Came here expecting tacky tie-in... Slightly ashamed to say that I really want this.

My second reaction to Angry Birds - right after "hey, this is Artillery with more amusing graphics" - was "hey, this is the virtual version of that game with the blocks, the toy soldiers, and the rubber bands that my dad played as a kid, and then taught to me when I was a kid."

I predict they will sell a lot of these playsets. Video is great but miniatures have a charm all their own.

Never be ashamed that you still like to have fun.

Coming soon: The Angry Birds Movie...

Close - it's actually a cartoon: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/18/angry-birds-cartoon...

They'll probably show a trailer right before the 'Asteroids' movie starts.

with the way they're selling stuff, it might make a great documentary.

I think maybe I should just set up a direct deposit between my bank account and rovio.

An interesting bubble, this Angry Birds phenomenon. And people seem to be starved to buy things, all the time.

The secret is the pricing. Back in the old days I spent more money in the first hour of my Magic: The Gathering habit than my wife and I have spent on Angry Birds. Of course, MtG required printing and shipping physical cards.

Still, even 0.99$ or whatever it costs is not nothing. I know people who have racked up several hundred EUR in App shopping. It adds up.

And people don't buy every game that is cheap.

It's a great model the game play itself was already a well-proven concept.

http://armorgames.com/play/3614/crush-the-castle There are dozens of these extremely popular flash trebuchet games.

I think Angry Birds nailed the promotional loop part -- the game play itself is really similar to existing popular games.

I know it's execution that matters, but it sort of disappoints me in an idealistic sense that Angry Birds got so widely accepted and liked when the concept isn't original; they just took another game and spiced it up a bit. Still a great achievement, but it makes me feel weird.

Dear internet: Any other notable i.e. good board game adaptations of video games?

http://boardgamegeek.com is probably the resource you want to look at for board games. You can probably find a list of boardgames for video games.

Yup, here it is, more than 200 of them: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamecategory/1101/video-game-t...

Very few of them are 'notable', as far as I know.

Well sometimes it's the other way around that's notable. See Spacehulk. Awesome board game and a pretty good video game as well

I've heard really good things about Star Craft. I haven't played it, but it seemed to do well in the reviews.

None that I know of, fingers crossed on a Greed Corp board game though.

These guys are printing money.