Hello! Here are some pod updates.

Hello! Our appearance on Resonant Arc's Xenogears Story Analysis series has brought a new influx of listeners and patrons to Retrograde Amnesia. Thanks to everyone for your support and thanks to all the new folks who saw us on Resonant Arc that decided to check us out. For those new around here, I occasionally try to give folks an update of what we're working on and where we are at with various productions. So, here we go.

As you may have noticed, Star Ocean will be the next premium miniseries. Neither of us has played it before, making this the second game we've covered that we have limited experience with (the first was Terranigma). This is especially exciting because we're going to take a more experimental approach to covering the game: Eric will be playing the original Super Famicom fan-translated version of the game and I will be playing the First Departure R remake released on PS4/Switch. 

Recording sessions for this series will begin once we finish recording episodes for Disc 2 of Final Fantasy VIII, which should wrap up sometime in September (at the time of this post, we have Trabia Garden and the Battle of the Gardens remaining). Disc 2 will take up to about episode 30 or so.

For the Star Ocean series, we'll take the same approach to releases as we did with Parasite Eve: new episodes will be released on Wednesdays as soon as they are ready. With Parasite Eve, we were able to maintain a weekly release schedule, but we were in-between recording seasons 2 and 3 during that run. So, for Star Ocean, expect there to be a relatively consistent schedule but perhaps a few breaks to keep the FF8 production pipeline flowing (we like to stay a fair bit ahead of schedule). This will not impact the weekly release for the FF8 season. 

As we do with everything, we'll be recording these episodes live on Discord, so if you'd like to play along with us in real time, please hop in the Discord if you'd like to see the recording schedule.

The first episode of Pod Kompression, our Final Fantasy VIII bonus series, will be released on September 1. In this weird one, Eric wrote 119 questions solely related to the dialogue and quips delivered by Squall and Laguna in Dissida Final Fantasy and forced me to reckon with my Final Fantasy knowledge and intuition. And yes, of course, the accompanying audio clips are interspersed through the episode. It's going to be a good one.

As always, please let us know what type of things you'd like to see us cover in the bonus series and we'll give it a look. We're definitely doing something on The Spirits Within, The Pocket Station, and the Squall is Dead fan theory, but we're still looking for more ideas.

We're always thinking about the next season. While nothing is set in stone, we're leaning towards the theme of PlayStation non-Squaresoft game for our candidates. We usually star kicking that process into gear when 50% of the current season has been released. We're not sure how long FF8 will go, but it's looking like somewhere between 40-45 episodes. 

-Chris