First off, apologies for not posting our typical Wednesday night release megapost last week. To say we were "amazingly busy" covering two concurrent events would be an understatement. Regardless, we're back again this week combing through the New Zealand App Store for cool new releases. If you're new here, here's how this whole deal works: Developers can set specific release dates for their games/apps. The trick is, since the App Store is a global marketplace, those games/apps are released on that specific date in each region. Thanks to the modern-day wizardry that are time zones and New Zealand's proximity to the International Date Line, they get things first.

These games will slowly be available to everyone west of New Zealand slowly throughout the day before finally appearing in the US App Store at 11:00 PM Eastern. Here's an alphabetical list of things coming out tonight that seem worth checking out:

Celtic Heroes, Free � [Forum Thread] � This 3D MMO seems to have the kind of feature list you'd expect: Character customization, multiple classes, a quest system, and more, all for free. Sounds cool, right? What has us scratching our collective heads is its file size. Celtic Heroes weighs in at a svelte 23MB. Perhaps they're trying to keep the download size under the 25MB limit for 3G installs, and streaming the rest of the content and assets in-game. Either way, our interest is piqued.

A Long Way Home, $1.99 � [Forum Thread] � A puzzle game that seems to employ a similar mechanic as Dizzypad and other similar "jump from one circular object to another" style games. I'm digging the art style, and the premise of making your way back to Earth one light year at a time seems interesting.

Cell Bound, 99� � [Forum Thread] � This cellular matching game involves matching five colored orbs together in a play area that you can spin around to line up matches. Multiple game modes are included, as well as power-ups.

Ewe Doodle � Keep the Sheep Alive, 99� � [Forum Thread] � This avoidance game puts you in charge of keeping a sheep safe from its natural enemies: Dogs, bees, and um, duel wielding maniacs? On a personal note, I grew up in the midwest on a farm. We had sheep amongst other animals. I have to say, I don't recall any issues with dogs, bees, or blood-crazed killers. Times truly have changed, apparently. Perhaps global warming is to blame.

Flick Golf Extreme!, $2.99 � [Forum Thread] � Previously, playing a game of golf on the decks of aircraft carriers and on the roofs of skyscrapers were reserved for members of the US military and the financial elite. Not anymore! Thanks to the thoughtful folks at Full Fat, the rest of us proles can enjoy these high-end pleasures. Seriously though, Flick Golf! was great, and I expect this to be just as good if not better.

iQuarterback 2 Pocket Edition, Free � [Forum Thread - We had a great time with the iPad-specific version of iQuarterback 2 in our review. We got a look at the iPhone version at WWDC, and it's just as much fun. If you like football, don't miss this fun and free pigskin-tossing mini-game.

Monkey Island Tales 2 HD, $6.99 - [Forum Thread] � Continuing where Monkey Island Tales 1 HD [$6.99] left off, the second installment delves deeper into this adventure which involves Guybrush, LeChuck, and all the other Monkey Island favorites. Like most episodic games, it's probably a good idea to play the first one before jumping into the second.

Mower Ride, 99� � [Forum Thread] � Alright, I'm stoked for this one. Vivid Games seems to have applied the "see how far you can go" gameplay style of jumping games, but transformed to a top-down vertical racer where you ride a lawn mower. Perfect!

Peter Packer, 99� / HD � [Forum Thread] � Judging by the trailer, this sorting game gets hectic fast. Bonuses are earned by sorting multiple boxes at once using multi-touch. I've never really enjoyed these kind of games, but I could see the simple premise being perfect for kids.

While out at WWDC 2011, I sat down with Limbic Software and Hidden Elephant to have a look at an upcoming game developed in conjunction with Digital Cavemen. Zombie Gunship is, I believe, the most promising title of the aerial zombie shooter genre. Ok, and maybe also the only member of that genre. But, I'm happy it will soon be out there, because sniping zombies from on high is a pretty sweet experience.

The game puts you in control of the turrets of a Lockheed AC-130 heavily-armored ground attack gunship. But, it's not merely enemy troops you're trying to wipe out. It's zombies. Hordes of zombies. And gigantic, hard-to-kill boss zombies. (It's grizzly.)

Your mission is to defend an allied army bunker at Cheyenne Mountain from the encroaching armies of the dead while, at the same time, keeping the unholy beasts from ravenously consuming a number of scattered and highly unfortunate ground troops caught outside said bunker � all from the belly of a soaring death machine. You have several types of ordnance with which to rain destruction upon the zombies, and the ability to zoom in for a surgical shot that can save a troop from an in-progress zombie attack.

It's an endless experience � the zombies just won't stop. The longer you fend off the horde, the higher your score. But, eventually, a zombie is going to get into the bunker or you'll inadvertently kill more than two humans with your fire, and that's when the story ends.

Zombie Gunship features Game Center integration, and an update to come will bring more types of zombies, more weapons, and more locales. Limbic recently partnered with a new art studio and a new sounds team that was responsible for the Gears of War audio effects. Zombie Gunship showcases these new talents nicely. The game should be available for download within the next two weeks. Price has not been announced.

I wanted to share a related anecdote that underscores the value of WWDC to iOS and Mac OS X developers everywhere. On my first night at WWDC Arash Keshmirian, CEO of Limbic, gave me a quick demo of the game, which definitely piqued my interest. Our actual sit-down with the AC-130 crew took place late in the week, on Thursday. Between my first glimpse of the game and our scheduled meeting, the developers were able to implement code optimizations with help from Apple engineers that allowed for three times as many zombies to wander the battlefield as before. And this is just one of many such WWDC success stories I've heard from developers we're close to. A valuable week, indeed.

While we were gathered, we also spent some time with Nuts! [App Store], Limbic's new climb-and-dodge title that launched on May 23rd and jumped high in the paid rankings shortly thereafter. The game challenges you, a squirrel, to make it as high as possible up a frustratingly branchy tree in an effort to gain ranking on the leaderboards. There are several different tree environments or stats (normal, icy, ashy, etc.). It's a fun little title that kept me well entertained on the late-night flight back home.

A Nuts! update coming this month will bring additional story and characters, with more environments coming later.

Bit Pilot [$.99] chose a bad time to be released on the App Store. The retro-influenced dodging game hit a week after One Man Left's Tilt to Live [$2.99 / Lite / HD] graced the platform, drowning out the much of acclaim it would have garnered otherwise. Perhaps the update that just hit this morning will give Bit Pilot some fresh legs and some new eyes, as it adds a lot of new components to the core game, as well as some fresh tweaks.

Bit Pilot 2.0 adds a total of three new tracks as well as two new modes: Tunnels and Super Massive Mode, respectively. The latter has you gathering power-ups and getting larger in the process, while the former has you dodging massive, creeping space rocks.

The patch also adds new taunts, friends list rankings, Game Center support, cumulative score tracking for his stat pleasure, and most importantly, universal support for the iPad and the retina display.

If you're more interesting in tackling a game like Bit Pilot with a mouse, or hey, even a Magic Track Pad, game creator Zach Gage will have your back. The game will soon launch on the Mac App Store alongside a demo version that gives you pretty much the full release. We'll grab those links respectively when the application goes live. It's expected to later today.

File this into the fun facts part of your brain: provided that a couple of dudes have bought the game within the last 20 hours, it's safe to say that Angry Birds [$.99 / Free / Lite / HD / HD Free] has been downloaded over 250 million times across its various platforms. That's a lot � like "almost the total population of the entire United States" kind of a lot.

Word of this came to Tech Crunch straight from Rovio Mobile founder Peter Vestebacka, who also mentioned to the publication that the studio is working on a game called Wine and Dine, as well as a title called Angry Birds Magic.

The latter is the more fleshed out of the two. Magic is a location-based game that unlocks levels or Angry Birds 'experiences' based on where you are. Plans are also in the works to have it interact with Angry Birds toys stuffed with computer chips.

Details are still really light on this project, but it does kinda sound more like a vehicle for Rovio to sell more Angry Birds stuff than a game We'll see.

Just a little remarkable note here to close this out: just a month ago, Rovio announced that Angry Birds had hit the 200 million download mark. That means, within the last 30 or so days, the title has received 50 million downloads.

Granted, most were probably free downloads, but that's still a lot of people to reach in such a short span of time. What's the secret here?

[Via Tech Crunch]

Defiant and Chillingo's Rocket Bunnies [$0.99 / HD] tells us of a future where bunnies have spread throughout the universe, and one rabbit, armed with only a rocket, must fight the forces of oppression to bring food to the hungry masses on each planet and asteroid. Or something like that, anyhow. Story isn't really a big thing in this game.

What we get instead is plenty of gravity-based planet hopping. Each level is filled with planets and asteroids, as well as obstacles�orbiting mines, rotating electrical fields, homing robotic spiders and the like. You, as the titular rocket bunny, orbit around a planet until you tap another one nearby. This launches you toward that planet as soon as you're lined up with it, and with careful timing you won't succumb to the various enemies and obstacles in your path�you might even get them to blow each other up. Hungry bunnies are spread between the planets, and your goal is to get to each of them alive.

Gravity-based physics games are already well-represented on the App Store, but Rocket Bunnies does things a little differently. You might start out treating it like a puzzle game, plotting each move carefully, but that isn't going to work for long. As you make your way through the game's 60 levels, you'll quickly learn that hesitation is death. Sit on a planet too long and a spider will come to destroy you. Fling yourself away from an asteroid at anything but the right moment and you'll smack headfirst into a web or a mine. There are no second chances. Mess up once and you'll be starting the level over again.

The fear of failure isn't the only thing that will keep you moving. In order to unlock all of Rocket Bunnies' levels, you need to earn higher and higher totals of stars. Each level has three stars to earn, but you don't collect them through clever platforming or puzzle solving, you earn them with speed. Muddling through at a steady pace will generally give you only one star, and you won't be able to unlock all the levels with performance like that. I'd like to see completion time leaderboards in a future update, since so much of the game revolves around shaving seconds of your time.

When I wasn't rocketing through each level at maximum speed, I didn't find Rocket Bunnies all that much fun. Avoiding all the obstacles while feeding the bunnies is challenging, but sort of bland. The game got a lot more interesting once I realized the stakes behind my level completion times. I needed to both react quickly and time my jumps carefully to get boosts (a reward for perfect timing) and to avoid dying.

While you're working on earning those three-star completion times, you can gather the 32 Crystal/Game Center achievements. Most of them require creative space acrobatics, with a couple that require grinding and completionism. Intrepid explorers will also be rewarded with a collection of hats that are hidden in a few of the levels, allowing you to dress your bunny in a sombrero or a trucker's cap if you're so inclined.

Despite all of that, Rocket Bunnies never completely grabbed me. It's a solid, even game that's good across the board that is never quite great. If you're looking for a new physics platformer, you certainly won't go wrong grabbing this one. It's not quite a universe of entertainment, but it's a galaxy or two for sure.

About a week or so ago, Noodlecake Games was in our forums talking up the latest update for Super Stickman Golf [99�], the golf-themed physics game with the phenomenal online multiplayer mode that has become an underground sensation. In a post discussing update 1.6 for Super Stickman Golf, they happened to mention that they have been fiddling around with a new game concept lately, and posted a few screens of what they're currently calling Lunar Racing.

There really isn't much known about Lunar Racing at the moment, but you can gather a few nuggets from the screens themselves. It appears to be a 2D side-scrolling racing game, and prominently features a multiplayer mode on the title screen. If there's one thing I've come to learn, it's that Noodlecake Games can create an incredibly fun multiplayer experience, so just the inclusion of a multiplayer mode is reason for me to get excited.

There also seems to be an element of car customization and even some sort of trick system that rewards you for things like flipping your vehicle. This is total speculation on my part, but I imagine the physics and gameplay being similar to So Long, Oregon! [$1.99] but with competitive multiplayer, which sounds completely awesome to me. We'll prod Noodlecake Games for more info on what exactly the deal is with Lunar Racing, and bring you any more information on the title as we get it.