EpicTilt's TapStar launches to beat out Tap Tap Revenge

Tapulous has dominated the App Store market when it comes to music rhythm games thanks to the more than 5 million people who have downloaded the free version of its Tap Tap Revenge games.

Now it has some competition however as EpicTilt has launched its TapStar.

Going out at a 48-hour special price of 99c or 59p to gain chart position and mindshare, the game launches exclusively with content from Sony Music, including the likes of Britney Spears I'm A Slave 4 U, John Mayer Say, Pink Get the Party Started, TLC Creep and... err Warrant Heaven.

A fairly US-centric line-up for sure, but with the option to play samples of Sony Music artists and then purchase further downloads from within iTunes, it's a list that’s certain to expand quickly. The list of tracks will also be opened up to other labels in time.

Incidentally though, this doesn't operate as a micro-purchase so you can run the game on OS 2.2 if you haven't got around to upgrading to 3.0 yet.

As for the game itself, as you can see from the screenshots, it takes a different approach from the Guitar Hero-style gameplay with a landscape orientation and four corner touch buttons for you to tap as the coloured arrows appear. The standard metric of the accuracy of your taps and number of sequential hits you can pull off will power your high score.