PS4’s Legendary PT Demo Used to Teach Japanese Students English

Yes, really

by Liam Croft Yesterday, 9:15pm

PT, the iconic PS4 demo that revealed Silent Hills, has found itself a new use case: teaching Japanese school students the English language.

Niigata Prefectural Tsunan Secondary School, located in the Niigata prefecture and north of Tokyo, posted an article earlier this week about one of its fifth-grade English classes using PT to learn English. “Students progressed through the story by making choices in English as they appeared one after another in the game,” it’s explained. The article itself has a few pictures of the class working its way through the PS4 demo.

Despite being probably one of the scariest video game experiences around, it’s said the students present “experienced the joy of using English”. The sudden ringing of the phone in the demo’s hallway apparently surprised some students, so the horror factor wasn’t completely lost in the classroom.

The teacher in question must have brought their personal PS4 into school that had PT installed on it from years ago, because the demo was taken off the PS Store over 10 years ago and isn’t playable on PS5. If that’s not dedication to your job, we don’t know what is. Maybe we’d have gotten stronger grades at school if we were learning languages via PT.

[source tsunan-ss-edu.note.jp, via automaton-media.com]

Liam grew up with a PlayStation controller in his hands and a love for Metal Gear Solid. Nowadays, he’s found playing the latest and greatest PS5 games as well as supporting Derby County. That last detail is his downfall.

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