You could run to the sun and back 160 times with the total meters run in Imangi Studio’s award-winning iOS games, Temple Run and Temple Run 2. Or you could fill 300 Olympic swimming pools with the number of gold coins collected in game (147 trillion of them, to be exact).

One billion downloads worldwide can bring a lot of success, like winning a BAFTA and Nickelodeon Kid’s Choice award in 2012. And, if you’re the company behind two of the biggest indie-hits of the last couple of years, you’re going to want to shout it from the rooftops.

“Having Temple Run reach the one billion downloads mark is a milestone we couldn’t have imagined when we first started out,” said Imangi co-founder Keith Shepherd in a press release. “We’re incredibly grateful to all the Temple Run players and our wonderful team.”

Note: This article originally appeared in the Cult of Mac Newsstand issue, Game On!. Grab yourself a copy or subscribe today.

You’ve heard of them: the heavy hitters. The mobile games so big, so profitable and so frustratingly popular that you refuse to play them out of spite. Or you do play them, and you genuinely enjoy them, which is also totally fine.

But we’re all about self-improvement and actualization here, so here are a few alternatives you might consider instead of those gaming equivalents of high-school quarterbacks.

Not only is your iPad the greatest time-killer of all-time, but while you’re busy playing games, writing emails, taking pictures, and tweeting, you’re also creating some abstract artwork with each tap and swipe.

Artists Andre Woolery and Victor AbiJaoudi noticed that each iPad app reveals a different pattern of swipes and taps that form a unique piece of artwork. In their collaboration series called Invisible Hieroglyphics, the duo highlight all of the hidden masterpieces you never knew you were making, by tracking the gestures and swipes on the iPad screen and translating them into artwork on acrylic glass you can hang on your wall.

Here’s a look at some of the invisible paintings you create everyday:

If there’s a video game character that deserves his own endless running game, it’s Sonic the Hedgehog; he’s been dashing through crazy worlds since the early ’90s, long before titles like Temple Run even entered development. And today Sega finally made it happen.

Sonic Dash is a brand new title “coming soon” to iOS.

The wildly successful Temple Run franchise is at it again with a new version based on the Oz The Great and Powerful Disney movie directed by Sam Raimi. Temple Run: Oz is built on Temple Run 2 but features some unique gameplay that’s appropriately themed for the coinciding movie release this Friday.

This isn’t the first time the small company behind Temple Run, Imangi Studios, has partnered with Disney; Temple Run: Brave was released last year.

In my review of Temple Run 2, I called it an “awesome sequel.” Millions upon millions of people seem to agree. Temple Run 2 has become the fastest downloaded mobile game in history with 50 million downloads in just two weeks. The previous record was set by Rovio’s Angry Birds with 50 million downloads in 35 days.

Temple Run 2 for iOS hit 20 million downloads after its first week on the App Store. Imangi Studios, the company behind Temple Run, has since brought the game to Google Play on Android and the Amazon Marketplace.

Today, Imangi Studios announced that Temple Run 2–sequel to runaway hit mobile game, Temple Run–recorded an outrageous 20 million downloads in its first week on the iTunes App Store. The game shot up to the number one free app in only eight hours, and is now the number 2 top grossing app on the App Store charts. Pretty amazing for a free to download game, right?

For a game that’s been downloaded over 170 million times and spawned countless ripoffs, the sequel to Temple Run came as a complete shock. The smash-hit endless runner started sneaking into App Stores around the world yesterday, and it went live in the U.S. late last night. Imangi Studios, the small company behind Temple Run, had no promotional material or teasers leading up to the release.

But now that Temple Run 2 is here, fans of the original can sprint, jump, slide, and fall through a new and improved world. With zip lines, new power-ups, characters, and a mine cart, Temple Run is better than ever.

Temple Run from Imangi Studios is one of the most successful games on iOS, racking up more than 75 million downloads during 2012 alone. If you’re one of the many players who are still addicted to it after all this time, you’ll be delighted to know that Temple Run 2 is hitting the App Store tonight.

Apple has today announced that the App Store has surpassed a whopping 40 billion downloads, with almost 20 million seen in 2012 alone. A record-breaking December, helped by another successful Christmas, boosted this year’s figures, with more than two billion downloads during the month.