Rovio Celebrates Release of Angry Birds Space in Tokyo

At a press conference in Tokyo today, Rovio held a small event to mark the release of Angry Birds Space.

I got to try out the game a little bit this afternoon, just before its global release. What’s cool about the game is that in order for the bird you fire to drop, you need enter the planet’s gravity field. If not, the bird you fire will just keep flying indefinitely. Thankfully Rovio has added some red trajectory lines to help players out.

The game features a number of new characters with new abilities, including the new Ice Cube bird, a purple Lazer bird, and the green bird Terrence which has been apparently upgraded to Incredible Terrence (I’m not sure what that means). Apparently we’ll know all the names of the birds when the comic is released later.

From an educational point of view, the game looks pretty neato. It’s a good way for kids to learn about how gravity works – without having to give them bullets to fire at the horizon. If you need a better explanation, NASA recently put up a video online that discussed this as well.

Angry Birds has also collaborated with National Geographic on an official companion book for Angry Birds Space. It explains all kinds of information about the planets, stars, comets, and all kinds of other things in other space.

We should also clarify that while this may be the first time that birds have been reported in outer space, it is actually not the first time for pigs.

Rovio was showing off some fun Angry Birds Space merchandise as well, and one of their representatives also had some fancy space glasses. The game will become available for download at 5pm Japan standard time (right about now), so be sure to check it out for yourself.

Update: We have some more photos from today’s event over on our Facebook page, thanks to Derek A. (aka @imorpheus).