Bullet-hell specialist Cave shooting Espgaluda II onto the iPad as native app

We told you that there'd be a "surprise announcement" at today's preview of the new DeathSmiles update, and the live Ustream event didn't disappoint.

If you're a fan of Espgaluda II, in particular, you'll be pleased to read that Cave is bringing the fast-paced bullet-hell shooter to Apple's 9.7-inch-screen iPad.

Unfortunately, this won't be as a free update to the existing iPhone shmup, and will instead be a standalone app.

Espgaluda II sees you dodging and weaving past hails of bullets, and through three difficulty levels to achieve the best score you possibly can.

There are two game modes available in the iPhone edition of the game - iPhone and Arcade - but we may see further modes implemented for the iPad release.

Game Center and OpenFeint support for both leaderboards and achievements is also bound to make the leap to the big-screen version.

There aren't any details currently on a release date or a cost for the game, but with the iPhone version priced at £7.99 / $11.99 / €9.99, we assume it'll be close to the £10 mark.

Cave was questioned on Twitter about including iCade control support in the release, to which the developer simply responded, "We'll think about it!" Fingers crossed for that, then.

There's also an interesting discussion in the comments section on Touch Arcade regarding a lack of native iPad Cave shooters due to RAM limitations.

Hopefully, the developer has managed to fully iron out any memory shortage issues.