Abject Suffering

Why are you doing this to us?

About the show

This is a podcast that's nominally about bad games. In reality, it's about the horror of daily life, GameFAQs Gold, strange combatants in the battle of Good vs. Evil, and a singular patriarch known only as Crick. Every Monday, Gary Butterfield and Kole Ross choose a game at random from the titles submitted by listeners, play it, and venture off on a freeform discussion that winds between the topic at hand, and the absurd.

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Episodes

  • 610: Sneak King

    May 19th, 2025  |  43 mins 5 secs

    People have been asking us to cover the Burger King games for as long as this show has existed. They fit the remit of Abject Suffering so perfectly! But emulation is difficult, and we wanted to make absolutely sure we could play these games perfectly, so we could avoid talking about them and instead dwell on how the Burger King corporation wasted a character with the amazing name “The Duke of Doubt”.

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    609: Ace of Seafood

    May 12th, 2025  |  34 mins 32 secs

    One of our least favorite game coverage schticks is pretending that a game’s concept is so wacky that you can’t understand it. You play as a mosquito who’s tormenting a family, and it’s a flight sim? Okay, cool, I get it. A domino wants to run little courses? Sure, why would I try to stop him? A studio’s whole deal is putting aquatic life in strange situations? This can totally fit in my brain and it would diminish us all to pretend that’s not the case.

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    608: Mercenary Force

    May 5th, 2025  |  34 mins 5 secs

    Listen, Mercenary Force isn’t a bad game at all. It’s actually quite interesting, if a bit too hard. A side scrolling shooter where you control four feudal Japanese warriors? It’s a good premise! Nobody knows what Gary was thinking when he brought this one.

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    607: James Cameron's Dark Angel

    April 28th, 2025  |  36 mins 15 secs

    Given how many super soldiers there are out there, you’d think there would be more social support for them. Groups, meetings, organizations. Shit, did I just reinvent the Venture Bros. from first principles? Come in and find out!

    “Why is one of the hosts named differently? What happened!?” Kaye is transitioning! Find out more here.

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    606: Jurassic Park (SNES)

    April 21st, 2025  |  42 mins 20 secs

    This week a patron demand takes us into a discussion about a game that Gary likes quite a bit. The Jurassic Park SNES game is open world, mixed perspective, and overall a huge surprise, since Ocean doesn’t usually do work this interesting.

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    605: MegaRace

    April 14th, 2025  |  44 mins 29 secs

    It’s the future. You’re on a gameshow. You need to wipe out the speed gangs with vigilante car violence, murdering every last one of them… for real! But not really though. But really, it’s VR. But it’s LIKE death. But not death. We can’t emphasize enough how unlike and like real death this is.

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    604: Dennis Miller: That's News to Me

    April 7th, 2025  |  36 mins 16 secs

    Cybermania ‘94 reminded us that there’s a Dennis Miller game on the 3DO. And we figured we might as well take a deep dive into a guy who sucks, via talking about a very strange multimedia product from the nineties.

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    603: Tony Hawk's Underground 2

    March 31st, 2025  |  40 mins 46 secs

    We’ll be honest, this isn’t a bad game. A Tony Hawk game will generally have a high floor for quality, unless it’s Downhill Jam or something. No, this is here because you voted for it, and it’s also the most Bam Margera you’re going to get in a video game by volume. And though we love Jackass, there’s a lot to dislike about ol’ Bam Bam himself.

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    602: Popstar Guitar

    March 24th, 2025  |  35 mins 41 secs

    A sub-par Guitar Hero clone that doesn't list band names or anything. Just shitty, shitty covers of pop songs.

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    601: Pigskin 621 AD

    March 17th, 2025  |  38 mins 15 secs

    What would it take to get you interested in football? Knights? Ogres? Vikings? Oh, none of the above… Well, you’re going to be very disappointed with this week’s game then. We’ll work on making tennis cooler next.

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    600: Tiger Handheld Electronics

    March 10th, 2025  |  31 mins 49 secs

    For our very special 600th episode, we talk about the most video game-shaped thing you could get that wasn’t a video game: the Tiger Handheld Electronics game. These heavily licensed consolation prizes were barely interactive, made heinous noises, and were ubiquitous in the early nineties. You can play many of them on the Internet Archive, but why would you?

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    599: Tuneland Starring Howie Mandel

    March 3rd, 2025  |  34 mins 59 secs

    Did you know that Howie Mandel made a series of kids games? Did you know that the music was a collaboration between artists from Pink Floyd, Yes, the Doobie Brothers, and Supertramp? If you did, that’s a very strange thing to know.