Earlier this month, some Rovio employees talked about the new location-based features that were coming to Angry Birds, letting unlock extras by visiting so-called Magic Places. The first implementation of Magic Places has just kicked off, giving us a chance to see how the feature actually works.

If you visit a Barnes & Noble retail store with your Nook Color in tow, you’ll have free access to the Mighty Eagle character. Apparently this system isn’t GPS-based, as we first thought (so good luck spoofing it), but is triggered when your Android connects to B&N’s internal WiFi network. Once the app senses the connection, it will unlock the Mighty Eagle while you’re on the network. We don’t know if this will be the case for future Magic Places, but in this case, unlocked content goes away when you leave the defined zone.

On the plus side, what you do when you have that free Mighty Eagle to use stays after disconnecting from B&N’s network (ie, the levels you’ve cleared it with remain cleared). It’s just unfortunate right now that only Angry Birds on the Nook Color works for Magic Places; presumably, other Androids and smartphones will be able to join in on the fun in the future, but we’re starting to get an unsettling fragmentation vibe from all the various versions of Angry Birds floating around, now with different behavior on different hardware.

Don’t forget that Angry Birds for Windows Phone 7 is set to finally arrive tomorrow!

Source: Android Guys