On March 22, Angry Birds Space, the fourth instalment in the franchise, will blast off to the International Space Station in conjunction with NASA.
But what happens when a Western game company with a seasonal title runs out of holidays? If you’re Finnish giant Rovio and the game in question is Angry Birds Seasons, you turn east.
Earlier this month, the spin-off to the top selling iOS game Angry Birds went all beautiful Japanese spring on us with a cherry blossom theme in the shadows of Mt. Fuji. The update has 15 new seasonal levels and two bonus levels, all capturing that ephemerally addictive trademark gameplay. It’s a timely homage to rebirth in a country undergoing the same.
The original game also went live this month on Facebook. And, the Angry Birds apps passed the 700 million download mark recently, having made their way onto just about every mobile platform there is from Android to RIM’s PlayBook.
Seasons is the second app in the series. It launched October 2010 in time for Halloween without the clickgamer.com (a Chillingo subsidiary) branding, It’s been a chart topper, too, along with last spring’s Rio, which was also a movie-tie deal in with Fox Entertainment.
Angry Birds has won myriad awards since it debuted on iPhone in December of 2009, and has sparked an entire industry of irate-cardinal branded products from iPhone cases to children’s toys, to baked goods. The game has been mentioned on just about every pop-culture and news TV show around the world and continues to draw legions of new fans.
The latest news is that iOS news magazine The Daily has launched a stand-alone special issue app dedicated to Angry Birds Space: The Daily’s Angry Birds Space Guide. There seems to be no limit to where these most unforgiving aviators will chase their swine nemeses. And they’ll keep on soaring for as long as Rovio keeps rolling out new levels, titles, platforms and product tie-ins.
