Rovio's Angry Birds franchise celebrates its 3rd birthday

December is a big month for many reasons. Obviously, it's the month that Christmas falls in, but it's also when Finnish developer Rovio launched its inaugural Angry Birds game, way back in 2009.

Yes, the now infamous Angry Birds franchise has just turned three years old. It seems like only yesterday we launched a peeved avian at a green piggy for the very first time.

How time flies. Rovio has gone from strength to strength over the past 36 months, and there are now five different Angry Birds titles and a pig-focused spin-off on the market.

Let's have a little look at each.

Angry Birds

The physics-puzzler that started it all. Angry Birds quickly catapulted into our iTunes libraries, into our hearts, and into the record books as it racked up ten million paid downloads in just ten months.

We gave Rovio's maiden release a shiny Silver Award at review.

Angry Birds Seasons

Bronze Award-winning Angry Birds Seasons debuted back in October 2010 as a small spin-off app called Angry Birds Halloween. A month later, Rovio introduced 25 Christmas-themed levels in a free update and renamed the app.

Since then, levels based on events such as St Patrick's Day, Valentine's Day, and Easter have all been added to the mix.

Angry Birds Rio

In January of last year, Rovio and Fox announced that a new Angry Birds title based on the latter's animated Rio movie would soon be available for smartphones and tablets.

Angry Birds Rio landed in the following March and was downloaded more than 10 million times in just ten days. It nabbed a Pocket Gamer Bronze Award along the way.

Angry Birds Space

Earlier this year, Rovio's miffed avians headed into space. Angry Birds Space was even more popular than its predecessor, and it skyrocketed to ten million paid downloads four days sooner than Rio did.

This made it the fastest-selling mobile game of all time.

Bad Piggies

After months of rumours pertaining to an Angry Birds title in which you took on the role of the green swine, Rovio released Bad Piggies.

Rovio turned the tables in this Silver Award-winning puzzler and finally allowed you to help those blasted piggies get their mitts on some lush eggs.

Angry Birds Star Wars

The latest - and possibly the greatest - entry in Rovio's feather-flinging franchise. Upon release, this Jedi-infused title topped Apple's App Store charts in just 2.5 hours.