Tap Tap Revenge 2.5 Hits Tonight, Takes Steps To Consolidate Popularity

If you’ve got an iPhone, there’s a good chance you’ve got Tapulous’s Tap Tap Revenge installed – the game is ranked as the iPhone’s most popular game of all time. Tonight the latest update to the game lands, adding a handful of new features including themes, “battles”, and a new song import feature. The features are part of the latest update of Tap Tap Revenge 2, which you can download for free here (if you already have the app you can just update it).

One of the most notable additions to the game is the introduction of themes. While the premium versions of TTR have featured a variety of color palettes and effects, the main version of the game has maintained the same color scheme for every song. Now Tapulous will be able to embed new themes with each new song that is downloaded, and songs that are imported from the premium games will retain their themes as well. This may not sound like a big deal, but as anyone who has played Guitar Hero or Rock Band can attest to, variation in the game’s appearance can really add to its replay value.

The other major addition to the game is the ability to import songs purchased through the premium editions of Tap Tap Revenge. Since late last year, Tapulous has been regularly releasing premium custom editions of TTR with music licensed from major artists, including Coldplay, NIN, and most recently, Dave Matthews Band. Before now if you wanted to play these songs, you’d have to boot into each game. Now Tapulous’s server can detect which songs your device should have access to, and will allow you to download them for play through the main application.

Tapulous is clearly looking to channel its popularity into a single application rather than have it scattered across multiple premium apps, and these new features are the latest steps in that direction. TTR is quickly gaining steam with major artists – last week it featured the hit single “Gives You Hell” by the All American Rejects as a free song, which was downloaded over 500,000 times. And once the iPhone 3.0 software update is released this summer, users will be able to buy premium songs directly through the flagship TTR app instead of having to download them as their own applications. Labels are taking notice, and they’re sure to become even more interested when they can sell their songs on an integrated TTR music store.

But Tapulous is going to face one major obstacle along the way: microtransactions are only going to be supported for paid applications on the App Store, and the flagship TTR games have always been free. Which means Tapulous will have to find a way to convince its millions of users to cough up 99 cents for TTR3.