We walked into this one completely unaware of preexisting stereotypes about professionals who drive white vans. Apparently Britons have thoughts. And as a joke game, this kind of works for a minute. So instead we talk about how to properly brand a plumbing company to attract a clientele that doesn’t really want to talk about it.

Haven: Call of the King is a PS2 platformer that doesn’t want you to think it’s a platformer. It wants you to think it’s anything and everything all at once. That’s why they don’t want you to call it a “platformer”, they want you to call it a “FreeFormer”. Which is… hey listen, we’re really sorry about this one, a lot of the episode is dedicated to trying to figure out how to get Gary a wheelbarrow. We fucked it up. Give us a chance again next week.

Nickelodeon was at the height of their powers in the 90s when they decided to start throwing more and more Nicktoons down the chute. This led to them trying to capture the grotesquery of Ren & Stimpy without any of its transgression. Thus, Aaahh!!! Real Monsters was born, a show about monsters who live in a dump trying to learn to scare humans. This predated Monsters, Inc. by several years, but still feels derivative of that movie!

The Oregon Trail is a simple game, but it’s timeless. The Amazon trail is complicated and involves time traveling magic panthers, and nobody has thought about it in thirty years. There’s a lesson there. Additionally, there are lessons in hiring contractors to fix your bathroom, and lessons about how the Liar’s Dividend has made public defecators of us all.

This is a sequel episode to Abject Suffering 619: Wild Woody.Look, we totally intended to record an episode about a video game. But sometimes you’re at a discount grocery store and you stumble across the deal of a lifetime. How many lives could you change with $100?

It’s time for another McDonald’s episode because they released a new game on the sly when they brought back the Changeables Happy Meal Toys. You know, those little toys that are like Transformers but the “disguise” form is food that scientists labored over to make sure you’d eat it forever.This game is basically nothing, a little Flash-like web game platformer. But this new toy drop has wildly expanded the McDonald’s cosmology, and that must be addressed.

Look out! It's tiny Sweettooth! He's going to run us over in his tiny car!

This episode is about a Donkey Kong sequel that's about a man who kills bugs. Kaye also talks about schlepping her cats across the country and Gary uses a bathroom in a haunted house.

The Dangerous Dave games are a series of PC platformers that acted as a precursor to Commander Keen, except with a redneck aesthetic and hyperviolence. This entry is hard, but not terrible, so we talk about how modern Helltimes have rendered thinking about having superpowers unpalatable.

Beast Wars: Transformers is an ugly show, and the PlayStation game based on it is even uglier. It’s a little bleak to consider that the cheap animation of the 80s cartoon is the best that these robots would ever look. So instead, Gary proposes a new sex move called “Trick or Treat”, and we work out the logistics of how to pull it off.

It’s honestly weird that we haven’t already covered the NES version of Bad Dudes, a game with an infamous intro and horribly choppy handling. So Kaye brings it as her vanity pick, and we talk about how bad times have also made ALL of us into Bad Dudes.

Friday Night Funkin’, a rhythm game credited with keeping Newgrounds relevant in the 2020s, is actually pretty good. The music works better than the visuals, and the fan community is really… enthusiastic… but there’s not much to hate here. So instead we talk about Gary’s trip to San Francisco, where he got mindfreaked.

Love Is… is a very sad and weird comic strip about naked eight year olds who are married and like being really bossy about what is and isn’t love. The game is nothing, but we cannot bring ourselves to stop diving into the comic’s archive to boggle at what was once (and apparently still is?) acceptable.

Minority Report: Everybody Runs is a licensed tie in game to a movie where ladies lay eggs that tell the future. Since this is a perfect fit for us, we talk about what precog powers would do to our lives, and Kaye talks about preparing for her upcoming move.

The Biker Mice from Mars was an also-ran in the Turtles boom of the early nineties. Its premise was exactly what the title implies, and it relied on the idea of bikers being a lot cooler than they actually are. But given any chance to talk about the Turtles, we dig into the missed potential in not focusing on the TEENAGE part of TMNT.

Panic! isn’t really a game, it’s a mouse training program with some context-free visual gags. Faced with the possibility that disliking this makes us sticks in the mud, we talk about why this presentation is a disservice to the very necessary emotion of whimsy.

We’ve done most of the major Christmas-themed games, so we had to dig deep and find some of the worst slop Steam could provide. Satan Santa is an asset flip game that makes generous use of AI in its text and marketing materials. A demon has replaced Santa and a kid needs to walk really slow about it.

Rock n’ Roll Racing is a game that people love. It’s pog monsters doing combat racing from an irritating isometric perspective, set to SNES chiptune renditions of classic rock songs. For what it is, it’s hard to find too much to complain about… so we talk about Gary’s ongoing crisis of whether or not he should become best friends with his dentist.

Everyone has to start somewhere. For Cliff Blezinski, starting meant making a pale imitation of Shadowgate called Palace of Deceit: The Dragon’s Plight. Playing it is a master class in what makes Shadowgate good. But you can’t be too hard on the kid for it, he was sixteen. Be hard on him for the things he said and did later.

Gamer Simulator is an unfinished piece of slopware available on Steam that doesn’t really simulate being a gamer, as much as it simulates being under a geas that makes it so you can only derive sustenance from powerups you find in video games. And when you’re done eating virtual hamburgers, you can learn about the cruelest reality television shows of all time.

At the twilight of Macauley Culkin’s first act, he released a trio of flops that included the movie The Pagemaster, a combination live action and animated film where he plays an awful little nerd who learns confidence by going into books. Because it was 1994, they made a ton of very bad and loose platformers based on this stinker of a property. We talk a little bit about those before digressing onto “Knights and Warriors”, a syndicated television show whose premise was “American Gladiators, but evil.”

The kids today don’t know the cautionary tale of Spore, Will Wright’s big gamble on a universal god sim that absolutely didn’t pay off. And even fewer kids know about the avalanche of Spore shovelware that followed EA taking a bath on the main game. It’s so fitting for a game about evolutionary viability to drown in its own ooze.

We thought there would be meat on something called “Action Man”, but then we found out that it’s just a re-badging of what we in America know as G.I. Joe. Which is disappointing. While we wait to talk about these exciting “Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles” next week, we also discuss the Free Willy animated series, and try to decode why kids everywhere are saying “6-7”.

Franko: The Crazy Revenge is a very bad shooter that, because of regrettable economic and political conditions, became the Polish gaming industry’s crown jewel for a little bit. And though the game is bad, it does have a very funny and sleazy energy about it. We end the episode by taking a moment to talk about the horrors of Granny’s Daycare.

I don’t believe we’ve covered a game from Lithuania on the network… until now. Extreme Sprint 3010 is a literal Running Man game, if running man was about dumpy little guys ambling lazily toward the camera. We also talk about War-Torn Portland, and Gary’s fascination with the show and phrase “Farmer Wants a Wife”.

Blue Stinger has the call to take you to Dinosaur Island and not have you fight any actual dinosaurs, and this is the least of its sins. From the same developer as Illbleed, it’s one of the many Resident Evil clones that history forgot, slightly bolstered by the fact that it was exclusive to the Dreamcast, which is a wounded baby bird that must be protected at all costs.We also talk about hiring private investigators to arrange love matches for GameFAQs contributors, and examine the anatomy of a Goro.

Bigfoot is, unfortunately, not about big hairy cryptids. Instead, it’s about monster trucks, which we are very bored of… until we make one of the most profound 180s in podcasting history.

Yo Noid! 2 is a comedy game that expands on the adventures of the Noid as he hops and bops to fight for his continuing relevance. It’s a fine platformer, but boy is the story and humor dated at this point! We also talk about Hatsune Miku, whether or not Tablet is bread, and expression vs. performance.

Finally a very old piece of media that Gary and Kaye can agree on: Gumby. He’s a psychedelic little shapeshifter who hasn’t been relevant since the sixties, and he has but one single video game about him.

Quarantine ends up being a very bad Doom clone, but instead of DoomGuy, you’re DoomCar, and you can only see five feet in front of you. And its snarl of lore is just too boring to pick apart. So instead we ask… what was the deal with the Three Tenors, and do you think you could take them in a fight?

This reskin of a Goemon game is kind of fun and interesting, despite its problems. But the discovery of Cowboy Kid's amazing American cover art leads us into a deep well of appreciating the Gay Cowboy trope as a celebration of having fun with the guys. The "Life at the Outpost" video is required viewing.

Todd hates slime. He hates it when things get goopy. So he went to a planet full of it to exact his revenge. We, however, are indifferent to slime, and also think this game isn't too terribly bad. So we talk about the dead-end economics of the slime-content, and carousels for some reason.

Garbage Pail Kids: Mad Mike and the Quest for Stale Gum advertises itself as a lost NES adaptation of the Garbage Pail kids line of collectible trading cards. In reality, it’s a modern game made by talented devs who make games for NES hardware. And it’s pretty fine! But there are so many Garbage Pail kids to talk about, so we spend most of our time camping out on them.Want 204 bonus episodes of this show? Just become a $5 member of our Patreon!To suggest a game for polls or randomizations, just use our Suggestion Machine!

It’s hard to think of a more damning indictment of the state of the world in 2025 than the fact that a cheap RTS developed to shock people with gender stereotypes in 1996 is really tame in comparison to what happens today. What happens in this game is by no means good, but it plays in tropes that are so outdated as to be cartoonish. Tim HomeImprovement would tell it to get better material.Want 204 bonus episodes of this show? Just become a $5 member of our Patreon!To suggest a game for polls or randomizations, just use our Suggestion Machine!

You are a rock and roll musician who fights creatures in virtual reality! You embody rock'n'roll in every way except the music. What's more, you received a job offer from Uganda!

Dynamite Dux is a forgotten Sega arcade beat-em-up with a profoundly cursed aura. Play five minutes of it and tell me this game isn’t haunted to hell and back. Then, come with us as we talk about the raunchy easter egg that took people 30 years to uncover.

Are you ready for an episode about a notoriously derided Superman game hosted by two people who don’t really care for or know about Superman, and haven’t seen that new movie everyone’s raving about? We hope so!

Picking games to cover on Abject Suffering is hard. We don’t like hitting ones that have been talked to death. So sometimes we just grab something with a name that calls out to us. What’s a Troddler? What does a Troddler mean for my life? We never would have guessed that Troddlers, a game nobody has heard of, might actually be a pretty fun puzzle game. Color us shocked!

Wild Woody is a swan-song for a system nobody owned, built around a power fantasy nobody has ever had. Who wants to be a pencil? So we introduce a much more tempting fantasy… How many hot dogs could you be trusted with?

Arachnophobia is now mostly forgotten, but it was once a beloved one-off horror comedy movie about extremely virile spiders overtaking a small town. Then they made a game out of it, and it was very boring! So we talk about Brian Wilson’s obsession with “Short’nin’ Bread” instead.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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: https://bsky.app/profile/garybutterfield.bsky.social/post/3ldi4heqxj22c

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.

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.

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?

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 & 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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: https://youtu.be/-BTRlkj01oc?list=PLl2UPRj734xpoXza_nOt6G-TjiWxXk9-A

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.

M&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&M’s lore… So this week we pitch a new M&M’s character: a grey M&M with a cashew sticking out of it, named Hercules PoundClit. He’s a sensitive, masculine man who exists to make the ladies swoon.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

I hate to say, but sometimes you just have to respect somebody with that many muscles.

Now to play a nice relaxing game where cops beat up... the incarcerated. Hmm.

Here is a list of your sins: You never used that coupon. Your wallet smells funny. You don't clean your phone.

Well, I don't see why the devs had to make it sexual.

I... I'm told this is a fashion game, somehow?

Spies! Snowboarding! Uh... yeah, we don't get it either.

I was suckered into playing this game because I got a comic book that was just an advertisement.

How can a game about beating up rich people be so unfun?

There is something very unsettling about a tree with legs.

Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas!

Actually, the episode with the trivia is "The One with the Embryos".

I, too, assume that all historically valuable objects have secret puzzles.

Kevin James got udders. You heard me.

Taurine!

Is the pizza funny or is the land funny because of the pizza?f

Doc... I've been dreaming of Californication again.

The fence painting level is pretty dope.

Die Fledermaus is still the Tick hero I think about the most.

There will be no further Sin Episodes.

This game is a comedy game, but we didn't make it to the punchline.

Oh, wow. It's just like the real sky.

The burgers are also made out of rocks. Because it's caveman times.

Don't you do it. Don't you pee. Don't! Hey!

It's probably lupus.

Christopher Walken walks into a bar. Everybody cheers.

"So, Mr. Tyrannosaurus, where do you see yourself in five years?"

It's Eve of Extinction, not Steve of Stextinction.

Gonna throw you around. Maybe put you in a toilet. The world is our canvas!

Careful. Careful! CAREFUL! Fuck.

Aw hell. Look out, he's back.

But what the fuck is a Bakugan?

Ah. FMV. What did we ever do to deserve you?

From a shitty movie comes a decent game. Also: Wolverine's foreskin.

That's just the way I boop around the house.

In this episode, Gary and Kole beat the shit out of some animals.

Gary and Kole make Mr. Pibb a gender affirming healthcare provider.

This is more like a limp response to Resident Evil than a hard edge.

In a world before skateboarding games were cool....

Now this Skunk? This is a skunk with attitude.

Another amazing entry in the mobile game from hell sub-series.

Radiohead.

Cartoons you can shoot with a gun!

There is a guy. And the guy has sci fi. Go, sci fi, go.

Another way to interpret dead aim is to say you aim like a dead person.

I don't want to go to Alpha Zones.

There are way too many Spawn games. There's even a The Darkness game and that's basically bullshit Spawn.

There are so many Mega Men Battles Network that you don't even know which one this is.

Be ant. Live ant. Laugh ant. Love ant.

Even though we did an episode about this game, we're still unsure if it actually exists.

Alvin and the Chipmunks are back. Again. This is a threat.

People love this game. We don't! Whoops!

It's like your favorite anti-comedy movie. But it's a fake game!

Boring early horror gaming, but hey it's still horror, so respect.

An 80s action movie themed beat em video game. No, you don't play as animals.

Wow, living through a disaster would suck. Let's make a comedy game out of it.

This is actually really tame. What law did they break exactly?

A sequel made for literally nobody, in an attempt to make a game for everybody.

Van Helsing is actually the doctor. The character is Van Helsing's monster.

I'm pretty sure I ate Shadow Blasters on Saturday mornings as a kid

Personally, I'm not really sure how, exactly, Hell runs.

Despite it's original and unique title, you have heard the story of this game before.

Game IntroductionFinish one labyrinth and you will be rewarded with a picture of the top half of a woman. Complete two labyrinths to be able to view the entire picture which is approximately 2.5 times larger than the screen. Move the joystick up and down to pan across the image. The game has 15 pictures and a total of 30 stages.

Not a typo.

I hope nobody finds out that I eat like one or two Uncrustables a week.

It's Edcruciating.

Okay, but imagine more muscles. More. MORE, DAMN YOU!

Please do not listen before listening to Wild 1-5, and 7-8. You can skip 6 and 0.

7h1s 1s 0n3 y0u d0n'7 w4n7 70 m1ss, f0lk5.

I had to check the title five times to make sure I spelled it right. Whoever was in charge of localizing this game made some interesting naming choices.

Finally a game that answers the question, why do we pay professional athletes when there's a perfectly good bear right there?

"The game was one of the first extensive CD-ROM titles and used full-motion video for both cutscene and interactive portions. It is over a gigabyte in size over two discs." --Wikipedia

Are you ready to have a BONER while you BIKE?! Bike Boner?!Oh, no, you're thinking of my cousin Mike Boner. He is a professional BMX rider though.

Big round number is big AND round.To celebrate, here is a bad game on a bad system that we all know. Plus, Gary and Kole, in the same room! That hasn't happened in years!

These dudes are past bad. They're downright crude.This is a sequel, or something, to Bad Dudes. You don't attempt to rescue the president, so what's even the point?

To maintain order, the Secret Games Commission (SGC) is formed to organize tournaments deciding which organization gets to control all of Neo-Amerika, leading to the creation of Biological Flying Robotic Enhanced Armored Killing Synthoids (Bio F.R.E.A.K.S.) serving as the champions for each participating organization.

Comedy Podcast: Games. With graphics by Factory of Assets.

I've never heard of this holiday before. I guess it's for celebrating mini-games?

This episode is fuckin' RAW!If you ever wanted a weird CGI Gordon Ramsey yell at you in a lifeless void, oh man, do I have the game for you.

It turns out "Zendor" is what your grand uncle called "debt".What I'm saying is you just inherited a lot debt.

Come KRUM!

Wine, sodomy and the lash. Or something like that I'm assuming.I'm not saying it is porn but I sure felt embarassed accidentally googling it at my day job.

Inside of you are two wolves. One is a Litil Debil. The other, a Litil Angle. Who will you listen to?

You know, it's probably about time we give freeware Linux games a shot!Ew.Nevermind, let's go to Chili's.

Nobody knows why, but people in the 90s thought if golf video games had comedians in them, maybe that would connect with the kids? Anyway, Eugene Levy fails to convince the boys that this golf is all that whacky.

Bionic Commando is one of the best games for the NES. Taking away your jump and forcing you to rely on predictable swinging physics was (and is!) a novel concept, matched by a delightful semi-serious, semi-goofy tone and exquisite level design. So you can imagine how high hopes were when a sequel was announced. Well, that was a mistake.

Tootinis is a game that feels like a student project that ended up getting a little money behind it. Very little money, mind you. So we're fully in "Please Be Cool" mode because all these people did was make a weird kids' game with baffling characters and a very funny intro. Additionally we talk about what Totino's Pizzas become when they enter your mouth, the new garage that Kole saw, and Gary's glimpse at our cold metallic future.

Magician Lord is an okay arcade game about a transforming wizard. That's not what's important, however. What's important is that we know that 2023 will be the year of the Buff Wizard, Who May or May Not Be a Frog Man. It's imperative that we embrace and hype this early so we can make it happen.Extremely ripped wizard. Possibly a humanoid frog. Strong as hell. Lots of lightning. Lovingly rendered buttocks and genitalia. Let's make it happen, people.

We've spoken on the charms and pitfalls of FMV video games before, and we're happy to report that Corpse Killer falls well on the charms side. It's a dead basic lightgun game, making Terminator 2 look like Time Crisis, but it also has ridiculously over the top acting and a bonkers story. So instead of laying into it for too long, we talk about how it's driving us crazy that someone out there is trying to make people care about Avatar.

City Connection is a fun arcade maze chase that takes place in a world where everything's the same, but cars jump for some reason? So we talk about the dangers of being so competitive that you scream about Bingo, and also cap things off with a vexatious Burger King anecdote.

First off, it's podcast malpractice that we didn't make this entire episode about the video for the KISS song "Psycho Circus". That's on us. We weren't even that distracted by the ho-hum Lithtech shooter that is KISS colon Psycho Circus colon The Nightmare Child. We just got very wrapped up in the concept of KISS itself, which basically amounts to Insane Clown Posse for boomers. This is also part two of our inadvertent duology of "Our Carnival Isn't Like the Carnival You Grew Up With, It's a Little Dark and Twisted!" games.

The image of a person with an eyeball for a head is very good. That's the nice thing we'll say about the Residents. But Bad Day on the Midway underlines some fundamental problems we have with them, since it's unpleasant to look at and listen to, and not to a very interesting artistic result. You poke around a demented carnival amusement park learning about mentally ill people, killers, and racists... and then it just ends, regardless of how you play. More power to you if you're down with the Residents' style, but we certainly draw the line here.

Who is Seymour, and where is he going? What does he want when he gets there? We can only answer one of these questions, but we barely care. Seymour catfished us, saying it was a game about a little potato man, only for us to learn that it's actually another horrible Dizzy game with the serial numbers filed off.

Simon the Sorcerer is a rude teen who likes boobs, doesn't know what's happening around him, and never stops talking. This, his improbable second adventure, draws him back into the fantasy world because he can't stay out of containers designated for clothing. Is there zero joy to be had in a Simon the Sorcerer game? We don't know. But this one just never... stops... talking. Why should a joke ever end? It can just keep going. That's what we call value.

It's time to do a mini-WOFF! about one of the funniest games we've played recently: The Looker. It's a candid and scathing parody of The Witness, taking place on a very similar island, and having you use a pen to solve placemat mazes while listening to faux-deep audio recordings. We stay on topic throughout this one and spoil quite a bit, so consider going and playing The Looker for yourself. It's free and it's about 90 minutes long.

This week's episode is about Hidden Agenda, a really neat DOS game that is both too serious and too good to joke much about. It's a strategy game where you run a fictional post-revolutionary Central American country, making decisions that steer its development and inevitably piss off the people around you. So instead we talk about Gary's recent solo PRGE, and give some extremely belated takes on the Silent Hill announcements. We recorded this a while ago.

It's a shame when a great idea is wasted on a terrible execution. That's what happened with Michigan: Report from Hell. You play as a television camera man who is out with a team covering mysterious and violent incidents in Chicago as a strange fog rolls in. You shape the events through what you choose to film. Great idea, right? Too nothing about it holds together, leaving us with a clunky and awkward PS2 survival horror game that should have been great.

If I was a kid and I got a Muppet game where I couldn't play as Kermit, I'd be pissed. That's the world that Muppet Monster Adventure forces on us, one where people know who Robin the Frog is. The good Muppets have been kidnapped by an evil monster, and it's up to Robin to rescue them, maybe? This is a bog standard licensed platformer, and it's not especially terrible as those go.

Clive Barker's most famous forray into video games is 2001's Undying, but that wasn't his first attempt. Before that, we learned all about the Nightbreed. It's unclear what a Nightbreed is, how you become one, or what they even do, but this Interactive Movie adventure game does its best to get you up to speed, terrible checkpointing and all.

Listen, it's not great when the way you earn points in a game is to find a lady and have vigorous sex with her before she disappears. That's what happens in Dan Dolme, a game about a man with a large penis whose girlfriend goes missing and he must find her and engage with her sexually. But the whole presentation is so surreal that it's hard to condemn it too much, at least from our point of view.If you want to argue that, we're fine, but please understand that this is a game where in order to proceed you must learn how to double jump off of your own piss.

You had to be around in the early '00s to know exactly how hard Razor scooters were being pushed on us. These were collapsable metal scooters meant for radical teens to ride to class. And they made a game about them, a not entirely terrible Tony Hawk clone. So we spend some time talking about the gimmick shoes that were foisted on us as kids.

People love incremental and idle games. Kole's ambivalent. Gary hates them. Somehow this turned into an extremely on-topic mini-WOFF! about the genre at large, with Cookie Clicker as the starting off point. Welcome to Hell!

Say what you will about stop motion animation, there's an undeniable degree of difficulty associated with it that makes it a little more impressive than CGI emulating the clay sculpture style. This is the core hubris of the "Wallace and Gromit " people hooking up with Dreamworks to make "Flushed Away", a story about a posh surface rat getting flushed down the toilet to fight a frog king. And then they made a game about it. And then we mostly talked about Jackass, and a bizarre YouTube channel called "Max TV".

Better late than never, right? Even if it's 21 years too late. 1986 saw the release of "An American Tail", a Don Bluth-animated film about a family of mice that fled Russia to head to America... 1986 being, of course, one of the last times that an optimistic story about immigration could be told in America. Then, in 2007, some weirdos decided to make a licensed game about it. One that even manages to make Monkey Ball mechanics un-fun!

Nyah, see? Myah. That's mobster talk, because we're talking about a pair of ZX Spectrum games which concern themselves with various illegal dealings in 1919. The roaring teens! Establish protection rackets, run hooch, pinch nanners, flip gatorboys, if it's illegal you can do it all. As long as it fits within the "Lemonade Stand" format.

Rise of the Dragon is a perfectly serviceable first person adventure game, held back by some misguided action sequences and a predictable plot. Cyber drugs? You're kidding me! So once we dispense with the formalities, Gary regales us with a tale of his return to the All-American Magic Show. Sometimes you CAN step in the same river twice.

WiiWare is an untapped market for us, and Gary brought in a doozie: a game about eating a lot in a very short amount of time. And you know what? It's not that terrible. It would at least have kept us entertained for a night in our dirtbag early twenties. So listen in and hear us talk about competitive eating, and learn a little more about Gary's horrible childhood.

Dragonfable is the long-forgotten followup to Adventure Quest, and somehow it still runs, and somehow you can still play it. Cribbing heavily from the hyper self-aware diction of webcomics in the mid-2000s, this is a repetitive, grindy RPG that's perfectly at home on this show.

Gilligan's Island is a hell named after its devil. The incompetent first mate of the S.S. Minnow bumbles about with an efficiency that cannot be accidental, ensuring that the island's flawed inhabitants will never again see another shore. Gilligan's Island is also a corny 60s television show which, for some reason, got an NES game made of it in 1990. It contains multitudes.

Galerians for the PlayStation is a flawed but interesting survival horror game, existing today primarily for people who are passionate about that era of the genre. Galerians: Ash is beloved by none. Picking up right at the end of the original game, Ash follows the continuing adventures of Rion through the world of Basically Akira, trying to stop synthetic humans from destroying the world. But they made it an action game and they shouldn't have done that.

Will Hughes joins Kole once again to talk about the DS launch game "Feel the Magic: XY XX", which is best described as "horny Warioware". We end up talking about the game quite a bit, though Will does frequently bully Kole the whole time. There's nothing to be done about it.Special Guest: Will Hughes.

Gary went and caught Covid, so this week Kole is joined by the AV Club's Will Hughes to talk about Zoop, the shallow puzzle game that magazines in the 90s put a lot of effort into getting people to buy. And since Gary isn't here, we kind of go hog wild on talking about things that would otherwise send him into the stratosphere.

It's a classic Gary Butterfield pick: it's an advergame about snack food. But M&M's Kart Racing for the Wii also happens to be the least fun, and least functional, kart racer we've covered for the show. It also leads us to one of the more bizarre and sad wikis we've found for a property.

Somehow it took us 460 episodes to reach Mr. Bones. I don't have an answer as to why. But, man, is it a sight to behold. You play the one skeleton on the side of good (guitars) fighting against a mindless army on the side of evil (drums), playing just the grossest, smelliest white boy blues you can.

Nickelodeon's GUTS, later Global GUTS, was a mainstay of the network's "cheaply produced gameshows" that acted as ballast for some of the other, bigger shows. Each episode, a group of kids competed in physical challenges, culminating in a trip up the Aggro Crag, for a chance to win a "glowing piece of that radical rock". From this setup, we get a really anemic minigame collection that's mostly repeats... so Gary talks about a juggler he saw recently.

The Curious Expedition isn't a bad game by any stretch of the imagination, but it sits at a table set with a lot of outdated tropes that don't look so great nowadays. We're pretty sure this Patron just wanted us to make a bummer episode about colonialism. So we talk about that, along with how people just drown in pig shit and we, as a society, have decided to accept that.

We're not interested in talking about whether or not Joe Rogan is a force for good. You can probably guess how we feel about his show. BUT, we are interested in how wild reality game shows got in the early 2000s, and this is a great inroads to talking about a whole bunch of them. Also, making a video game version of Fear Factor is a terrible idea.

Something is happening with our brains, and we're in this period where we're extremely receptive to schlock. To the point where we can't guarantee that Harvester won't become a WOFF! episode at some point. It's a bizarre FMV adventure game that's all about the glorification of violence, and it's full of some extremely potent, trashy horror ideas.

The kids are going to have to learn about FUB and his obscure war at some point. That's why we're covering Loaded, a bonkers shooter that has all the charm of seven Twisted Metal games rammed together. We also talk about the Miracle of Uncles.

Hugo's House of Horrors is a classic adventure game that's actually quite charming. Doubly so when you see how vehemently the designer insists that he'd never heard of Maniac Mansion before making it. We also talk about how J. Jonah Jameson and Cornholio are related, and how Kole's got snakes.

This SNES has a mission to boringly go where no man has gone before! An interface that mimics the bridge of the Starship Enterprise does a lot to make this feel like a more complex game than it is, but it can't hide the terrible Away Team and ship-to-ship combat. We also talk about our Holodeck fantasies, and Kole finally gets to tell his falconry story.

This is probably someone's favorite game, which is weird to us. After the 16-bit era, Treasure kind of split in two. One part released bullet hell shooters. The other had a habit of making technical platformers that are impossibly ugly to look at. Silhouette Mirage falls into the latter camp, with a projectile affinity system that was a test run for Ikaruga's main gimmick.

This recently revived and translated SNES game is a little less food-oriented than the title would have you believe. It's not a complete lie, but what you get is a Cho-Aniki brawler with a little bit of cooking thrown in. Which is a bummer, all told.

It's no longer safe to be in the water, but that was usually the case to begin with... at least of you're Gary. The Jaws NES game has a bad rap because it's very slight, but it's pretty interesting, if a little grindy. We also talk about the ethical implications of eating shark meat, but only if that shark was a really bad dude.

Imagine if you will a city of dinos. Also imagine a game based on a movie about some teens visiting that city of dinos. And imagine Kole's odds of survival when trapped in the world of Sonic the Hedgehog. Picture all of this in your dreams.

This one gets a little... gross. Of course we begin by talking about ELEX, a game from the team that made the Gothic and Risen series, which we had never heard about before. It's not terrible, just generally shoddy. What IS terrible is the direction Gary takes this episode.

We know about Solid, Liquid, and Solidus Snake, but are you ready to meet their little brother Solid-ish Snake? The concept for this game is good: What is it like to be stranded behind enemy lines as a footsoldier in a time when wars are fought entirely by mechs? Too bad it squanders it by feeling terrible in the hands and being very opaque in how it presents information to the player. So we talk about how we feel we'd fare against a mech instead.

Reventure is a cute little joke platformer about the many ways that quests can end. It's got a little Stanley Parable in it, along with a little Don't Shit Your Pants. It's not a bad game, and actually kinda neat, so we instead talk about Dangerous Animals shows, and Kole tortures Gary with home improvement chat.

Listen, have fun, go mad, get buried in a Dymaxion house. That's about the order of operations in this episode about a UK-only kids game based on a property called the Tweenies. They like to have fun and dance around, and one time a genie trapped them in the jungle with dinosaurs. But is there a more sinister side?

Why would you play a game about making games when you could make a game yourself, said the wise man, you absolute clod. Game Dev Tycoon bears a striking resemblance to Kairosoft's Game Dev Story, and they have caught plenty of heat for that, but if you're going to mimic a light management sim, there are far worse examples to crib from.

The Genesis is home to some very weird and obscure games, and Saint Sword is one of those. We use its strange transformation powerups to launch into a prolonged conversation about the pros and cons of centaurism.

Is it here because it's a late entry in a beloved series that changed hands? No, it's here so we can joyously talk about the opening cutscenes. It's very hard to be mad at this game unless your favorite unit got nerfed. Then you'll hold a murderous grudge for life.

We chose this game on the basis of a misunderstanding, because the UK doesn't know how to name candy. What we thought would be a game about those sweet, sour, chalky tablets, ended up being a game about big M&Ms. Would the game based on the chalky candy have been any better? It's impossible to say, so we'll say yes. Yes, it would have been better.

We take this perfectly fine party game and play it exactly the wrong way... Alone! We also talk about hats, the problem of having a head that's too big, and the meanest thing Gary has ever done.

Hop into a limo with $1,000 and your worst yuppie friends and head to Vegas in order to learn about the hidden horrors of strangers approaching you to ask for things. Also, we learn about the daring exploits of Mr. Colo$tomy, high roller extraordinaire.

It's hard to know what Devolver Digital was thinking when they signed on this one. You may think the idea of a turn-based side scrolling stealth game sounds cool, and it might be, but only if it was... finished. Ronin is not.

What follows is an in-depth report on what qualities someone must possess to be "so raven". This Disney Channel millennial favorite is, honestly, a conceptual 50 car pileup, and the universe it inhabits is so weird we only get a chance to scratch its surface.

It's the video game version of "The Song That Never Ends", and ironically it ALSO pisses off bus drivers. A joke game created for an unreleased Penn and Teller prank game, Desert Bus has ascended from myth to meme to genuine charity hero. We talk a little about its history, then bag on how terrible road trips are.

One Must Fall 2097 is an illustration that the Console/PC gap cuts boths ways, depending on the genre. While the PC exceled at first person shooters and RPGs early on, it struggled with racing games and fighting games... though it's not like they didn't try. An early effort by Epic, this fighting game pits Dorito robots against each other, with different pilots you cannot see.

You remember this object from your childhood? Now it's covered in blood! That's the 90s industrial touch, baybee. Listen to us talk about this strange first-person pinball game and wrestle with why effort isn't inherently a bad thing, but it can certainly make things worse.

It's a clash of the titans, as we clash about whether this game about titanic animals is any fun. And that makes for an episode that, on the whole, stays on topic! At least in comparison to the other episodes of this show.

What happens when your toilet is also a living creature who produces waste? We talk about this and more, and unsuccessfully try to not make this episode all about how old television was terrible.

A game with an unlikely name has an outsized legacy, weirdly turning into an engine for early 3D first person PC games. But before we hit that, we have to talk about unlikely showbiz rites of passage and a very bad brush with emesis.

Odd are you played it on a demo disk back in the day, but this PlayStation game is better and weirder than you'd expect. Also, heads up, there's a gnarly anecdote about a plumbing accident that gets about as bad as it could possibly get. If you're squeamish, you'll know when to turn things off.

We can't lie and say this minigame collection is any good, but we CAN talk about how great the Goosebumps books are. And we can gush about how important kids' horror media was to us when we were young.

A boring Battlezone clone's hilarious manual sets us off onto talking about business monsters again. You might not believe that Forbes Corporate Warrior exists. You might not WANT to believe that Forbes Corporate Warrior exists. You aren't ready for Forbes Corporate Warrior to exist.

Funny enough, it was the most misguided port I could think of. Which isn't to say that the mini version of Max Payne isn't impressive in its own way... It's just frustrating to always get killed by enemies who are off-screen.

Crass, classist humor can't paper over a thin game long enough for us to not find another truly depressing internet phenomenon. And we can't stress enough: be cool.

This game isn't bad, but it's really not for us. You play as a monster who wants to grow his garden, which means going into little pocket dimensions to make friends to bring back home. This turns into a message game about how to be a better friend to yourself... but it's all very basic, and the writing clangs on our taste. So instead, we talk about some strange encounters Gary recently had in Portland.

We've only made this mistake once before, but there was a calendar whoopsie. So while we primarily talk about Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, we also get a little bit of Princess Tomato and the Salad Kingdom. A minor misunderstanding gives way to discussions of frightening produce and the ravages of age.

Kole may not be able to convince Gary that Homestar Runner is funny, but at least we can both agree that the porn game that's also named Peasant's Quest is gross as heck.

We got burned by a name again. But can you blame us? "Eyeballs are your ENEMIES!" is a really tempting name for an Abject Suffering game. So we took the bait, realized we don't really have any eyeball digressions, and flounder for a while. Damn you, asset flip games!

A clown, his horrible stick, and a very normal woman end the world and have to try to un-end it. But we mostly end up talking about sex toys and weird Captain Planet villain eggs.

Throw another entry onto our list of games about snacks. But Pringles: The Game isn't an official product... it's a Sega Genesis ROM created by a hobbyist in the 21st century. This is a labor of love, made only out of enthusiasm for those pressed salty shavings.

An episode where, admittedly, neither of us can remember a specific aspect of the Heroes of Might and Magic universe... but it doesn't matter, because this is actually just King's Bounty! So you can't trick us with your lies.

This is actually a good game, but we couldn't pass up the opportunity to talk about Forbidden Cubes. If you're familiar with this, it's probably because of a demo disk that came with your PlayStation, or from buying the PlayStation Classic mini-console. Its austere, frankly creepy presentation wraps up a satisfying puzzle game that gives us plenty of geometry-based digression material.

This week we talk about an experimental indie adventure game that seems fine, we just weren't in the mood for it at the time. So we talk about proper marshmallows, letting 'er rip, and pepper spray.

Troma decided to take the disgusting and disturbing Toxic Avenger series and adapt it... for kids! What we got was a one season animated show that was a weak stab at Captain Planet, but at least it resulted in some neat toys. Oh, and some very bad video games.

This week has us looking at a fun little indie game about a young girl trying to use her dolls to figure out how people have sex. It's a very small project, made over three days for a game jam, but it's a fun springboard into a few conversations about sex and insecurity.

The good news is that this episode doesn't get as gross as you'd expect. This is a modern-ish remake of a storied German franchise where you start and run an pay toilet empire. Which isn't a terrible idea, even if the execution stinks.

Remember when conspiracy theories were fun? It feels like a long time ago. It's also strange to look back at old video game controversies and realize how quaint they are. Case in point, 2004's "JFK Reloaded" caused an outcry because of its subject matter. Is it tasteless to recreate the assassination of a beloved U.S. president? We personally don't think so, and you can listen to hear us make our case.

There was no reason for them to digitize this simple dice game, but they did it anyway, and gave it one crackerjack title. We talk about road trip memories, rural fair competitions, and generally vibe about how great and horrifying pigs can be.

Do you have fond memories of this? Sorry! It's pretty bad! We talk about the misguided gimmick (a cartridge with a solar light sensor) that looms large over a stealth RPG that was already pretty bad. Games will need to get up much earlier in the morning if they want to make us go outside.

Knuckles' Chaotix is the only game that could possibly embody the sheer awkwardness of the Sega 32X. It stars Knuckles and his shitty friends as they attempt to stop Dr. Robotnik from doing something I guess. The problem is, Knuckles is bound to his co-op partner by a stretchy energy band, which makes doing "Sonic" stuff impossible. But they still expect you to do Sonic stuff.

A divine agent has gone rogue, taking the sacred texts with him and throwing the whole world into chaos. It's up to you to find him and stop the crisis in the most mind-numbing way possible.Also, we talk about that time a car crashed into Gary's house at 3am.

Dried fruit almost had a home in the NES in this mediocre platformer published by Capcom. The problem is, the popular California Raisins commercials, where sentient fruit performed Motown classics, cost more to produce than they generated in sales. So the California Raisins went away, and this game didn't see the light of day until recently.

And the award for "most obscure Lovecraft game adaptation" goes to... This thing. It's actually not that bad, though! While this is our first Hidden Object game, the genre was extremely popular with casual gamers for a while. And this seems like a good one, eschewing most of the pixel hunting for a basic point-and-click adventure setup. We honestly thought this would be worse.

Back around the turn of the millennium, before social media forever changed what the word "celebrity" meant, "Celebrity Death Match" was a staple of the late night MTV lineup. It was an exceedingly violent claymation show where different celebrities wrestled to the death, often with "jokes" that mostly just made fun of women. They made a game out of this, and we made an episode out that game, which turns out to be the Super Smash Bros. of gathering as many sexual predators into one game as possible.

This game is nothing, but it's also a reminder of a forgotten era of Windows 3.1 aesthetics and production values. We know basically nothing about jets, so instead we invent the character of Periodicles and talk about the Torso Killer.

Timecop was created out of necessity once someone realized "Time" and "Crime" rhymed. Jean-Claude Van Damme took a break between railing miles of coke to act as an enforcer for an agency trying to stop people from using time travel to get rich. Then they made a really bad game out of it.

This cinematic game for the NES is slightly divisive between us, as it awkwardly fumbles to be Rainbow 6 before Rainbow 6 was possible on hardware.

Torque may or may not have killed his wife and child, and now he's in a haunted prison with plenty of time to sort himself out... in between monster attacks. This honestly isn't a terrible game, but it's just outrageous enough to talk about here.

This week we talk about Warlocked, the tiny RTS that kind of could. That's right... they made a real time strategy game for the Game Boy Color and it actually works, although it doesn't feel like your usual strategy game. We also talk about a horrifying video involving a toilet.

To celebrate episode 400 of Abject Suffering, we dip into some Steam crapware, based entirely on its funny name. Last of Ass has nothing to do with The Last of Us, instead being a low-effort take on Slender: The Pages meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre. You're trapped on the land of some goddamn cannibals, and you need to sneak around to get the parts you need to fix your car. That's it.

We believe that Guilty Gear is a good series that just isn't for us. We don't really go in for hyper-stylized, chaotic fighting games like this. What everyone can agree on, we think, is that Guilty Gear Isuka is a very bad entry in that series. In an attempt to add some gimmicks to the series, the developers break the design conventions that make 2D fighters work, making for a uniquely unpleasant experience.

They killed Marlow Briggs on the wrong day with the wrong scythe. So an ancient Incan god king has revived him as a spirit of vengeance, Captain Planet-like! This game is actually competent, so we spend time talking about how the only reasonable way to spend money if you're a billionaire is to restore your hometown to exactly the way it was when you were ten.

Truth time: Buffy is a blind spot for us. Both of us were watching different things in the 90s, and sometimes it's just too hard to go back to something from that era if you don't have any nostalgia for it. This first Buffy game is an anemic GBC brawler, so instead we talk about our newest supernatural villain: the incompetent Frankenstein.

William Shatner's magnum opus spans nine books, a theatrical release, a television show, and several TV movies, and you probably only know it from an offhand joke on the Simpsons. It's cyberpunk without the punk, where a digital drug named Tek is the scourge of the streets. In the game, you play as a Tek addict turned narc agent who has to hunt down dealers in awkward first person shooter combat. After all, the kids need to learn about TekWar sooner or later.

Eternam is a very strange adventure game. Taking cues from Westworld, you play as Don Jonz, who won a vacation package to a fantasy planet, only to learn that his arch rival is working some kind of scheme there. Decent jokes and horrifying faces abound!

The wild swings that developers took on the PS2 are infinitely fascinating, and one that you don't hear too much about is Dog's Life. It's a bad game, but there's not much else like it. It's open-ish world, you play as a dog, and you can shit and piss at the press of a button. One person does all of the voices, and the ending needs to be seen to be believed.

This mediocre brawler about Kabuki warriors fighting generic monsters doesn't provide much fertile ground for discussion, so we default to talking about tragedy and the ways out education failed us.

In a remarkable bit of serendipity, this game wasn't a hit because you couldn't hit anything in it. Garry Winnick and Steve Purcell set about creating a quirky little brawler for the NES, and they made a comic to promote it. Then they made an animated series to promote it. And people were excited. Then they played the game and the whole house of cards came tumbling down.

We all know the stereotypical traits of nerds. Thick glasses, nasally voice... narcolepsy? Lester the Unlikely is a cinematic platformer, a la Out of This World or Prince of Persia, that highlights how important good level design is to that kind of game. However, if you're looking for a game that lets you punish turtles, this one's got your number.. Shredder.

It's a fantasy saga of high flying dragons and alien invasions where nothing at all happpens. This episode is our followup to the Companions of Xanth episode, this time featuring a fantasy series from Kole's childhood. Dragon Riders: Chronicles of Pern is a Dreamcast adventure game based on Anne McCaffrey's books about dragon riders who don't do very much.

This week's Abject Suffering is about an admirable joke game that asks the question: is it possible for a dog to be bad?

When you're a kid with unlimited free time, and games are not plentiful and the internet isn't around, you end up reading a lot of questionable novels. Enter Xanth: Piers Anthony's problematic saga that continues to this day. Listen as we talk about the Legend adventure game based on the books, and also dig into bad kids fantasy in general.

Imagine a pop-o-matic world. That might have made the Game of Life more interesting! Everything ensconced within perfect plastic and metal, the ideal randomizer. However, another way to make the Game of Life more interesting is to make it into a video game like Jones in the Fast Lane. A lesser-known Sierra title that plays like a board game, you start at the bottom rung of your career, and try to use your limited time and money to reach your goals. It's neat!

We all like Contra, right? What if we did it again but worse? And what if Konami wasn't as great as you remembered it, and you've been letting them coast on Castlevania for decades?

This kind of good PC shoot-em-up game takes your regular arcade shooter like Raiden and adds more story and a dash of humor. That doesn't give us a lot to work with, so we talk about the prospect of grown-up sleepovers, and start recommending products.

Everyone remembers the X-Files game for PlayStation. It was an FMV game that shipped in a huge case with a ton of CDs. Less well-known is this PS2 survival horror game that is... actually pretty neat! We talk about this, and also pitch a spin-off show: The X-Fires.Support Abject Suffering

Just so you're not disappointed, this isn't the PSX game that stars Bruce Willis. That would be the similarly anonymous game "Apocalypse". No, this is a really bland cinematic action game that stars a man with amnesia and a bizarre gun arm. It's like Contra, but the bad Contras.

This single-screen asset factory platformer posits the existence of a new kind of nose, while we talk about the nightmare of our cats bringing us a corpse.

It's crazy how developers kept on trying to make first person games happen on the DS, even when it was abundantly clear that they were painful to play. This breaks out into a more serious conversation about innovation vs. proficiency, and we apologize for that. We'll make it goofier next time.

The best, most expansive creepypasta universe lends itself to an admirable fan game. Problem is, it's multiplayer, and playing games with strangers is the pits!

A game that, for legal purposes, is unaffiliated with the real Santa or Christmas.

Crystalis is, first and foremost, a pretty good game. There are fun details about its story, and why they still honor the American dollar, but mostly it serves as a good launching point for talking about the absurdities of NextDoor.

Is there a name for the kind of stealth horror game that's popular with streamers? Things like Hello Neighbor and Bendy and the Ink Machine? Whatever that is, this is one of those, but with a fun, crappy educational vibe. Truth is, this is actually pretty good and fun, so we range far afield on this episode.

You may be thinking, "Hey guys! That Capcom NES Little Mermaid game wasn't bad! What gives?" And you're right. The only crime that game commits is being too simple. This week, we're talking about the very bad Little Mermaid game made for the Sega Genesis, which looked at the Dam level from TMNT and said "hold my conch".

Imagine, if you will, a kind of battling toad. Nobody asked for this episode, we just felt like talking about it. Rare's darling baby that launched a thousand memes, about things ranging from its difficulty to its availability in stores. We don't care for it very much! But we only talk a little bit about why the game doesn't work, and spend most of our time talking about the Dark Queen's Pixar ass, horrible holiday memories, and comparative power ratings of the toad boys.

This survival horror/survival sim set in an arctic base is notable for one reason: It was made entirely in Blender, which is not a game engine. It would be like somehow making a JRPG run in MS Paint. Other than that, it's got a baffling "barely translated" charm... so instead, we talk about how Gary recently developed hypothermia in his house.

We need to re-calibrate what constitutes an "Abject Suffering Emergency". It's hard to tell how earnest the Whiteboyz Wit' Attitude are. On one hand, the music is pretty bad and farcical, but on the other hand, they've been at it for many years. This Steam game is a gussied up sales pitch for their compilation album, featuring some limited rhythm gameplay set to their low production value videos.

This is our second rock band management sim this year, and it's by far the superior to "Rock Star Ate My Hamster". The drug fixation aside, this is a fun little Lemonade Stand sim that has a fair bit of complexity and some of the best procedurally generated names we've seen.Special Thanks to Beyond Reason for the theme song remix.

This week we look at a humble, gag-based point and click puzzle game that's a parody of a parody of MacGuyver. We also talk about the 1994 Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito film Junior. At length.

They turned a good book into a very frustrating text adventure.

Back in the late '70s and early '80s, Britain was overtaken by treasure hunt fever, sparked by a childrens' book called The Masquerade and its promises of a valuable gold rabbit for anyone clever enough to solve its puzzles. The contest ended in allegations of fraud, and this cursed rabbit went on to become the basis for an outright scam called Hareraiser, a duo of games for microcomputers that were little more than unsolvable messes. The gold rabbit was auctioned off when the company was liquidated, and we were left with one of the worst "games" in all of history.

Warm up your pipes, you opera singing leeches, because we're going to talk about the game that we blame for murdering classic-style Resident Evil experiences. Taking place shortly before the events of the original Resident Evil, STARS Bravo team medic Rebecca Chambers and failed Chili Peppers clone Billy team up to fight through a train and some anonymous facilities full of zombies and leeches, all while being too ineffectual to hold objects.

It's very hard to be a Castlevania fan, especially when Konami decides that this very ugly and shallow Power Stone clone is worth releasing. Famously featuring a story line where a little girl wants bigger boobs, it also has hideous costume redesigns for a large number of beloved Castlevania characters, and a pretty lame excuse plot.

Swords & Darkness, a game you've never heard of, is a very poorly made side scrolling Demon's Souls game released on the 3DS eShop. It's broken in some pretty entertaining ways, so give this a listen and save yourself the $7!

This week Gary brings a character with a very ill-advised product pitch, then we get into talking about this charming and not-fun Cinemaware game about ants. Please stow your picnic baskets.

Probably one of the most hideous games we've covered for the show?

A baffling game gives way to a discussion on obstinate linguistics.

We use this kind of okay point and click adventure game as an excuse to eat stunt food. Warning: Mouth sounds abound.

We head back to the Power Rangers well to learn more about what teens do on the moon.

The conflict that will tear the network apart.

We didn't know there was a Sopranos game, and neither did you, probably.

Gary's favorite game! He says it! He can't take it back!

This little businessman sim is actually pretty good, so we do a kind of job interview of our own.

An indie game with a simple premise: highlight how much regular video games make using a gun look easier than it actually is.

We really got cheated when it came to extreme sports. It's all just crotch hugs, with very few robots in sight.

The Popeye universe is more vast and more pointless than we initially imagined.

We stretch the concept of "concepts" to the limits.

We were excited to play a band simulator, but all we got was Lemonade Stand plus puns.

From one of the best games of all time, to an unmitigated disaster.

Episode 350 introduces a beloved character that will endure for decades to come.

How has Top Gun remained a cultural touchstone for all of these years?

We stumbled into a gross one. Sorry, folks.

Get ready for us to be effusively positive about an extremely strange and nostalgic experience.

Take a good book and make a wonderful movie out of it, then wait 30 years and make a terrible movie and somehow a worse game of that movie.

Talk about submarine life segues abruptly into the dismal dystopia of Cameo.

These bad, bad, bad, bad boys don't make us feel so good.

This very bad 3D platformer has you playing as Anthony Kiedis in a surreally meaningless empty void.

Before you head to the polls to vote for the next car president, remember my campaign slogan: Cars are cars all over the world. Similarly made, similarly sold.

The 90s really were the pits, weren't they?

A relic from an era that reached peak Talky.

How do you talk about a game that isn't a game... yet?

You have no idea how deep the rabbit hole goes.

This is another Abject Suffering emergency as we sail into the sea of madness that is the Captain Crunch Extended Universe.

In which we introduce the concept of "offboarding week" to Abject Suffering.

This is based on a movie that doesn't exist, and you can't convince us otherwise.

The Frogger Expanded Universe is no place to raise a kid.

We're aware of the coincidence that an episode about witches is numbered 3:33. It wasn't intentional, and that makes it spooky.

Financially ruined by whaledom.

It's, like, totally a game that was originally named Magic John.

You can hear our souls leaving our bodies.

Darren accidentally brings us a kind of okay game.

Doug Lief joins us to talk about the rare misstep in Capcom and Disney's collaboration.

An interesting subject for an adventure game gets tripped up with hostile mechanics.

They made so many Rugrats games, you guys.

Quirky cult survival game is actually pretty tedious!

Chris Khatami comes to us with an excuse to talk about Goldeneye 007. Don't tweet at us saying this shouldn't be on the show.Go to Chris' comedy festival in Portland! It's taking place the weekend after Thanksgiving. It's the Ha-Ha-Harvest Comedy Festival.

As a citizen of the world, you must know all languages and help me figure out who pooped in my lawn.

We know what you did, and you know what you did.

This is a boring adventure game for nerds, so we get depressed about the Darke Gyfte.

Neopets is darker than you might imagine, in ways you might not expect.

Behold! The greatest enemy of Myst.

We should stop being surprised when a game lives up to its reputation.

The scoundrel Bryan Wade strikes again!

One six minute music track justifies an entire game.

In the end, the true Trivia Monster was me all along.

Food, fun, and fashion... the mall has it all!

Our first ZX Spectrum game is weird and good!

Everyone's favorite Marvel characters finally get their own game.

It's tough living in a post-Skingood world.

A horrifying addition to the pantheon emerges.

A weird mood blooms in a vacuum.

Get okay with penetration!

A comedy game, a chance van encounter, and making soup with madmen.

A good game with a terrible aesthetic!

A very specific prejudice.

It's not GRRRREEEAATTTT!

I'll tell you what I don't want, what I really really don't want.

It's Pokémon without the charm!

Gary's favorite game of all time. He will go to the mat to defend this game.

For our tricentennial, we roll out a modern stinker.

When you want Mario Kart, but your mom says you have Mario Kart at home.

Snip.

This is actually a fun little tactical shooter for the Game Boy Advance.

Is it possible for a product title to have hubris?

A haunting at the asset factory!

The saga continues, and we meet a powerful new foe.

This is the most positive you'll see us be about a brand.

More like Crapland.

Get ready for an angry episode about a very good game!

Every time we say the word "bee", the speed of the episode remains the same.

David Cage is back on his bullshit.

Bringing back some of that Big Robot Magic.

A premise so potent it created an Abject Suffering Emergency.

The beginning of your JRPG is terrible.

There are few experiences as disappointing as figuring out that a game is supposed to be funny.

Solomon joins us to talk about the proto-Miis and candy bars.

Welcome to the worst.

Did you know Francisco Franco is most famous for being "stuffy"? MARIOFACTS.

You remember this as a quirky tech demo. In reality, it's a game about pinching boobs.

Maximum baffling. Maximum repugnant.

The weirdest creative Hail Mary we've ever seen a studio throw.

Socks the Cat disappeared after refusing a subpoena from the Starr independent council. He reappeared in Argentina as El Gato Calcetinas.

We throw Gary a bone and talk about Willow for a long time. I'm no happier than you are about this.

It's a classic Abject Suffering showdown! Gary is extremely apathetic toward Gundams, while Kole is mildly apathetic but remembers liking them in the past. Catch the clash!

This episode has kind of a big round number, so we gotta bring out the big guns... including one of our favorite Wikipedia sentences ever.

A new contender takes the GameFAQs Gold crown.

Oh No, It's Another Boring 16-bit Fighting Game!

Listen to Kole fail Gary's test at naming a good dino.

Imported from Norway, it's one of the few iOS games we've covered on the show!

From the people who brought you Perish Hard, Last Blood, and Angry Max.

This might surprise you, but we think Sailor Moon is cool and good. This game, however, is very very bad.

The title is a lie. Rocky and Bullwinkle have no friends.

It's a very strange, little-known survival horror game. And Kole doesn't like it at all, which is strange.

Action sports with a martial edge, dropping soccer bombs on an endless goal.

Is it green or red!?

An episode of Abject Suffering that's about suffering.

He's too angry to articulate how angry he is, which just makes him angrier. He is the architect of his own perfect Hell.

An adventure/strategy hybrid game that's less painful than the Gom Jabbar!

Absolutely shameless.

A beloved series, and a beloved genre of game which doesn't care about making you want to play it.

The delightful comedian Carolyn Main joins us to talk about an NES grappling hook game.

This game is actually quite good! As long as you get the DS version.

For a while in the 2000s we thought there was enough meat on classic arcade game bones to bear this kind of remake.

Special thanks to Andrew for taking us back to the Dickieverse, where we learn how MDickie thinks video game development works.

Come on in, come to the racing game where the fun never begins.

A bizarre game that's actually kind of cool, which also uses a nifty technology. Yep, Fjords is where it's at!

Children can be so cruel, and frequently they are.

A jam-packed three-pack of crap.

You cannot go home again, and you cannot rethink who you've asked to adopt you.

It's a very special 250th episode spectacular that looks at a joke game that's successful both as a game, AND as a joke!

A game so good you'll walk in on your naked neighbors to get it.

It's an RPG-maker anti-game about a lowly pissworm who just wants a hand.

What could possibly go right?

From the Kid Kool collection, we learn about Kole's new son and also contemplate some unsettling interactions.

This is a good game, but it starts off Kole's Castle Quest, so that's neat.

Someone tried to back-door a WOFF episode, so listen to us talk a little bit about this forgotten game from FromSoft's awkward years.

They did the Crash Bash, it was a mediocre smash.

Everyone forgets that time that Pixar tried to claim unicycles as their own intellectual property.

You know the nova is heavy because the mechs can't even stand up.

We're taking a break on wrestling games for a while, so listen in to hear about Gary's Gabriel Knight vacation to New Orleans!

Do yourself a favor and at least watch the intro to this game. Holy cow, those walk cycles.

This week we play a fun game whose title is both a truth and a dare.

Discussion of the GameBoy version of T2 turns to time travel and weird chess.

A baby's gotta do what a baby's gotta do, but we really wish they wouldn't.

A title that follows in the august footsteps of Inspector Gadget.

The most Psygnosis-looking non-Psygnosis game is virtually unplayable. Seriously, look up a video of this game.

It's a spooky and funny, fun and fast platformer from a series that is notably bad.

Brayton Cameron returns to school us on Bloody Roar and usher in the new age of Chili Horse.Special Guest: Brayton Cameron.

This anti-game is gold, Jerry! Gold! Seriously, go play it right away. We'll wait.

Syrg joins us to talk about the infamously bad Silicon Knights game "X-Men: Destiny". We are not taking offers for debates at this time.

Peter Pan's all grown up, and it's kind of depressing.

It's a game about the popular show that is no longer popular, and which we have never seen.

Irritating Stick is a game about not touching the sides. This episode of the show is mostly about coping with trashgut.

We hadn't done a mainline Sonic game for Abject Suffering before, so we're happy that our first one is a doozy.

Let us solve this fleshy puzzle together on this Christmas episode extravaganza.

We head back to the FMV DMV to pilot an idiot through the process of avoiding neck injections.

Kole accidentally backdoored a good game in for a mini-WOFF.

This episode's randomization goes horribly, horribly awry after the fact.

John K's parade of grotesque buffoons that shout sincerely-held regressive beliefs, surprisingly, makes for a terrible game.

With all apologies to Jenni Polodna, we venture into the teeming subculture of auto-generated Horse Cop games on the app store.

Kids will go crazy for these ugly spheres... for boys!

Wetrix is most certainly NOT for kids.

10-4 we got a bear in the hoopty stripe. Hopalong to the med-bay for some snackattacks

Looks like we found another classic Abject Suffering redemption.

Featuring the soundtrack of Final Fantasy Tactics.

It's an upsetting and nauseating trip to the past to try to assemble the pieces of the life of a man who died long ago.

This one's from the "weird and slight" column, not the "bad" column.

A perfect simulation of being ground between the gears of the system.

It's what you see when you grind up a bunch of POGs and snort them.

If you say "Altered Beast" backward, the curse will activate. Your head will get bigger as your body gets smaller, until you roll down a hill and disappear.

We know this is a good game. We're just overwhelmed.

We don't have time for the fake golden stuff.

Have you seen THIS? No, really, have you seen this? Because it's very good.

We didn't know about the updated Rocko reboot movie when we recorded this, which is eerie.

Incredibly cute. Incredibly not for us.

An unreleased non-classic keeps rolling on the river while we revisit the topic of Buffo, the strong clown we admire.

Let's get our hands dirty, it's the junk food half hour.

A bold vision of an eternal Halloween.

This monument stands proud for all those who were lost in the destruction of Spondylus.

James Cameron brought out sweet baby boys back to us, but they've changed.

Luck is an artificial construct that anthropomorphizes the chaotic forces that make the choices in your minuscule life not matter.

It's been a little while since we got some verified GameFAQs Gold. Enjoy!

It's the second ever Abject Suffering to require a disclaimer.

If you think just the words "Gabe Newell" are a joke, you'll love this episode about the worst thing we've covered.

Let's attend to the question of Kole's sandwich paradox.

Don't leave your music on shuffle during sex if the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers theme song is in your library.

The League of Extraordinary Hams has united. Will Alan Rickman, Dennis Hopper, and Tim Curry make it across the country to see Robin Williams with their friendship intact?

Bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin' bustin'

From the makers of Gorky17, winner of "Title of the Year" every year since its release.

Beep beep, I'm a robot on wheels.

Brayton Cameron joins us for a Teenage Dirtbags crossover!Special Guest: Brayton Cameron.

Doesn't seem so smart to me!

We already struggle to talk about sports. Listen in to find out what happens when we have no knowledge of the game or its cultural context!

Since nobody knows what "Family Dog" is, we address the Shaq flat-earth controversy head on.Links:Beetlejuice's Rockin' Graveyard Revue - Universal Studios Hollywood - 1999 - YouTube

The wonderful Jim Crawford joins us to talk about the weirdest advergame that ever was.You should probably at least check this out. It's free. https://archive.org/details/msdos_ENGJONES_sharewareSpecial Guest: Jim Crawford.

Finally, we get the chance to not talk about four games at once!

Greed is good, and so is this game... kinda.

This game, also known as Menace Beach, teaches us that even Sunday School teachers can be sexy.

Get along there pardner, to listen to us holler 'bout them FMV cowpokes over yonder.

It came from Brazil!

Don't get it twisted: We like this game.

When you go to the toilet, make sure it's a toilet.

Cave men AND ninjas? This is conceptually crowded. Please note: the last half hour of this episode is all spoiler-chat for Westworld.

It's a black sheep, ugly duckling, awkward teen. It's Castlevania 64, and we use it to talk about weird sex.

Today we revisit the classic Leonard Nimoy documentary: "In Search of... Mascot". Sega, what were you thinking?

Stay tuned through the end to learn shocking new facts about Beholders and Alton Brown.

Discussion of a bland D&D game for Genesis gives way to talk about sports, then a little bit about politics. Sorry, we're only human!

A small error and Marvel's lack of originality has lead to another classic Abject Suffering book report mix-em-up!

My cyber friends, let us avoid the crunchpunks by plugging this filthy jack into the back of our elbows... Here we are: absorbed within the placentaverse of this vegan dopplersphere.Links:peaceful skeleton realm attacked by helicopter - YouTube

Can gritty presentation save a mediocre third person shooter? We find out what separates the 50 Cents from the rest.Links:Postal, Hatred, and Weighing the Worth of Asshole Simulators - YouTube

Our most foul game prototype yet springs from a game that falls in the bottom 5% of everything we've ever covered on this show.

Hi, I'm Maga Morn and I'm here to beat the Robert Masters.

Inside the case, you find an object so cursed that even Strahd would object to its existence. A dim mist descends.... You are now in Ravenloft.

Europe was a mistake.

Slight discussion of a super British anti-game quickly gives way to an anxious therapy session about the 2016 US election. You've been forewarned!

We recorded this one in case of emergency, since our great godfather died on Columbus Day.Links:Gremlins 2: The New Batch (video game) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaGremlins 2 - Nes - The New Batch - Full Playthrough - No Death - YouTubeGremlins 2 DOS - final level - YouTubeDOS - Gremlins 2: The New Batch (Motivetime) - YouTubeGremlins 2 Completed No Miss Game Boy - YouTubeKey & Peele - "Gremlins 2" Brainstorm - Uncensored - YouTubeGremlins 2: The New Batch Message Board for Amiga - GameFAQs — Look at this gaggle of weirdos.

Gotta say this will be a weird one, Syrg. It's a dicey thing to talk about, hopefully we treat the subject matter with a respect that is completely lacking in the original product.Links:GBDNATE FAQ — A rundown of some of the goofier parts of the game's development.

Prepare for a game that's better than Mario Paint, if your metric for quality is "number of animal sounds available for music composition".Links:Fun'n Games (SNES Gameplay) - YouTubeFun 'n Games - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

From behind you, you hear a wheezing rasp. Before you can turn, you feel the rush of air. You know he's standing there, wagging both his finger and his hammer. As though to confirm the inevitable, you make the last movement you'll ever make. You wheel around. It's Kernel Kleanup. You've been deemed inpure. Oblivion awaits.Links:Pesterminator: The Western Exterminator - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaPesterminator by Color Dreams Nintendo NES Gameplay Part 1 - YouTube

It's an also-ran on the level of Sparkster and Bubsy, an attempt to cash in on the mascot craze with the ugliest hero imaginable. It's Aero, the Acrobatic Bat.

This raffle-winner episode about a terrible, outdated isometric collectathon comes with a SEVERE content warning for the last third of the episode... specifically for people who get squeamish about eye stuff.

The ultimate lesson of this tech-demo stretched to full game is "be yourself." Also, if any viscous substance crosses our doorstep, we'll immediately start talking about ejaculate.

Nick Glauber joins us this week to talk about a misguided Christian FPS that's so bad, it makes us physically ill and destroys our computers.Special Guest: Nick Glauber.

The only "rad" thing about this game is its name, but there might be something worthwhile here. Also, orbs. Orbs. Orbs.

It's a game that will make you physically ill, and ideologically queasy!

Thus begins a strange new fascination.

Of all the games to break the top 10% of things we've covered for the show, how in the world is "Boogerman" one of them?

It's our most upsetting episode opening to date!

Up Next: The Christian spinoff, Sonic Sinball.

An infamously bad redemption. Thanks for being with us for 150 episodes!

Evan Jones Thorne, you've been down too long in the midnight sea. Oh what's becoming of me. Ride the tiger, you can see his stripes but you know he's clean... Oh don't you see what I mean. Gotta get away... Evan Jones Thorne.Special Guest: Evan Jones Thorne.

The Forces of Evil are bolstered as Fruit Man joins their ranks, with his demonic possession meat puppet Dizzy and their plaything Nuts.

In the warmth of Derek's reign, we must still suffer through this inventive, sublime, but outdated wreck of a game.

Bump to the boom to the boom to the bass, bump to the Praise Derek!

Jeremy Greer joins us to talk about the least-inspired X-Men game since the NES one.Special Guest: Jeremy Greer.

Basic brawler leads to banter about 'bate'n.

Did they think we wouldn't notice? They take this incomprehensible Z-tier superhero and group him in with everyone's favorite rascally tycoon... Despicable. The first half of this episode is business as usual. After the music, we talk about Captain America: Civil War at length. The dividing line for spoilers is clearly marked.

Muddy Waters, get out of my foundry!

Superstar guest Jenni Polodna joins us to talk about new ways to open sardine cans, ASMR, and Wild Horse Rescue.Special Guest: Jenni Polodna.

More "K"s than a Mortal Kombat fan konvention. Also, another isometrik klusterfukk.

A love letter to falconry and harp.

A bold and unpredictable creative culmination.

Will Hughes of the AV Club joins us to talk about Christian Slater, and we spend a little time going on an incredibly mundane flight of fancy with a kid who came unprepared to school.Special Guest: Will Hughes.

To install the Haunting screensaver, just should "Polterguy!" three times.

At last we find it, a game that's not just underwhelming... but also actively evil.

Brayton Cameron joins us to talk about the fast-paced breakneck twitch action of Aerobiz, featuring a demo for Koei's new breakout strategy jam: Nobunga's Ambition.Special Guest: Brayton Cameron.

The Attic Stooge is like a hot tub or pool. Even if you don't use it yourself, you keep it around for the resale value.