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

  • Episode 35: Samurai Ghost

    April 27th, 2014  |  35 mins 37 secs

    It’s strange but true, but customs that we attribute to a given locale often have shared roots. For example, did you know that seppuku and pumpkin carving come from the same, misguided place? Listen to the end to find out!

  • Episode 34: Harley's Humongous Adventure

    April 13th, 2014  |  30 mins 5 secs

    There are many ways in which a man can be small. Let's take stature as a given. There's also pettiness, deceit, closed-mindedness... All of these diminish us. What else diminishes us? Shrink rays of our own design.

  • Episode 33: Body Harvest

    March 30th, 2014  |  28 mins 34 secs

    In the long view, the Ninentdo 64 might be Abject Suffering, the system. In our initial estimate, the NES seemed like the most fertile and hateful ground... but the N64 is a remarkable moment in history where everyone's reach exceeded their grasp.

  • Episode 32: King of Dragons

    March 16th, 2014  |  38 mins 3 secs

    We're not proud, and we never said we weren't hypocrites. We also never promised to do things like "actually talk about the game we're supposed to talk about". That's your bad. You assumed that.

  • Episode 31: Episode 31: Ballz 3D

    March 2nd, 2014  |  35 mins 57 secs

    Squares. Circles. Tetrahedrons. The stately geodesic dome. Icosahedrons. Cubes. Hypercubes. Sentient cubes. BALLZ.

  • 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.