Angry Birds (video game) was being played, the staff liked the characters, and the team elected to design a game around them. In early 2009, physics games, such as "Crush the Castle", were popular flash-based web games, so the Rovio team was inspired by these games. During the development of "Angry Birds", the staff realized the birds needed an enemy. At the time, the "swine flu" epidemic was in the news, so the staff made the birds' enemies pigs. Angry Birds was the studio's 52nd produced game and on its initial release, the game did not sell many copies. After Angry Birds was a
Angry Video Game Nerd was released in North America on April 2, 2015, and released in Europe on December 10, 2015. On June 4, 2015, a 3DS version became available for download in the Nintendo eShop. On July 17 of the same year, during ScrewAttack's annual SGC convention, Freakzone announced a sequel, "Angry Video Game Nerd II: ASSimilation", originally due for release in Winter 2015, but delayed to March 29, 2016. There have also been some unofficial, fanmade Angry Video Game Nerd games including "Angry Video Game Nerd's Angry Video Game", "Angry Video Game Nerd in Pixel Land Blast", "AVGN Game Over", "AVGN Game