Hideo Kojima’s ‘P.T.’ Demo is Helping Japanese Kids Learn English

It’s been over a decade since Kojima Productions released P.T., an interactive PlayStation 4 demo meant to set up the studio’s next project, Silent Hills. The demo was pulled after the game’s cancellation, but it’s found new life over in Japan as a tool to speak English.

Per Automaton, the Niigata Prefecture’s Tsunan Secondary School recently began having a fifth-year class—roughly high school sophomores for those in the west—play through P.T. entirely in English, from the dialogue to the menu text. After certain sections, the teacher pauses the demo to ask students what direction to go, and they’d have to answer in English with phrases like “walk around the room” or “answer the phone.” From there, they’d dictate the player’s next action.

In a translated school blog, the teacher revealed the demo spooked the students a few times with its jumpscares, but ultimately called the class “an atmosphere that was a mixture of excitement and excitement” as the students learned the new language.

The Niigata Prefecture’s use of P.T. adds an interesting wrinkle to the demo’s ongoing legacy. After its release and delisting, several games like Layers of Fear and Resident Evil 7 (and the Director’s Cut of Kojima’s own Death Stranding) referenced or took clear inspiration from it. There’s also been several fan-made remakes released for free on PC and VR, and Christophe Gans, director/writer of the upcoming Return to Silent Hill movie, used the demo as a reference point during production. Even Kojima hasn’t fully left P.T. behind: his next title, the horror game OD, has drawn comparisons to his formerly playable teaser. It’s too bad the demo and game are both lost to time, but they’re preserved in more ways than one.

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