newjerseynewsroom.com

BY BOB HOLT

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

About two years ago, 30-year old Finnish video games designer Jaakko Iisalo began sketching a flock of fat, round birds with big yellow beaks, thick eyebrows and somewhat crazed expressions on their faces. They also had no legs, which must have made them angry.

And somewhat of a phenomenon.

If that isn’t enough, according to electronictheatre.co.uk, a new free online version of Angry Birds has now been released, which is playable in an Internet browser.

For the uninitiated, Angry Birds is a simple game where the objective is to fire birds from a catapult into a structure made of pillars and blocks, aiming to remove pigs from inside. Players can target the pigs directly with their birds or aim to make pillars fall on them, resulting in a higher score.

Angry Birds was designed to play in Google’s Chrome. This new version of Angry Birds is available to play now at http://chrome.angrybirds.com/. Angry Birds will play direct in the browser without any installation or update requirements.

The Guinness Book of World Records says the iPhone 4, the Apple app store, and Angry Birds have all broken world records.

Guinness has listed the iPhone4 as the fastest selling portable gaming system, with first day sales on June 24, 2010 of 1.5 million. The PSP sold 200,000 when it launched in 2005, and the Nintendo DS moved 500,000 consoles back in 2004.

Holding the Guinness record for the most popular application marketplace is Apple’s app store. In under three years, app downloads have gone past 6.5 billion. The app store was offering 259,470 apps for purchase or free download by September of last year.

Apple’s app store also made the record book for largest downloadable video game store, with 37,362 games being available as of last September.