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.

Abject Suffering on social media

Episodes

  • Episode 30: Cool World

    February 16th, 2014  |  39 mins 57 secs

    How does a person feel when they stare into the smoldering, waiting eyes of their creation? When it clambers for your attention... wanting love, wanting validation... wanthing to feel something, ANYTHING. That's how God feels about you ever day.

  • Episode 29: Yu-Gi-Oh!: Worldwide Edition: Stairway to the Destined Duel

    February 2nd, 2014  |  44 mins 37 secs

    Not everyone knows the creation myth for anime. One day in a peaceful village in Japan, a truck carrying a surplus of decimal places from the war overturned, spilling extra zeroes and permanently altering the population. What was once 20 was soon 20,000.

  • Episode 28: Stone Protectors

    January 19th, 2014  |  38 mins 25 secs

    What stones can't do is support an entire multimedia blitz with bad puns related to (ugh) rock and roll.

  • Episode 27: Scrapyard Dog

    January 5th, 2014  |  45 mins 11 secs

    In fact, the act of sharing a hot tub with a group of strangers is a form of communal Butthole Soup Making. So, think about that next time you're in a jacuzzi.

  • Episode 26: Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City

    December 22nd, 2013  |  35 mins 3 secs

    We might secretly like sports. Or, at least, Gary might. One imagines him as a closeted basketball hound, feverishly building brickets for his Springtime Fever league, going in on office pools to see which squadrons will tame the orange bounce.

  • Episode 25: Captain Planet and the Planeteers

    December 8th, 2013  |  35 mins 25 secs

    Captain Planet takes a cut of the proceeds, and buys them all 40's of Old English to share. He sleeps in an unadorned firetrap apartment and no longer fears death.

  • Episode 24: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

    November 24th, 2013  |  29 mins 33 secs

    The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are just like this glass. Once, they didn't exist. Then they started existing. And then they didn't stop existing. The NES game is an artifact of that violent cultural birth. Also, it doesn't really belong here, except it's kind of flickery and a little too hard.

  • Episode 23: Mission: Impossible

    November 10th, 2013  |  39 mins 45 secs

    Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take this container of Vaseline, and smear it all over these Doritos. Just really get it in there. That's right. Rub it real good. Now stack them up and press your face into it.

  • Episode 22: Friday the 13th

    October 27th, 2013  |  35 mins 49 secs

    If people don't stop having sex, then the human race is done for. The church has done all it can, but it's not enough. We must instead turn to our masked vigilante saviors to stop this sexy, sexy scourge once and for all.

  • Episode 21: Home Alone

    October 13th, 2013  |  34 mins 40 secs

    Home Alone was written by John Hughes. So were a bunch of other movies. He was a fixture, and then he just went away. Was he aware of this game? Did he conceive of the stereotyped mobsters that are in it?

  • Episode 20: Ren and Stimpy Space Cadet Adventures

    September 29th, 2013  |  37 mins 57 secs

    How can you capture something as fucking nutso as Ren and Stimpy in a game? We spend about 35 minutes figuring out that you can't do it with a monochrome spaceship where Log attacks you.

  • Episode 19: Mohawk and Headphone Jack

    August 28th, 2013  |  35 mins 22 secs

    We're somewhat convinced that Michael designed Mohawk and Headphone Jack specifically to be as unappealing as possible. Good job, Michael. You broke us.

  • Episode 18: Captain Skyhawk

    August 28th, 2013  |  32 mins 37 secs

    We don't contend with mediocrity that often. So far, the closest we got was Pac Man 2, and that doesn't really count since it's so weird. Captain Skyhawk doesn't really belong here.

  • Episode 17: Bubsy II

    August 14th, 2013  |  35 mins 57 secs

    This is the singularity that happens when 1000 bad ideas try and cram their way into a premise that isn't promising. This is our first mascot platformer... any why not live life to the hilt?

  • Episode 16: Road Runner's Death Valley Rally

    July 31st, 2013  |  37 mins 14 secs

    Kole has become unstuck in time. This is the epicenter of his primary dissonance: how can he be a 26 year old man, but appreciate Road Runner cartoons and Nick at Nite?

  • Episode 15: Where's Waldo?

    July 17th, 2013  |  33 mins 47 secs

    Saving Private Ryan started out as a Where's Waldo film adaptation. True fact. But Spielberg descended into the heart of darkness, gradually turning Martin Handford's whimsical vision into a twisted hellscape of severed limbs and broken hearts.