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'Ugly' is a stunning short built on glitch-riddled simulations
Ugly is a film built on beautiful contradictions. The characters have odd, blocky proportions and stumble around like a group of drunk boxers. The town, too, is comprised of weirdly angular cars, buildings, bicycles and trash bags. There's a consistency to the art style, though, that resembles origami and the papercraft video game Tearaway. And the lighting, a stunning mixture of pastel pinks and blues, gives every frame a warm, inviting sheen. It's an unusual, attention-grabbing blend that feels both charming and unsettling at the same time.
The crowdfunded ‘ToeJam and Earl’ sequel is finally coming this fall
Toejam & Earl was a bizarre, funky and novel Sega Genesis roguelike game released in 1991. And despite a pair of lukewarm sequels, the original creators raised over $500,000 on a successful Kickstarter in 2015 for a fourth game. After several delays past a planned 2017 launch, the team at HumaNature Studios has announced that Toejam & Earl: Back in the Groove will come to PC and consoles in the fall.
Find 'Rick and Morty' rants with a quote search engine
Rick and Morty is chock-full of quotable moments, so it would only make sense that someone would eventually find a way search every single word, wouldn't it? Sure enough, it's here. The creators of the Simpsons and Futurama search tools (Paul Kehrer, Sean Schulte and Allie Young) have trotted out Master of All Science, a web engine that lets you find any Rick and Morty line and create a meme or animated GIF to match. If you want to share the existential despair of a butter robot or understand why the entire series revolves around Mulan, you just have to punch in the right keywords.
'Virtual Rick-ality' is a VR treat for 'Rick and Morty' fans
Rick and Morty is one of the funniest shows on television -- and it's also one of the weirdest. Co-created by Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon (Community), the series is like a demented spin on the Doc Brown/Marty McFly relationship from Back to the Future. Rick Sanchez is a dimension-hopping alcoholic genius who's the grandfather to Morty, a nebbish kid who's always in over his head. Comedy! While I was initially worried that the show's first VR experience, Virtual Rick-ality, might not live up to the series' wildly inventive attitude, it didn't waste much time proving me wrong.
Adult Swim's latest game embraces cassette glitches
Does something look slightly off with picture you see above? Don't worry, that's on purpose. Adult Swim Games and Fire Face are launching the surreal puzzler Small Radios Big Televisions on November 8th for PC and PS4, and its hook is a time-traveling cassette deck that lets you "reconstruct the past" of abandoned factories through tapes. Only here, reality is just as fragile as the tapes in question -- expect plenty of distortion, discoloration and other glitches that could play havoc with your head. Complete them and you'll find retrowave tunes from Owen Deery (also available on Bandcamp) as a reward. Given Adult Swim's solid track record with releasing off-kilter titles like Headlander and Westerado, it could be worth a try just to see how well this analog-meets-digital premise turns out.
Adult Swim streams 'Space Ghost' episodes for free
Over the weekend, one of the people behind Adult Swim's Space Ghost Coast to Coast cartoon passed away, and the network has decided to honor his memory by making episodes of the show available for free. C. Martin Croker voiced two characters on the show, Zorak and Moltar, as well as serving as an animator on the show and other projects. Like many shows of its era, viewing the old episodes is difficult since the DVD releases are now out of print. Adult Swim says it has posted every episode "that we could get our hands on," and you can watch them here with no log-in required.
Brad Neely's weird Adult Swim cartoon premieres on Vine
Adult Swim is consistently debuting new shows season after season, but usually not on Vine, right? That's why the fact that China, IL creator Brad Neely's Harg Nallin Sclopio Peepio is available on the network is such an interesting change. Neely's upcoming comedy show can be found via one six-second clip that looks like any other Vine at first, but when you click on it a full version of the 10-minute episode is available (all thanks to the service's new rules for "select publishers.")
'Pokémon' meets 'Rick and Morty' in an Adult Swim mobile game
The news arrived quietly in a Tweet -- there's a new, free mobile game coming from Adult Swim. But this isn't just any game. It's a Rick and Morty adventure game that appears to be styled after Pokémon. Yes, this could be fairly incredible for fans of outlandish, time-bending, raunchy, animated comedy. Pocket Mortys (not Pocket Monsters) is due to hit iOS and Android on January 14th.
'Rick and Morty' Instagram game is an interstellar treasure hunt
Adult Swim has added one more weird experience to its warehouse of silly yet generally entertaining video games based on its television shows: Rick and Morty Rickstaverse, a hidden-object game that takes place entirely on Instagram. This is a true point-and-click game -- In Ricktaverse, players click on photos of the literal Rick and Morty universe (the starting point is in space with a naked Santa) and tap the tags that pop up on each photo to be transported to a new area. There are secrets, collectibles and mini-games to find, each played out by tapping photos on Instagram. Find and follow the accounts of five Garblovian Bootleggers, for example, and they may post exclusive Rick and Morty clips in the future. Welcome to the golden age of user-driven advertising.
Adult Swim makes virtual reality even weirder
Virtual reality's notion of strapping a display to your head is already a bit weird by itself, but Adult Swim just took that strangeness to a new level. The network's Virtual Brainload app for Android invites you to grab a Google Cardboard viewer and experience the "backside of reality" -- in short, it's going to be a kaleidoscopic mind trip. Whether or not you're up for the audiovisual assault, you can expect more VR content from Adult Swim's parent, Turner, in the future. The broadcaster says that it's working on "deeper, custom-created" virtual content that will arrive as soon as this year, so you can expect these VR side projects to become increasingly important in the near future.
Hulu's Turner deal gives it Adventure Time, Venture Bros. and more
Hulu is about to be your go-to destination to catch up on the adventures of the Venture Bros. and Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The streaming service announced a deal with Turner Broadcasting that adds Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, TBS and TNT titles to its library on May 1. The animation-heavy agreement brings Adventure Time, Dexter's Laboratory, Robot Chicken, Black Jesus, NTSF:SD:SUV and other shows from Cartoon Network. TNT dramas The Last Ship and Murder in the First will eventually be followed by additional shows from TNT and TBS. Kid-friendly Cartoon Network shows will be available ad-free in the Hulu Kids section. The service recently secured ratings juggernaut CSI and animated series South Park to help it compete against Netflix and Amazon Instant Video.
Here's why 'Too Many Cooks' is tailor-made for the internet
By now, there's a good chance that you've seen or heard about Adult Swim's Too Many Cooks -- an epic, warped internet video that sends up the overly tidy world of '80s and '90s sitcoms. But just why did this video manage to click with so many people? If you ask PBS, it's because the 11-minute clip speaks directly to the heart of online culture. The internet is fond of absurdist humor that highlights the apparently meaningless, repetitive nature of life, PBS argues; Too Many Cooks plays on that love of the ludicrous by dismantling a formulaic, "perfect" TV universe where everything has meaning.
Adult Swim cartoon jumps from cable to Instagram in 15-second chunks
So, let's say you want to watch an episode of Adult Swim's "Rick and Morty" but you don't have cable and the only thing you have on you is your smartphone. Well, luckily for you, you're able to watch the latest episode of the show entirely on Instagram. That's right, in a stunt by Cartoon Network's adult-oriented spin-off, the most recent 22-minute episode of "Rick and Morty" has been cut down into 109 15-second chunks and uploaded to the image-sharing service for all to see. The clips were posted in reverse chronological order, so you had to wait until early Friday morning to watch it in its entirety. It's not clear whether this is a one-time experiment or a preview of the network's plan for 15-second shows, but we're just glad they didn't decide to go with Vine -- that would've resulted in 220 6-second clips. You can watch the first 15-second Instagram clip of the episode after the break.
Daily iPad App: Amateur Surgeon 3 is pretty bloody good
Would you believe that after releasing two totally obnoxious, over-the-top Amateur Surgeon games, Adult Swim's newly released Amateur Surgeon 3 is a tasteful, realistic look at the medical practice? No? Ok, good -- because it's really, really not -- but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Amateur Surgeon 3 lets you poke around inside the bodies of a whole cast of characters and creatures, each with their own medical ailment. Using the touchscreen, you'll need to cut out organs, yank broken bits of glass and other objects from within bodies and of course sew up wounds and clean up your work at the end. But this is an Adult Swim game, so there's absolutely nothing realistic about this experience whatsoever. You often cut up your patients with a pizza cutter, cauterize wounds by burning them with a Bic lighter and can use special "tag team" powers -- like bringing your dog into the operation so he can lick the patient's wound -- to help you complete your overall goal of saving the life of your patient (or was it victim?). Everything from your "medical" tools to the organs on which you are operating are rendered in an overly cartoony fashion, which is a good thing since the visuals would look pretty gruesome if they attempted to appear realistic. Still, the app carries warnings for profanity, nudity, violence and horror, so it's probably not a good recommendation for especially young app lovers. Unlike Amateur Surgeon 2, this third iteration is free to download (though that may change later). Of course, you'll still have plenty of opportunities to shell out cash towards the developers via the in-app purchase options which allow you to buy everything from in-game currency to "blood packs" which are required in order to retry failed missions. If you're not too squeamish and don't mind dropping a few bucks in the event that you fail a few times in a row, Amateur Surgeon 3 is a fine choice. Or, you know, you could just find a giant bear and attempt to operate on it using random kitchen utensils. Same thing.
Daily iPhone App: Robot Unicorn Attack 2 turns Adult Swim's biggest hit freemium
Adult Swim has built up a nice stable of games on the App Store, and the biggest workhorse in it is Robot Unicorn Attack, a Flash game that's an endless runner where you play as the titular creature dashing and jumping to '80s music playing in the background. That game's been very successful, but due to the music licensing, Adult Swim's never been able to turn it freemium, which is a business model that potentially offers a bigger audience (and more profits). Robot Unicorn Attack 2, however, is built freemium from the ground up. It's free to download, and the game earns you a currency which you can spend on powering up your unicorn, customizing it with various extra items, buying boosts to help your score and so on. The music has changed to something a little more easily licensed, though you can still buy a number of real licensed songs (Corey Hart!) via in-app purchase. And while there's not multiplayer per se, there are also daily and weekly challenges, designed to get you to beat your own high score, or fight for your faction in a larger competition. The game itself hasn't changed much, though the boosts and the upgrades do pack a pretty solid punch (you can add plenty of extra jumps to your unicorn's repertoire, and even fly once you've reached full speed). Developer PikPok (best known for their great Monsters Ate My Condo games) has done an excellent job here riffing on the original title, while still keeping Adult Swim's freemium requirements in place. Robot Unicorn Attack 2 is definitely worth a download -- the freemium elements aren't always successful, but this is a solid update on Adult Swim's most charming game.
Daily iPhone App: Super Monsters Ate My Condo makes a great game even better
Monsters Ate My Condo, developed by PikPok and published by Adult Swim, has been one of my favorite games this year so far. It's a frenetic puzzle game that has you tossing apartment blocks into the various hungry mouths of gigantic monsters, trying to stack up the right colors and earn points all over a very weird, but wild, aesthetic. And yesterday, Adult Swim surprised us with a re-release of the game, this time called Super Monsters Ate My Condo. The Super version leaves the basic core gameplay intact, but while the original version has an "endless mode" included, this one sticks with only the timed mode, and instead builds a more addictive progression backend on to the game. Now, you earn coins by playing and scoring, and those coins can go back into "boosts," which help your multiplier and your bonuses, or hats for the monsters, which help you with each different bonus as well. Obviously, these coins can also be purchased with real money, which might make you guess that this is just a freemium money grab. And while that could be true, it actually works without extra in-app purchases: The progression system (along with a Jetpack Joyride-style goals system and a wheel of prizes at the end of each round) actually make the game a little more grounded and interesting to play. You'll want to keep the first copy of the game on your phone for that endless mode, but Super Monsters Ate My Condo does add a whole new dimension of addictiveness to what was already a great game. It's available on the App Store now for just $0.99.
Daily iPhone App: Velocirapture has you saving and smiting dinos
Velocirapture is a weird one. You play as God, either smiting or saving a series of faithful or evil dinosaurs. Yup, it's weird. It's brought to you by the same developers who made the really terrific (and similarly strange) Monsters Ate My Condo, so if you liked that kind of swipey puzzle/action, you'll probably like this one, too. I didn't think it was quite as simple or as polished as that game, however, but maybe you'll disagree. As the dinosaurs wander around, your job is to swipe the righteous ones Heaven and to swipe down the bad ones, smiting them into nonexistence. The action gets fast and crazy quickly, and unlike Monsters Ate My Condo, there's a bit of a metagame, as you can level up your skills and combos as you go, adding a little more depth into how you can play it. Quite a few of the iTunes comments on the game talk about crashes, but if you're running the latest iOS, I don't believe you'll have a problem. Velocirapture is available as a universal app for US$1.99. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
Adult Swim looks to release one mobile game a month
Jeff Olsen of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim division did a quick interview with our fellow bloggers at Joystiq, and he says that in addition to the Android launches the company is doing this week, they are expecting to "get to the point where we can release a new mobile game a month." That would create quite a library of Adult Swim titles. The company has already seen a fair amount of success with its current setup of iOS titles, including the very popular Robot Unicorn Attack. Olsen says the idea is to keep working on Flash games that are promoted through the TV channel, and then take the best of those to iOS to profit. There's no word on how much money these games are making for the channel (it must still pale in comparison to their actual advertising dollars), but if nothing else, they're likely offering some good brand awareness for their cable programming.
Adult Swim releases free universal app with full episodes in the app
Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming division has been surprisingly Mac-friendly -- not only has it produced a number of great iOS games already, but its shows have included a number of Mac references as well (always in the service of comedy, of course). I guess it's no surprise that Adult Swim released a universal app of its own. Like many television apps, there are some extras, including a schedule of shows, and clock, weather and calendar features. But the real draw here is that you can watch full episodes of Adult Swim shows in the app, from Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job to Family Guy (reruns), Aqua Teen Hunger Force and, one of my favorites, The Venture Brothers. And the best part is that the app is completely and totally free. If you're an Adult Swim fan at all, you'll definitely want to go get it off of the App Store right now. Great to see such a solid strategy from these guys on iOS -- I guess they definitely know where their audience is.
Steve Jobs kills off the CD on Adult Swim's Robot Chicken
It's no secret that Steve Jobs isn't a fan of the physical CD, preferring, of course, that his customers buy their music in his iTunes store. But what length is he willing to go to get rid of the CD for good? On the latest episode of Seth Green's grossly satirical stop-motion show Robot Chicken we found out, as a Steve Jobs parody became a target for both Compact Disc Man and Zune Man. The "superheroes" tried to do Jobs in, but he succeeded in killing the CD off in a hail of gunfire. Zune Man, however, was allowed to live, with Jobs stating that he "wouldn't waste the bullets." Touche. Click Read More below to check out the clip for yourself.