New Angry Birds game blasts off March 22, will team with NASA

Angry Birds ... in ... spaaaaace!

On March 22, our furious red feathered friends are set to go to the moon and beyond in a new game called Angry Birds Space, according to Rovio, the Finnish company that created the Angry Birds empire.

“It’s one small fling for a bird, one quantum leap for birdkind,” the game maker says in an online launch teaser.

On its company’s blog, Rovio said Angry Birds Space will be an entirely new game, but regular players will still notice lots of familiar elements.

One thing that won’t be familiar? Zero-gravity conditions that players will have to contend with as the birds arrive on new planets.

There will also be slow-motion puzzles and “lightspeed” destruction, Andrew Stalbow, general manager of Rovio North America, told Yahoo News.

Stalbow also mentioned that National Geographic and NASA have signed on as launch partners.

“Science and education are very important to us, and we’re very excited to have NASA and National Geographic as launch partners on Angry Birds Space,” he said.

Unfortunately, the Yahoo story was short on details about the nature of the collaboration and neither Rovio nor NASA responded to a Los Angeles Times request for comment Monday morning.

One clue for what might have inspired the National Geographic connection: We stumbled on a July 2011 National Geographic story on the angriest birds in the world that was inspired by the popularity of the Angry Birds game.

The goshawk, “a large raptor with needle-sharp talons that breeds in northern regions,” is apparently the most viscous.

Rovio has been busily capitalizing on Angry Bird mania. The company launched a Facebook version of the game on Valentine’s Day 2012, and has plans to open Angry Birds Land, an Angry Birds theme park, in Finland this summer. An Angry Birds retail store opened in Finland in November.

The company plans to release Angry Birds Space in mobile gaming, animation, retail and publishing on the same day, and says it will divulge more details in early March.

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