men Drink Hard Seltzer? [Men of the Sea]

We. Are men. Of the sea. Or at least we try to be. Between the shards of these emotions we're discovering men who love to drink, clarifying the way to say words, debating more origin species of demi-humans, talking through the safety of combining inebriation and work assignments, learning a new card game, seeing what happens when antagonists are consumed by rage, and recognizing that treasure and people are both treasures. We don't know if the Captain is dosing his crew but we do know that yo...

Time of the Bonus 4: Tournament of Gears, Part II

Hello. The Tournament of Gears will now conclude. We're talking through the other half of the bracket en route to crowning the true champion. Which Gear will be the best, coolest, and most impactful based on criteria we set mid-conversation? Listen, find out, and react to our lunacy! Spoilers are abound!.