Angry Birds to get own theme parks: company

The Angry Birds are set fly from the virtual into the real world next year as the cartoonish birds from the popular smartphone game get their own theme parks, a playground company said Thursday.

"The idea is to to create a different concept for gaming by integrating the virtual and physical worlds ... so parents can spend more time with their kids," Finnish playground maker Lappset's managing director Juha Laakkonen told AFP.

Lappset and the developer of the game, Rovio, have agreed to build the first Angry Birds-themed play parks in Espoo, near Helsinki, and in the northern Finnish city of Rovaniemi, which are expected to be operational in April 2012.

But the goal is to bring the activity parks to other venues worldwide, Laakkonen explained.

"We are still in negotiations so we cannot disclose the specific cities, but they will be in America, Asia and Europe," he said.

Laakkonen said he was as yet unable to say how the two companies planned to recreate in the real world the mobile phone and tablet experience of catapulting whimsical birds into absurd fortresses built by little green pigs who have stolen the birds' eggs, saying only that "safety issues are important."

When Finnish game developer Rovio released Angry Birds in 2009 no one at the company expected the nonsensical game would become the most popular paid application for Apple's iPhone, with more than a half-billion downloads to date on various devices. (AFP)