Abject Suffering

Abject Suffering

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.

Episodes

617: Mega Man Soccer

July 7, 2025 • 38 mins
We don’t know anything about soccer, but we DO know things about Mega Man. Unfortunately, this game leans more on the soccer side of the equation. So we default back to the last time either of us played sports: in gym class. We also talk about our recent trips to festivals, both Renaissance and Pride.
Mark as Played

616: Bug!

June 30, 2025 • 33 mins
To prove just how dead in the water Sega was in the mid-1990s, they bet big on Bug!, a very slow 2.5D platformer that began life as a Sonic game. The Sega Saturn was a system in search of an identity, and boy howdy, Bug! did not provide it.
Mark as Played

615: Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six

June 23, 2025 • 34 mins
Have we talked about Spider-Man more than any other superhero on this show? Maybe Batman is up there. And Gary has definitely shoehorned “Turn Off the Dark” into more episodes than is necessary. But this is the first time we’ve really camped out on the Sinister Six, one of the more incoherent supervillain groups of all time. Also, take a look at Spider-Man’s sprites for this game. He’s so schlubby!
Mark as Played

614: Black Eyed Peas Experience

June 16, 2025 • 35 mins
Folks, Gary chose to harm all of us by picking this game for Abject Suffering. Part of the shovelware dance game craze of about fifteen years ago, the Black Eyed Peas Experience ranks pretty low on the list of things we’ve covered. And that list is long.
Mark as Played

613: Guardian War

June 9, 2025 • 32 mins
Covering Guardian War right after Paperboy 64 is a one-two punch of some of the most hideous games we’ve played. But looking past its shoddy veneer, Guardian War is kind of interesting, if insufficient. Of all of the 3DO games we’ve played, this is the one that’s most like an actual video game… being a kind of over-the-shoulder tactics RPG. Gary also underwent a harrowing medical experience, so we had to talk about that too.
Mark as Played

612: Paperboy 64

June 3, 2025 • 36 mins
Would you believe that the Paperboy game for the N64 would be one of the ugliest things we’ve covered for this show? It seems like that would be hard to accomplish, given the competition, but this game’s spindly polygonal horrors are genuinely unnerving.
Mark as Played

611: Gon' E-Choo!

May 26, 2025 • 37 mins
Make no mistake: This is a game created for a furry vore comic… but it’s such a mild example of what we can only assume is fetish material that all we’re left with is a pretty okay Popeye arcade game clone. So we talk about the many faces of Gordon Ramsey instead.
Mark as Played

610: Sneak King

May 19, 2025 • 43 mins
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”.
Mark as Played

609: Ace of Seafood

May 12, 2025 • 34 mins
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 preten...
Mark as Played

608: Mercenary Force

May 5, 2025 • 34 mins
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. “Why is one of the hosts named differently? What happened!?” Kaye is transitioning! Find out more here. (https://www.patreon.com/posts/127161202)
Mark as Played

607: James Cameron's Dark Angel

April 28, 2025 • 36 mins
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. (https://www.patreon.com/posts/127161202)
Mark as Played

606: Jurassic Park (SNES)

April 21, 2025 • 42 mins
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.
Mark as Played

605: MegaRace

April 14, 2025 • 44 mins
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.
Mark as Played

604: Dennis Miller: That's News to Me

April 7, 2025 • 36 mins
Cybermania ‘94 [See Adaptation Decay 97, true believers!-- Grinning Gwen] 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.
Mark as Played

603: Tony Hawk's Underground 2

March 31, 2025 • 40 mins
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.
Mark as Played

602: Popstar Guitar

March 24, 2025 • 35 mins
A sub-par Guitar Hero clone that doesn't list band names or anything. Just shitty, shitty covers of pop songs.
Mark as Played

601: Pigskin 621 AD

March 17, 2025 • 38 mins
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.
Mark as Played

600: Tiger Handheld Electronics

March 10, 2025 • 31 mins
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?
Mark as Played

599: Tuneland Starring Howie Mandel

March 3, 2025 • 34 mins
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.
Mark as Played

598: Get the Girl

February 25, 2025 • 34 mins
When you're a teen, you do stupid things. You might drive recklessly, you might make some off-color jokes you won't be proud of later, or you might make a dating sim with your friends that will be on the internet forever. That's the case with Get the Girl, a DOS quiz game by a group of teens who have a very tenuous grasp on how to interact with women.
Mark as Played

Popular Podcasts

    Stuff You Should Know

    Stuff You Should Know

    If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.

    24/7 News: The Latest

    24/7 News: The Latest

    The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.

    The Joe Rogan Experience

    The Joe Rogan Experience

    The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.

    The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

    The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

    The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.

    On Purpose with Jay Shetty

    On Purpose with Jay Shetty

    I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!

Advertise With Us
Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

Explore

iHeart

Live Radio

Podcasts

Artist Radio

Exclusives

News

Features

Events

Contests

Photos

Information

About

Advertise

Blog

Brand Guidelines

Contest Guidelines

Subscription Offers

Jobs

Get the App

Automotive

Home

Mobile

Wearables

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.