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.