Kotaku Splitscreen Podcast Takes Video Games Back To School

Remember back in the day, when the new school year would coincide with the fall video game boom, inexorably intertwining the acts of learning and playing? When you’d come home from a long, hard day of trying to stay awake and spend a few hours in front of your favorite games to wind down? If not, don’t worry. In this week’s episode of Kotaku Splitscreen we remember those days for you.

Or Ethan, Lisa Marie, and I remember our versions of those days. Back when Lisa Marie would bring her plain, non-SP Game Boy Advance to school to trade Pokémon, or when Ethan spent hours with Final Fantasy VIII. Or when I, much older than those two, would trade bootleg floppy disks of black-and-white Apple games like Conan with other students in my primitive computer science class.

In this back-to-school episode of Splitscreen we also discuss games set in schools, and no, not just Persona. We’re talking Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, which starts in a school, and Danganronpa, in which high school students get murdered. We even talk Lollipop Chainsaw, Goichi Suda’s high school zombie action game, which now that I’ve had time to Google image search I am incredibly embarrassed to have played and enjoyed. Hoo boy.

Listen to the full episode to find out which song Lisa Marie is surprised neither Ethan nor I remember. And a reminder that new episodes come out every Friday, so like and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher to get them as soon as they go live. You can leave a review, too, or drop us a line at [email protected] if you have questions or want to suggest a topic. Or if you want to deliver your hottakes in realtime you can reach us on Twitter: I’m @unclefahey, Ethan is @ethangach, and Lisa Marie is @lisamarie_lynn. Until next week!