Fans of Adult Swim’s raunchy, absurdist cartoon Rick and Morty may have a long wait ahead before its third season, but the newly announced mobile game from the network’s in-house gaming studio is sure to help tide them over. Pocket Mortys is a Pokémon-inspired game, coming to iOS and Android on January 14. Adult Swim Games announced the release with a tweet that features a GIF that should look immediately familiar to fans of Game Freak’s genre-defining monster collecting/battling franchise. (via Polygon)
Pocket Mortys. Mobile. January 14th. pic.twitter.com/tXAU07lzbR
— [adult swim] games (@adultswimgames) January 5, 2016
Senior producer Chris Johnston subsequently confirmed via Twitter that the game would be a free download, but assuring fans that it would be a more substantial offering than previous Rick and Morty mobile titles, like the “balloon-popping simulator” Rick and Morty: Jerry’s Game.
Rick and Morty follows the exploits of Rick Sanchez, a crude, selfish, alcoholic mad scientist, and his meek grandson Morty, and their adventures through time and space. Given the show’s frequent dalliances with parallel universes and all sorts of sci-fi shenanigans, the game’s apparent premise of collecting various Mortys and making them fight one another is hardly a stretch.
The series has received wide critical acclaim, riding a wave of fantastic cartoons that have garnered large, adult audiences, like Adventure Time, Steven Universe, and Gravity Falls. It is the brainchild of co-creators Dan Harmon (creator of Community) and Justin Roiland (the Earl of Lemongrab on Adventure Time and creator of the notorious web series House of Cosbys). Roiland voices both Rick and Morty. Harmon will also provide voiceover for the game, according to Adult Swim Product Market Manager Sean Baptiste.
Rick and Morty‘s second season reached its surprisingly heartfelt and gut-wrenching conclusion this past fall. Although a third season of the wildly popular show has been confirmed, there is no word yet on a premiere date. Given that there was a whole year between the end of the first season and the start of the second, and that a character in the show named Mr. Poopybutthole explicitly said that the third season wouldn’t start for another year and a half, 2017 seems likely. Until then we’ll just have to bide our time by catching all the Mortys.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.