Exquisite Suffering

Quick Note: My schedule was upended by my move, so this is September's second premium episode of Abject Suffering. There will be two more Exquisite Suffering episodes coming out this month. I apologize for the confusion. - Kole If you say the word "Pokémon" nowadays, people will stare at you gape-mawed, because nobody remembers this long-forgotten Nintendo franchise. Its plunge into obscurity was...

It's a long-running question that we're pretty much done with: can a unique concept make up for terrible execution? Yes, there can be a game about herding creatures. Shepherd sims are pretty rare, outside of Mass Effect. But Herdy Gerdy is a real mess that tries to take the worst aspects of Zelda and make them its own. Put simply: we don't like the meat, and we sure don't like the bone.

Add another one to our Motion Sickness Suite. Originally a 3DO-exclusive answer to Doom-like hallway crawlers, PO'ed tried very hard to establish its own voice by being irreverent and gross. So you go around slapping walking butt-vaginas with frying pans in a frictionless void. When we're done talking about the game, we talk about anger... and how we don't feel emotions anymore.

In all the years we've been creating podcasts, we've never really talked about Harry Potter at length. And when a Harry Potter game went up on our Abject Suffrage poll, you all voted with enthusiasm to hear about it. So, this episode is nominally about the GameBoy Advance version of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, a kiddy action RPG. However, it's mostly about our pitch for a movie about th...

It's always a challenge when we're asked to cover a game that's actually good, because there's only so many ways to say "yeah, it works really well." So we make do. We talk a little bit about Star Wars, but that's a dry well too. What's not dry? Condoms and how they contribute to real life environmental storytelling.

I think everybody's response to Final Fantasy VII was "that story was way too short, incomplete, and I wish I knew what happened to that incidental character three years later." This maximalist attitude brought us the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, and Dirge of Cerberus . It's not a bad thing for a studio to break out of its genre, but Square shouldn't make shooters. Listen in to find out why.

It's a rare occasion when we cover an MMO for a show, so we want to go all out. Get the community on board. Or at least, we try to. Runescape turned out to be a tough nut to crack, leading to a night of vaguely confused wandering. This episode features a special guest performance of Stomp right outside Gary's window.

Indy's sophomore adventure is unjustly maligned, but this game deserves every word of its bad reputation. It's a confusing and alienating mishmash of mechanics. So instead we talk about how scary it is to pee in a bottle.

Let's all go to the county fair and become animals. Also, let's get sentimental over the strongest clown, who eclipses all weak clowns. Least of all, let's talk about this very pretty, but poorly designed game about a clown making a chase.

God's only perfect creation, Tommy Lee Jones, once voiced an action figure who tried to torture a boy. That was the genesis of Small Soldiers, an attempted multimedia franchise with the craziest casting and the wildest soundtrack. This episode was originally supposed to be about the "Globotech Design Lab" game, but that wouldn't run, so we did a survey of the property instead. And Kole also talks...

It's sometimes called Slaughter Sport . Maybe Mondu's Fight Palace . In Japan it's simply called Fatman . But everyone knows it by its ridiculous original title: Tongue of the Fatman . Bizarrely, this game predates Mortal Kombat, while also bearing a superficial similarity to its aesthetic. The game barely works, so expect us to talk a lot about that aesthetic... and even more about nipples.

David Crane was a foundational figure in early video games, but that man loved him some obtuse mechanics. "A Boy and His Blob" drew in lots of kids with its E.T.-esque storyline, but repelled a lot of them because it's not the kind of game that wants you to play it. We dig into this, and more, but also try to pick the right pet for Kole.

What is this, why does it exist, how did it get approved, and who bought it? No Rules: Get Phat isn't tied to any cartoon, even though it looks like it should be. There's no movie, no novelty song, no toy. It just... is. Let's try to unravel this mystery together, though I gotta tell you that we don't get very far before we start talking about gym class.

A bland and bad 16-bit platformer inspires a sober contemplation of how weird it is that the fringe elements of the internet are intersecting with everyday mainstream life. It's more entertaining than it sounds, we hope.

Behold the Mario 64 that might have been. Argonaut was on top of the world, doing 3D programming for Nintendo. When they cooked up a prototype 3D Yoshi game in their spare time, Nintendo was intrigued... but they passed. So the two organizations went their separate ways. That prototype became Croc, while Nintendo went on to make Mario 64. Are these things related? I don't know, let's just talk abo...

We'll never not have something to say about The Simpsons. Or the recent bumper crop of quality Simpsons memes. What's more difficult to talk about is this abysmal collection of surreal Simpsons minigames. So instead we do what we always do, and range far afield.

Welcome to futuresports, prisoner. Welcome to... THE HELL. Rageball envisions a world where all balls are skulls, and all sport is blood. It's murderball without the wheels, and anything goes... except moving quickly. But we feel the best way to describe it is with an acrostic about Ass Bart.

The 1994 Street Fighter movie is a lot of fun. And you might think the game based on it, which nominally plays like Street Fighter II, might be fine. However, it's a complete mess for various technical reasons. Come explore these reasons with us, as we also talk about the mechanics of Milkshake Ducking, Action Hero Afterlives, and other topics.

This episode is meandering... even for us . Beetlejuice is a horror comedy classic, from the days before Tim Burton lost his goddamn mind and wore out his welcome. This game for the NES is chock-full of misguided design decisions and is barely functional... so we talk about movies in general, including the one about the tiny man who pays less rent.

From the video game legends at Simon & Schuster and the genius behind Skittles (the candy), we bring you a Zelda clone called Darkened Skye . Navigate worlds themed after Skittles commercials while casting Skittles magic and listening to your shitty wisecracking imp friend.

This episode solidifies an axiom for Abject Suffering episodes: the funnier a game is trying to be, the more serious the episode will end up. Crypt Worlds is a 2013 anti-game that's chock full of surreal imagery and weird-Twitter-like writing. It's also not bad , but we have questions about what it's trying to accomplish... and how effectively it's accomplishing it.

When there's no more room in hell, Harvey Keitel will fall apart and Jon Lovitz will masturbate in a tree. Little Nicky isn't just a singularly unpleasant movie, it's a completely inexplicable GameBoy Color game. Listen in to hear us talk about its platforming, its mini-games, and the physiological effects of shooting arrows from private places.

Imagine a completely circular rack of ribs rotating in the middle distance. Do you approach it with wonder, hoping to shave some delicious morsels off with your front teeth? Then welcome home, brother or sister. We're happy to have you. Welcome to the order of Hastur.

Listen in as two Americans discover a European sensation for the very first time. Hugo for the PlayStation is a collection of games that were originally played on broadcast television , which where controlled by phone . It was also a cross-media sensation, creating a whole universe of ugly, shitty little trolls that frolic around and give you fuck-me eyes.

A pale imitator to ANTZ , A Bug's Life was Pixar's side project wile working on lucrative Buzz 'n' Woods movies. How exactly would such a thing translate to a video game? Only time, this show, and stories about Trash Friends can tell.