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Over one million apps have made their way onto the App Store during its five years of existence. A million. That's a pretty miraculous number when you think about it. However it's not the amount of apps we have to pick from that I find so fascinating, but rather just how much things have changed since 2008. Pickings were comparatively slim at first, and many developers were just starting to dip a toe in the waters of Apple's new smartphone.

On top of that, the technology itself has changed tremendously in a relatively small amount of time. It makes me wonder if anyone from 2008 would even recognize current iOS devices, and by extension the App Store. Would a newer Apple initiate have any idea what they were looking at if they somehow managed to take a trip to five years ago? I think it warrants a look at how the hardware, the App Store, and the apps contained within it have evolved.

2008 - The Beginning of the Beginning

The App Store's first year was a rough but promising one. The iPhone 3G rolled out to coincide with Apple’s new software venue and the original iPhone was still viable. The iPod touch was also present and accounted for, while the second generation appeared closer to the end of the year. Even at this point many developers were eager to push these early iOS devices to their limits, to make them more than just a phone or an .mp3 player with a fancy screen.

Handy apps like Pandora Radio, Last.FM, Facebook, and Yelp were to be expected, but that didn't make them any less impressive to have on a handheld platform. Others such as the intuitive personal organizer Evernote, the eerily accurate song-identifying app Shazam, eWallet’s convenient and secure account password management, and MLB At Bat with its extensive baseball coverage further capitalized on the particulars of the hardware and its general portability. Of course there were also some pretty unnecessary options out there, too. Flashlight kind of served a purpose but was also fairly pointless. It wasn't as bad as stuff like More Cowbell!, though.

At the same time, the games available on the App Store were beginning to show people that "mobile" didn't have to equal "mediocre." Sure there were a few simple ports of the odd classic such as Ms. PAC-MAN, Vay, and Scrabble, but there were also some impressive iOS renditions of popular console games like Super Monkey Ball coming out. Potential mobile gamers also had a few really special titles such as Galcon and Fieldrunners to tide them over. When all was said and done there were over 7,500 apps on the App Store by the end of the year, with more being added every day.

2009 - Moving Right Along

The following year saw even more impressive releases as Apple's digital marketplace began to expand. The second generation of iPod Touch was the bright and shiny new toy at the time, but it was followed shortly by the iPhone 3GS in June while the latest and greatest third generation Touch closed out the year in September. It all meant better processors, better CPUs, more advanced operating systems, and so on. All stuff that developers needed to acclimate to, but also stuff that meant they could push their boundaries even further. There was no loss of steam when it came to content, either: the App Store finished off 2009 with well over 100,000 apps available.

Many of the basic smartphone necessities were covered, but there was room for so much more. Especially while the technology was improving. Plenty of people used their iPhones as phones, sure, but with the addition of Skype they were able to enjoy the added functionality of instant messaging and voice chat without cutting into their data plans (so long as a wifi connection was present). Big companies were really starting to take notice as well. That same year Starbucks and many other big businesses threw their virtual hats into the ring with their own apps designed to make life a little bit easier for their iOS-using customers. Practicality was also becoming an even bigger focus. The Kindle app gave iOS users a practical e-reading option, and Dropbox was there being Dropbox. By which I mean "an awesome and super-convenient way to transfer files between multiple platforms." And this same level of refinement could be seen creeping into the games as well.

So many of the App Store's most notable games and franchises came out around this time. It was almost a mobile rennaisence of a sort. This was the year Real Racing first blew mobile gamers' minds, even causing some of them to question the legitimacy of in-game video footage until they were able to see the finished product for themselves. Zenonia was just a fledgling action RPG at the time, and while a lot of people liked it I doubt they knew just how many sequels it would spawn. The same goes for Pocket God, although with updates rather than multiple releases. Flight Control began to eat away at peoples' free time, Angry Birds and Doodle Jump hit it big (like, super big), and Myst and The Sims 3 further displayed the potential for major releases on mobile platforms. Oh, and Canabalt almost single-handedly invented and popularized a genre.

What do the following iOS apps and games have in common? Well, they all surprised the heck out of us when they were released. That's saying something, considering we're all jaded journalists and such.

Apps that come along and knock our socks off are rare, so we've put together a list of ten of the most surprising apps from the last five years of the App Store to commemorate that fact, and to maybe show you some cool stuff you might have missed.

Surprising Apps

These are the apps that came out of left field, making innovative use of iOS hardware and software to bring us a truly unexpected experience.

Hipstamatic - The grandaddy of hipster photo apps, Hipstamatic created the crop and filter genre, with switchable virtual lenses and film types to apply to your ironic images.
Word Lens - Aim your iPhone camera at a sign in another language and see it magically transformed right on your device. If this isn't transformative tech, I don't know what is.
Cycloramic - This one lets you set your iPhone down on a hard surface, then uses the built-in vibration feature to spin around in a circle, taking a 360-degree video of the entire process. Wow!
Dark Sky - This innovative weather app does one thing really well: warn you when it's going to rain. You can even get a 5 minute warning, which is enough to get your umbrella out and stay dry!
Star Walk - Astronomy apps have been all the rage, especially since the iPad came out. But this one lets you hold your iOS device up to the sky, and it will show you what stars and other heavenly objects are up there, in real time. Heck, you can even track Santa with it during the holidays.

Surprising Games

These games either came out of nowhere and burned themselves into the collective unconscious, or were so bizarrely fun and successful that they had to be mentioned here.

Game Dev Story - We've spent entire days in thrall to this cleverly addictive saga of video game development, putting our retro-styled pixel people through their paces to push out the next great hit.
Candy Crush Saga - What's so surprising about a match-three game becoming the top-grossing app in just a few weeks? Well, it's a match-three game.
Tiny Wings - One indie dev, Andreas Illiger, sat down and created this brilliant piece of game design, popularizing the one-touch game genre and garnering a ton of copycat and clone apps in the bargain. Plus, he made a lot of money, which we like to talk about, too.
Angry Birds - Did you ever think that flinging birds in a slingshot at pigs in bizarre structures would turn into a global hit, spawning way too many tie-in items, like fishing lures? Us, neither.
10000000 - Small, brutally difficult indie game that became a smash hit overnight. That's pretty surprising, right?

While games may not be the largest percentage of apps in the App Store (non-games lead the way overwhelmingly), they are the most popular single category, with over 151,000 active games in the App Store as of this month, according to 148Apps.biz.

One could argue, and indeed I will, that games are the most transformative type of app in the App Store, bringing a quality of play to iOS devices previously impossible to achieve. As 148Apps staffers have been heard to proclaim, there are over 1.2 billion thumbs waiting to play games on these crafty little devices.

Of course, there have been landmark games since the App Store went live in 2008, titles that create, extend, and improve on the current state of the art. Here then, are the top 20 of those games, as chosen by your App Experts at 148Apps.

Doodle Jump - This one started the jumping game craze, inspiring a host of clones and imitators along the way.
Angry Birds - Need we say more? The grumpy avians have taken over the public consciousness.
Tiny Wings - Not just another bird game, Tiny Wings showed us how one mechanic, brilliantly executed, could take an unknown designer to untold heights.

Candy Crush Saga - Good heavens we still get a lot of invites for this casual, money-printing game.
Clash of Clans - Say what you will about free to play, but this game has gotten it right.
Tiny Tower - Nimblebit hit the jackpot here with a smart combination of tower building and free to play retro gaming.

Temple Run - If anyone deserved to have a huge hit, it's the folks at Imangi Studios, who have been pushing the boundaries of quality gaming from the beginning. This one created the 3D endless runner genre at a breakneck speed!
Puzzles & Dragons - Another free to play darling, this one gets all the elements right to keep players entertained and paying.
Where's My Water? - Disney's breakout hit, with a new IP (intellectual property) and a fiendishly addictive mechanic.

Pocket God - 47 updates later, still going strong and keeping kids of all ages entertained and laughing.
Minecraft Pocket Edition - The surprise PC hit the iPhone like a ton of cube-shaped bricks, letting crafters and miners of all stripe build and explore on the go.
Words with Friends - Scrabble with people you know. What's not to like? This one started the "with friends" genre with a bang.
Draw Something - Super successful, super quick, leading Zynga to buy the developer for a landmark price.

Infinity Blade - This game set the bar high for utter gorgeousness and a fighting mechanic that still sees itself in current games on the App Store, some two and a half years later.
Canabalt - Heard of the endless runner genre? Canabalt started it all with a one-touch game that exploded onto the scene in 2009 and has remained in the collective imagination ever since.
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP - This one proves again and again that the indie spirit can be captured and distributed via mobile, with a game that may never have gotten noticed on the bigger consoles.
Galaxy on Fire 2 - This space exploration and dogfighting game set the standard for utter gorgeousness, as well as finding a way to build a space sim on a tiny mobile device.

Spaceteam - Don't forget to flush the four-stroke plucker! Wait, what? Play this game with a few of your (drinking) friends, and you'll see what multiplayer party games *should* be like.
Real Racing - Still the gold standard for racing games on a mobile platform, the original game hit the starting line in 2011, with sequels upping the ante on visuals, controls, and profitability.
Super Hexagon - If you hate yourself, play this brutally difficult yet strangely compelling arcade game and thank indie developer Terry Cavanaugh in the morning.

Appropriately enough, there's a practically endless supply of Endless Runners to choose from across the App Store. Which ones are the best and most worthy of your attention, though? We took a look at our favorite 4 in recent times and explain just why they're worth diving into.

Solipskier
Solipskier has been quite a hit both commercially and amongst the developer crowd. It's not strictly an Endless 'Runner', instead focusing on skiing but it is fantastic fun. Players must draw the ski slopes while picking up speed and completing some impressive jumps and tricks. It also offers some innovative and memorable music thanks to a feature that means music 'pops out' when skiing fast, adding to the sense of speed as you solely hear the sound effects rather than soundtrack for a time.

Tiny Wings
Yes, it's nearly as huge as Angry Birds (and continues the bird theme well) but it'd be impossible to not mention Tiny Wings when rounding up the best Endless Runners. All about flying endlessly, players control a cute bird as they bounce across many hills. One tap is all that's needed to control momentum with numerous challenges encouraging players to improve for next time. The latest update included an extra mode for even more fun. It's a wonderfully calming yet gripping experience.

One Epic Knight
One of the more recent entries to the genre, One Epic Knight combines dungeon crawling with endless running, pitting a knight against a never ending dungeon as he attempts to collect up all the loot, clear the evil creatures and dodge some fearsome traps. Swipe controls ensure none of this feels too complicated and it's a great change of pace for a normally predictable genre.

Ski Safari
Many games have included avalanche chases, Ski Safari focuses solely on this big problem with Sven the skier desperately trying to escape the cavalcade of snow while using animals to help his escape. Each animal offers a different ability to speed Sven up plus a selection of objectives add extra purpose to the game. It's adorable and addictive in equal measures.

Starting about a week ago, Andreas Illiger, the creator of Tiny Wings started tweeting some rather obtuse notes on his timeline. Odd posts like "There will be no new game by me any time soon. But there will be something new from me..." Then today, came a countdown and then a link to a YouTube video.

At the end of the very well done teaser video was the payoff -- Tiny Wing 2.0, coming to the App Store on July 12th. The follow up to the amazingly refreshing Tiny Wings will be released next week.

At this point we aren't really sure if it's version 2.0 of Tiny Wings or a whole new app. But either way, we are really looking forward to this one. Stay tuned!

[via: Touch Arcade]

Part One: Games 16 - 25
Part Two: Games 6 - 15
In what was another fantastic year in the world of iOS gaming, we are here to bring you the titles that we, the staff of 148Apps, thought were the best of the year. Here are our top five picks for the Best Games of 2011:

5. Tiny Tower: Listening to some of the most prominent voices in gaming journalism right now, so-called 'social' and 'free to play' games are the scourge of the industry, and will bring forth the end of gaming as we know it, or at least a cowpocalypse. Of course, the problem is more that these games tend to be designed for nefarious purposes, to try and suck every last penny out of players' wallets. Tiny Tower was one of the few to not do this. It does a lot of the little things right - from giving out its credits through completing in-game actions, to providing things for players to do while actually checking in on the game, to feel compelling yet fair.

I spent weeks on end compulsively checking my tower, managing where my little bitizens should be working, and making that building go higher and higher. I eventually stopped - my tower was very large, and I didn't necessarily feel the need to make it bigger, and I had other ways to spend time when on my iPod. But there's just a satisfaction in knowing that a game is designed in a way that if I wanted to get back in, I could, and wouldn't have any negative effects waiting for me if I did so. This is a shining example of what the industry needs to do with their free to play titles, as it is infinitely more satisfying than the ones that make me feel like they just want my money.

4. Tiny Wings: This wasn't supposed to happen. A game made almost entirely by one guy in Germany, with no promotion whatsoever, shooting to the top of the charts? Sure, in the early days of the App Store, back in 2009, it would seem believable; but here in 2011, for this to happen? It seems impossible. But it's clear to see why it did just that: its watercolor graphics, adorable bird protagonist, and simple-yet-unique gameplay mechanic all combined to make a hit game that just happened to be picked up by people...then by a few more...then a lot more...then suddenly everyone was talking about this ingenious little game made by some unknown developer that now everyone was playing. I still don't know how it happened, but I'm sure glad it did.

3. Infinity Blade 2: There was one iOS game that made me cry this year. This was not it. It should have, though. Due to glitches with iCloud, I lost my built-up characters twice. On consecutive nights. A lesser game would have made me throw it down in frustration, delete it, and never speak of it again. I guess it says a lot about a game that I could pick it up again for hours on end, after any practical benefit to playing it had eroded, whether it had been to simply review the game or even after I had beaten it. There I would sit on my couch, continuing to hack away at enemies, managing my equipment to keep mastering it and improve my stats. I've lost a lot of time to this stupid game, and though it may be inherently repetitive, and largely only iterative on its well-known prequel...it was still some of the most fun I've had this year.

2. Where's My Water? - Physics games can be distilled down to a pretty easy formula these days: combine an endearing protagonist to create an emotional connection to the player with gameplay that uses the physical interaction of objects in a simple enough way that even casual players can become hooked to for great success. Combine these two things, and profit is the hopeful result. Plenty of games attempt this. Very few succeed at it, though. Where's My Water did just that.

The goal of the gameplay, which is simply to cut through dirt to guide water to Swampy's bathtub, hits the notes of being deceptively simple with added complexity. Soon, dangerous substances are added, along with pipes, bombs, moss and other hazards. But that simple mechanic of cutting through dirt to guide the water with understandable physics, remains the core.

Of course, the fact that Disney makes Swampy come alive doesn't hurt at all. Swampy is fantastically animated, as one would expect from, well, Disney. His worried and pained expressions while wearing his shower cap and waiting in his empty tub for his bath water causes that hook to sink in; I'm not just doing this for myself, I'm doing this for that little guy! He gets so happy when he gets his water that it becomes difficult to not become attached, to want to keep trying to get that water to him.

Disney found a way to create that kind of emotional connection to players, and look where they sit on this list. They earned it.

1. Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP - In reality, a lot of the hype for this game was in part due to its visual style: sure, retraux pixel art is en vogue among a lot of games this year, but it was the detail, the usage of it to become something more than just imitation of the good ol' days of gaming. The mystery played a large part of it too - we knew how it looked, but how would it play? What was the setup for this game? What will happen?

What we got was a truly beautiful experience. The combat is simple and somewhat repetitive, sure. But everything else about it raises the experience to another level. The art and animation are splendid, of course. The music, composed by Jim Guthrie, is an incredible feast. The writing is at times humorous, but helps to set up a scene of a world with mystery and wonder, explaining only just enough when it needs to. The ending is so powerful it brought me to tears. It takes a powerful piece of art to do that, and it is something that few games have ever done to me. As a pure game, it is imperfect. But as an experience - I can't say I experienced anything greater on iOS this year. This will stick with me for a while, and it is an easy choice for our game of the year.

That's it, there's our list of the best of the year in iOS gaming. Did you have a preferred title? Let us know in the comments! We look forward to another great year of iOS gaming in the year 2012!

This week, July 25-29, the freemium/free to play revolution continued as Carter Dotson explored the recent decrease in premium game revenue on the App Store. Dotson writes, "Not only are free to play games now becoming the biggest source of revenue for games on the App Store, they’re also potentially more open for competition. The top 10 publishers of free games account for 27% of the total downloads of the top 300 free games, versus the top 10 publishers of the top 300 paid games generating 54% of those downloads, and one of those publishers is one-man developer Andreas Illiger of Tiny Wings fame.

Read the full story here.

Over at 148apps.biz, Sharon L. Cohen explored app developer's needs for solid, substantive analytics, and suggested Chomp as a good source: "The latest Chomp stats...provide continued insights into the way that users are searching for apps. Previously, 148apps.biz reported that fewer and fewer queries are for specific app names: For every one hundred searches, only nine were for the name of an application. This statistic flopped in May. 'Compared to April, the ratio of non-app name versus name queries shifted 9% in favor of name searches.' Ah, the fickleness of users. The moral of this story is continue to place an emphasis on key words and search engine optimization including brand promotion. In other words, cover all your bases."

Read the full story at 148Apps.biz.

GiggleApps reviewed Creative Genius on the Go, an app designed to stretch kids' imaginations, even as they are trapped in the back seat during long trips: "This app offers 150 different scenarios for everyone to consider: 50 'What Ifs?' that prompt the players to describe how the impossible may be possible; 50 'Imagine That,' which are mind-stretching challenges for boosting brainpower and relieving boredom and screams from the back seat, and 50 'Wack-tivities,' or silly diversions for when everyone is tired and can’t wait to stop at a hotel and get something to eat."

Divert yourself to the GiggleApps review for the full story.

That's it for this week! Be sure to stop by our Top 148 Lists page to view the latest price drops as well as the top free and paid apps and games. See you next Saturday.

Now available at competitive rates!

On This Episode:

We discuss the iPad 2, and its feature set, whether there were any surprises, and what the new features could change about its usage.

We discuss the potential of iOS TV gaming, with the iPad 2's true screen mirroring, and the potential of the Apple TV as a gaming console.

We discuss Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP, and its long development time, and whether the App Store business model can sustain higher budget projects, and why iOS games often aren't able to sustain longer hype cycles.

Who We Are:

Host: Carter Dotson

Guest: Chris Hall, 148Apps

Guest: Brad O'Hearne, Big Hill Software

Contact The Show: Email | Twitter

Music:

"Beatnes7 (Theme to The Portable Podcast)" by The Eternal - Download on iTunes here:

"Nanocarp" by The Eternal

How to Listen:

Click Here to Subscribe in iTunes:

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Listen on WRGT Radio every Friday at 4pm Central

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Apps Mentioned in this Episode:

The king, Angry Birds has been, at least temporarily dethroned by a pair of Tiny Wings.

We reported last night that Tiny Birds had quickly risen to number 2. But today they break into the top spot in the overall paid charts in the US. Pretty amazing for a indie developer out of no where. It's pretty amazing to see a story like this after the App Store has been open now for two and a half years. Early on seeing an indie developer break the top ten was wonderful, these days it's downright amazing.

If nothing else, I hope this serves as inspiration to other indie developers. You can still make a splash in the App Store, you just have to make a really unique, compelling, and interesting game. Congratulations to Tiny Wings and Andreas Illiger!

If you haven't picked up this game yet, do so now. If you don't love this game, you won't love any game.