Angry Birds: 10 Games That Didn't Make the Cut

Blockbuster game "Angry Birds"

I don't understand the game Angry Birds. I've never played it but virtually everybody I know does - I don't get it.

At its core, the game pelts suicidal birds at shoddily constructed buildings in the hopes that the structures will collapse on and kill green pigs that are inside.

Could you imagine the public outcry if any part of that scenario was actually true? As inhumanly cruel as it sounds, that's the premise that was approved, designed and marketed to wild success. I can only image the ideas that got rejected because they might be "too over-the-top" but here are the top-10 game ideas that might have been rejected by the game developers and marketers of Angry Birds:

10. Dentures and Colostomy Bags of Doom: set in a nursing home, this rollicking free-for-all had bed-ridden residents tossing boomerang dentures and exploding colostomy bags at haggard nurses and aides.


9. Miss Pac-Man PMS: this was a redesign on the classic Ms. Pac-Man, only this time she was enraged by the hormone wash that accompanied her "monthly friend."

8. Booger Ball: a flem-fueled, mucous-laden game that combined the best elements of kickball and snooty noses with little legs that ran the bases and slipped on the wacky sebaceous residue.


7. Cow Pie Eating Contest:  the traditional pie-eating contest took an audacious and kooky culinary turn for the worst - if you thought rapid pie eating was disgusting this game took it to a scatological level.

6. Kevorkian's Balloon Pop of Death: talk about a "killer app" this game sought to rejigger the carnival favorite combo of balloons and darts, swapping out the darts with lethally-dosed syringes - how fun is that.


5. Al-Qaeda Whack-a-Mole: while this game tested well among gaming focus groups, a series of email threats forwarded to the developers by Al-Jazeera quickly killed this concept.

4. IRS Bank Breaker: the developers really liked this idea that portrayed IRS agents as killer bank robbers, but it was abandoned once they received a battery of IRS audit inquiries.

3. Librarian Rampage: this idea was the runner-up behind Angry Birds, but due to the innate temperament and helpful nature of librarians the most extreme emotionally response that the game designers could create for librarians was "mildly-annoyed" - no rampage.

2. Congressmen Gone Wild: the sexcapades, inappropriate photos, sexting and general shenanigans of members of Congress held a lot of potential as a game - but focus groups consistently thought they were watching actual newscasts because of the believability of the game content.


1. Rabid Gerbil Tennis: this engaging game had championship tennis players whacking rabid gerbils at each other instead of tennis balls; however, development was stopped when the game designers received a cease-and-desist letter from Wilson tennis balls for failure to brand the gerbils as official "Wilson" gerbils.

What other gaming ideas might the developers of "Angry Birds" abandoned?