Abject Suffering

661 episodes — Page 2 of 14

Ep 611Abject Suffering 611: Gon' E-Choo!

<html>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.</html>

May 26, 202537 min

Ep 610Abject Suffering 610: Sneak King

<html>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”.</html>

May 19, 202543 min

Ep 609Abject Suffering 609: Ace of Seafood

<html>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.</html>

May 12, 202534 min

Ep 608Abject Suffering 608: Mercenary Force

<html>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! <a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/127161202" target="_blank">Find out more here.</a></html>

May 5, 202534 min

Ep 607Abject Suffering 607: James Cameron's Dark Angel

<html>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! <a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/127161202" target="_blank">Find out more here.</a></html>

Apr 28, 202536 min

Ep 606Abject Suffering 606: Jurassic Park (SNES)

<html>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.</html>

Apr 21, 202542 min

Ep 605Abject Suffering 605: MegaRace

<html>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.</html>

Apr 14, 202544 min

Ep 604Abject Suffering 604: Dennis Miller: That's News to Me

<html>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.</html>

Apr 8, 202536 min

Ep 603Abject Suffering 603: Tony Hawk's Underground 2

<html>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.</html>

Mar 31, 202540 min

Ep 602Abject Suffering 602: Popstar Guitar

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

Mar 24, 202535 min

Ep 601Abject Suffering 601: Pigskin 621 AD

<html>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.</html>

Mar 17, 202538 min

Ep 600Abject Suffering 600: Tiger Handheld Electronics

<html>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?</html>

Mar 10, 202531 min

Ep 599Abject Suffering 599: Tuneland Starring Howie Mandel

<html>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.</html>

Mar 3, 202535 min

Ep 598Abject Suffering 598: Get the Girl

<html>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.</html>

Feb 25, 202534 min

Ep 597Abject Suffering 597: Herc's Adventures

<html>Hey folks, Herc’s Adventures is actually kind of a good game. Made by the Zombies Ate My Neighbors team at LucasArts, it expands on that formula with some neat ideas like its novel death mechanic and its open world. But to be honest, a lot of this episode is informed by residual Guppy Energy left over from recording the Sonic 3 Adaptation Decay with Will.</html>

Feb 17, 202536 min

Ep 596Abject Suffering 596: Big Rig

<html>Once you’ve played Lemonade Stand, you start seeing Lemonade Stand everywhere. This week’s game is like that, but the Lemonade is trucks. And the rainy day is a drunk driver careening into you for no reason, ending your cross country haul. Which inspires us to rank vehicles by how scary they would be to drive.</html>

Feb 10, 202537 min

Ep 595Abject Suffering 595: OnlyCans: Thirst Date

<html>Everyone’s seen the warning they put on cans of soda: Don’t photograph this or it will ejaculate all over the place. That universally acknowledged fact is the basis for the joke of OnlyCans: Thirst Date, a free comedy game where you take pictures of sexualized pop cans and are graded on how good they cum.</html>

Feb 3, 202536 min

Ep 594Abject Suffering 594: Cat in the Hat

<html>Honestly, how did we go so long without talking about this? The Cat in the Hat is an infamously bad movie, and stories about its botched production are how we learned that Mike Myers is a real dick. Which is a shame, given the Wayne’s World of it all. The biggest surprise here is that the game, a 2.5D platformer, isn’t terrible.</html>

Jan 27, 202536 min

Ep 593Abject Suffering 593: Virtua Cop

<html>A patron demanded that we talk about a kinda good game, played incorrectly. Virtua Cop was genuinely impressive not because of its 3D graphics, but because for the first time enemies would animate and move and not just be pop up animated gif targets. Honestly, that’s probably enough, though you really want to play this in the arcade.</html>

Jan 20, 202534 min

Ep 592Abject Suffering 592: Rocky Rodent

<html>Rocky Rodent is a dine-and-dashing menace, and one of the most unsavory-looking characters we’ve discussed on this show. Everything about this IREM Sonic clone is off, in the way SNES slop tends to be. We also talk about ringmaster and bellhop uniforms, for some reason.</html>

Jan 13, 202538 min

Ep 591Abject Suffering 591: Spider Man: City Raid

<html>You likely don’t know what Spider-Man: City Raid is. It’s not a big budget title like the the Activision movie tie-ins or the recent Insomniac titles. In fact, it has no official license at all. It’s a Flash game made purely for the love of Spider-Man, and the Ram Jam song “Black Betty” for some reason.</html>

Jan 6, 202534 min

Ep 590Abject Suffering 590: Home Alone (PS2)

<html>This week we talk about the little-known PS2 game adaptation of Home Alone, a Christmas classic that was already super old in 2006 when this came out. But honestly, there’s very little there to talk about. Instead, we camp out on the taxonomical horror of a picture of corndogs Gary took ten years ago. Here’s the photo: <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/garybutterfield.bsky.social/post/3ldi4heqxj22c" target="_blank">https://bsky.app/profile/garybutterfield.bsky.social/post/3ldi4heqxj22c</a></html>

Dec 30, 202441 min

Ep 589Abject Suffering 589: Inspector Gadget

<html>What is the meaning of Inspector Gadget? Is he basically a cyberzombie, which would explain the bungling? In which ball is the essence stored? This mostly on-topic episode is not afraid to ask the important and hard-hitting questions about this awful metal man.</html>

Dec 23, 202435 min

Ep 588Abject Suffering 588: Bubble Bobble Revolution

<html>Bubble Bobble is elemental! How could you screw it up? Well, they found a way. Bubble Bobble Revolution isn’t just bad because it’s nonfunctional… even if you could get past level 30, it would still be an ugly game that feels bad in your hands. But there isn’t much to say beyond that, so enjoy a meandering talk about what the existence of the Costco Guys says about our chances of the world getting better, ever.</html>

Dec 16, 202445 min

Ep 587Abject Suffering 587: The Brainies

<html>With a name like The Brainies, you know Gary brought this game to the show. He’s been on a tireless search for new Zoombinis, new Babos, new Creatures… any annoying little guy to dunk on. The problem is, the Brainies don’t got the sauce. And they might be kinda racist?</html>

Dec 9, 202436 min

Ep 586Abject Suffering 586: Poker Night 2

<html>Poker Night 2 is a perfectly fine concept for a game, featuring beloved characters playing Texas Hold ‘Em after dark. Brock Sampson, Ash Williams, and Sam from Sam &amp; Max are all delightful in their own right and you wouldn’t be blamed for wanting to hear their quips.And then along comes Claptrap.</html>

Dec 2, 202437 min

Ep 585Abject Suffering 585: Pink Goes to Hollywood

<html>We’ve gotten mad at a lot of things on this show. Some of them just, some of them goofy. This might be the maddest we’ve gotten recently, trying to figure out what the Pink Panther’s whole deal is. Why has he been an enduring character? What does he even do? There’s zero information online, but this fucker is everywhere and someone needs to answer for it.</html>

Nov 25, 202438 min

Ep 584Abject Suffering 584: Shark Tale

<html>Shark Tale is a notoriously crappy DreamWorks movie, which is already a deck with a lot of low cards. But DreamWorks had this habit of making good-looking licensed games based off of these movies, and for some reason they are kinda beloved. That is a false idea, though. It’s a bad thing to believe, that this could have been good.</html>

Nov 19, 202434 min

Ep 583Abject Suffering 583: Hollywood Squares

<html>The NES saw a glut of games adapting popular gameshows, most of them developed by Rare. Improbably, Hollywood Squares is one of the more functional ones… albeit with some cuts. Gone are the stars! There’s nothing Hollywood about this! Additionally, Kole brings a chilling secondhand anecdote that might actually just be a straight up bummer.</html>

Nov 11, 202436 min

Ep 582Abject Suffering 582: O.D.T.: Escape… or Die Trying

<html>O.D.T.: Escape… or Die Trying is a game with a confusing title. The O.D.T. is short for O.D.T.: Escape… or Die Trying or Die Trying. It’s a botched attempt at a Tomb Raider-like third person action game with theming and a story that are sure to put you to sleep. So we instead talk about how unfair the concept of Mario and Sonic competing in the Olympic Games would be.</html>

Nov 4, 202437 min

Ep 581Abject Suffering 581: ALF

<html>It’s bizarre that we haven’t done an episode about the Alf game for the Sega Master System, but we have a good excuse: We were completely sure that we’d already done it. This famously bad game is a poor adaptation about everyone’s favorite fish-out-of-water sitcom about a fuzzy alien who lives with a family who barely tolerates him. However, it does accurately depict how miserable it was to MAKE the show Alf.ALF Horror Recut: <a href="https://youtu.be/-BTRlkj01oc?list=PLl2UPRj734xpoXza_nOt6G-TjiWxXk9-A" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/-BTRlkj01oc?list=PLl2UPRj734xpoXza_nOt6G-TjiWxXk9-A</a></html>

Oct 30, 202439 min

Ep 580Abject Suffering 580: Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

<html>In what amounts to a backdoor episode of Watch Out for Fireballs!, this listener-demanded discussion of the Return of the King game for Game Boy Advance has us mostly talking about how we would have enjoyed having this portable Diablo-like back in the day. We also talk about the Lord of the Rings’ cinematic legacy, and put 60 seconds on the clock for a Rebuttalfield about not being a weird crank about Trick or Treating teens.</html>

Oct 23, 202440 min

Ep 579Abject Suffering 579: M&M’s Beach Party

<html>M&amp;M’s Beach Party for the Wii is one of the more anemic minigame collections we’ve covered, and we’ve already done deep dives into M&amp;M’s lore… So this week we pitch a new M&amp;M’s character: a grey M&amp;M with a cashew sticking out of it, named Hercules PoundClit. He’s a sensitive, masculine man who exists to make the ladies swoon.</html>

Oct 16, 202436 min

Ep 578Abject Suffering 578: Faselei

<html>The word “faselei” means “babble” in German, which is a better description of this podcast than this game. Faselei!, our first Neo Geo Pocket Color game, is actually kind of neat… a turn-based tactics game with a very unique action system. The problem is, it’s about mechs… about which we have little to say. So instead we talk about inhalants, that wonderful feeling of finally identifying a half-remembered game from your childhood, and the bizarre ceremony of hockey games.</html>

Oct 8, 202437 min

Ep 577Abject Suffering 577: Drac's Night Out

<html>If I mention Reebok’s Pump shoes, I know only one image comes to mind: Dracula. Specifically, Dracula having the time of his life, on stairs. No, I’m not on too many or too few drugs… This is an actual game that was almost released. We talk about it a little bit, before talking about shoes that give you superpowers and K’s recent trip to the Ohio Renaissance Festival.If I mention Reebok’s Pump shoes, I know only one image comes to mind: Dracula. Specifically, Dracula having the time of his life, on stairs. No, I’m not on too many or too few drugs… This is an actual game that was almost released. We talk about it a little bit, before talking about shoes that give you superpowers and K’s recent trip to the Ohio Renaissance Festival.</html>

Sep 30, 202438 min

Ep 576Abject Suffering 576: V.I.P.

<html>Pamela Anderson was everywhere in the 90s, as a sex symbol and an object of ridicule. And none of her projects is more forgotten than V.I.P., the show where she bumbles into starting a bodyguard agency for the stars. And now, you, can fulfill your lifelong dream of playing a barely interactive video game adaptation of her adventures!</html>

Sep 25, 202433 min

Ep 575Abject Suffering 575: Wonder World Amusement Park DS

<html>If you go anywhere used games are sold, you’ll see shelves choked with DS and Wii shovelware. And this week’s game, Wonder World Amusement Park, is emblematic of everything about that phenomenon. But of course, Gary picked this game to have an excuse to talk about his trip to the Oregon State Fair, which featured a real life reenactment of The Zoo Race.</html>

Sep 18, 202438 min

Ep 574Abject Suffering 574: X-Perts (Genesis)

<html>Gonna be honest, it’s weird to record an episode that stays on topic like this one does. Everyone remembers the Eternal Champions, right? A franchise beloved enough that it got two character-specific spinoffs before Mortal Kombat got even one? X-Perts (unrelated to the X-Men) is in the running for one of the worst beat-em-ups we’ve covered for the show, which is really saying something.</html>

Sep 10, 202435 min

Ep 573Abject Suffering 573: Cabela's Dangerous Hunts

<html>Behold, the Nega-Bear. It exists within and without our dimension. Do not try to shut your eyes, as the Nega-Bear moves faster when it is not perceived.</html>

Sep 2, 202434 min