WinPhone 8 - Tile.Counter: how to display value >99?

Question

Windows phone

In the light of a recently published article about notifications in WP , I remembered a problem that I never found a solution to, postponing it in a box for the future. Actually, the question is how to display the counter values ​​​​more than 99, because. WP displays them as just 99 ( basic tile page on MSDN ).
An example of an application in the market that displays the maximum value of 999: Nextgen Reader
Actually there were ideas:
1. pre-created icons with the display of the 1st digit in the icon;
2. generating a background image of a tile with the required number (probably performance problems);
3. there are some hidden mechanisms (for example, the missed call counter displays numbers > 99).
Any other ideas?