For Angry Birds aficionados, there’s some good and some bad news.
The good: You’ll soon have a new opportunity to fling our feathered friends at piles of smirking pigs courtesy a new edition of the game dubbed “Angry Birds Magic.”
And the bad: It’s only available for Nokia’s C7 Smartphone, which employs near field communication technology.
Ready for the twist? C7 owners can’t unlock all of the 20 levels on their own.
According to the Nokia blog:
Five of the levels are as normal. But at that point you need to find a friend with an NFC-enabled phone, as the remaining levels are inter-spliced with ones that can only be unlocked when you touch phones with someone else. Finding one friend will unlock five more levels. A second friend will unlock another five, and a third the remaining five.
But since there’s only a handful of phones that incorporate the technology – which allows contactless data collection between devices – how will you find someone else with a C7 to help you exact revenge on the pigs?
Nokia has a solution, of course: a second way to unlock levels is tapping the phone against NFC tags, which could be placed in various locations. But hold on tight before you start searching. The company said, “We understand clues as to their locations will be forthcoming.” Is that a marketing ploy? Probably.
The Magic edition will come preinstalled on the Nokia C7 as part of the Symbian Anna update and will also be included on all Nokia NFC-enabled devices in 2011.
Even hardcore Angry Birds wonks may find switching phones to get their fingers on the new version distasteful, but props to developer Rovio for adding another dimension to the game.
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