It's been sort of a strange week for new iOS releases. First off, several developers opted to release their games earlier in the week than usual in order to coincide with the release of the shiny new iOS 5 software update. Second, TouchArcade's trusted Captain Hodapp is off gallivanting around at GDC Online in Austin, so was a little too tied up to bust out the usual midweek roundup of Wednesday new releases. Thus, the burden has fallen upon yours truly, The Bearded Night Watchman of TouchArcade, to put together a list of what has come out today.

But hey, this post coming later than normal has a nice side effect � if there's a game on here you weren't expecting, then it's already out right now, and you don't have to suffer in anticipation as you wait for it to filter through the various international markets and hit your own local App Store. Ok, enough blabbering, on to the releases, and we should be back with your regularly scheduled Wednesday release post next week.

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Espgaluda II HD, $10.99 � Lite � Forum Thread � CAVE has made quite a few fans by bringing their bullet hell shooters to the iOS platform in excellent fashion, but many people have been clamoring for native iPad versions of their games. Today that finally happens with Espgaluda II HD. One interesting twist to this release is that you can actually buy each of the two modes from the full game as their own separate apps with Espgaluda II HD Arcade Version, $6.99 and Espgaluda II HD Smartphone Version, $6.99. Kind of a cool idea if you're interested in some CAVE shootery goodness but aren't interested in the full package. Just keep in mind, if you pick up any of these games, you're going to need an iPad 2 to play them.

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Galaxy on Fire 2 HD, $9.99 (Universal) � Forum Thread � Fishlabs' epic scifi space shooter, now with insane visuals tailored specifically for the increased horsepower of the iPad 2 and the iPhone 4S, either of which are necessary to run the game. Content-wise you're essentially getting the same game as the regular Galaxy on Fire 2 which launched just about a year ago, but with all sorts of technical enhancements like completely rebuilt ship models, increased texture resolutions, additional lighting and shader effects, and tons more. This just might be the most advanced game visually on the iOS platform to date, and it sure doesn't hurt that it's also one of the deepest, most satisfying gameplay experiences either.

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Steambirds: Survival, Free � HD � Forum Thread � After jumping the gun and accidentally releasing the iPad version earlier this week, and then quickly having to pull it from the App Store, today marks the official release date of Steambirds: Survival and both the iPhone/iPod touch and iPad versions are all once again available for sale. Steambirds: Survival takes everything about the original Flash version of Steambirds (which was also ported to iOS last year) and cranks it up to 11. There's now a more meaty campaign structure, survival levels, plane power-ups, and more. Plus, the wonderful turn-based mechanics of the game would make for a perfect fit with the new asynchronous multiplayer options in Game Center, which the developer hopes to implement in the near future.

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Pocket BMX, 99� � Forum Thread � I've been excited for this little title since we first caught wind of it back in early September. I'm a pretty big fan of the Stickman Skater and Stickman BMX games, with their simplified 2D side-scrolling take on those "extreme" sports. Pocket BMX looks to take that basic concept to the next level, offering much more control over your character as well as the ability to string together a bunch of tricks into a combo, highly reminiscent of the old Tony Hawk Pro Skater games. The one question mark I have is about the controls, but if those are solid enough then this should be a winner.

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Advena, 99� � Forum Thread � Gamevil's latest action RPG title. The big features of this one are the ability to play with up to 5 party members and switch between them on the fly, as well as the ability to pick from multiple character classes. I've pretty much had my fill of these hack 'n slash-heavy side scrolling RPGs, as they usually end up being quite repetitive, but so far the impressions in our forums are quite good, and you can't really beat the price if you're looking to get your action RPG fix.

Descend RPG, $3.99 � Forum Thread � Harkening back to the days of old-school, turn based, first person, grid based dungeon crawling RPGs of yesteryear, Descend RPG attempts to keep the classic gameplay intact while bringing the visual style into the current age. And, it seems to accomplish that pretty well, especially for a game that was created by just one guy. Inspirations for the game include classics like Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder, so if you were a fan of those games back in the day then you just might have an affinity for what Descend RPG is offering.

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Who would've thought there was room for a new endless runner in the App Store? Imangi Studios, apparently. They surprised us in early August with Temple Run [link], an excellent new take on the formula that�scored 4.5 stars in our review and was among the titles in our Best iOS Games of August 2011 roundup. I think our own Nissa best summed it up as, "the endless runner that makes you feel like an archaeologist with a penchant for deadly situations."

The only complaint I've had with the game is its lack of native iPad support. Well,�I'm happy to report that the game's third update, which landed last night, takes Temple Run universal.

The v1.3 update brings the following enhancements, as listed by Imangi:

• Universal iPad Support! Run for your life on the big screen!
• Two new characters to unlock! Barry Bones, a city cop with an attitude, and Karma Lee, the fastest legs in the Far East. To unlock new characters, just go to the Store and scroll down.
• More objectives to increase your score multiplier!
• You can now Tweet your score at the end of a game! That way all your friends will know you're the Temple Run champ!
• More ways to get free coins! Go to Store > Get More Coins to check it out!
• Lots of performance enhancements and bug fixes! Temple Run should run smoother than ever!

I've been running this latest version of Temple Run for a while now and it's definitely more fun than ever. It's surprising how much richer an experience the game is on the iPad with its 10-inch screen. But, entrenched leaderboard kings watch out � I quickly found that playing on the iPad is conducive to much higher scoring.

A couple of weeks back, at the release of their v1.2 update, Imangi made Temple Run a free download, which is something iOS gamers seem to have appreciated. I recently managed to pull some stats from developer Keith Shepherd regarding the game's activity across its life-so-far in the App Store. As a paid app, in its first month, Imangi saw 10 million games played. Three days after going free, Temple Run hit 20 million games played, and after a week as a free app, it hit the 100 million games mark. All told, right now 350 million games of Temple Run have been played. Not a bad run…so to speak.

Imangi is working on iCade support for Temple Run and hopes to bring it in the next update.

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Steve Jobs unveiled iOS 5 back at WWDC this year. Since then, those of us with an iPhone 3GS or later device have been anxiously looking forward to the array of new features and functionality introduced in the update. At last week's Let's Talk iPhone keynote, Apple revealed that today was the lucky day for iOS 5, and if you've got a device that'll run it� Plug it into iTunes, make sure you sync, and mash that update button.

My favorite improvement so far has definitely got to be the entirely revised push alert notification system. That nasty blue popup that interrupts everything you're doing when you get a text message, your Tiny Tower is ready for something, or the zillion other things that used that type of been notification is a thing of the past. Now there's an incredibly elegant notification center where all these alerts are stored, and the actual popups themselves simply scroll in from the top instead of stealing focus.

If you've got an iPad 2 (or are getting an iPhone 4S in a few days), you'll be able to do display mirroring via AirPlay. Doing cool things with this is largely dependent on developers utilizing it in interesting ways, but so far Firemint is doing awesome things with Real Racing 2.

In addition, Game Center has seen a few tweaks. One I'm most excited for is turn-based support. If developers utilize it, Game Center can handle all of the matchmaking and turn data management between players. I've heard from developers that this functionality does not degrade gracefully to previous versions of iOS, but once iOS 5 adoption picks up we could see a rush of great turn-based games now that developers can offload their entire online infrastructure onto Game Center.

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iCloud isn't something that should be underestimated. Out of the box it'll keep your device backed up to Apple's data centers and in the event of device failure, loss, theft, or whatever else you'll be able to re-download the entire contents of your phone regardless of the last time you synced. Also, once developers start embracing it, you'll be able to seamlessly sync save game data between devices. As someone who often plays games on both my iPhone and iPad, I can't wait for this to pick up steam.

iOS 5 is an incredible upgrade. I've been running the developer version since the gold master hit last week, and much like the upgrade from iOS 3 to iOS 4, my iPhone 4 feels like a totally new device. iOS 5 boasts a feature list of over 200 additions and improvements, so if you want to know everything that is new and different, check out this huge list over on MacRumors.

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