Let’s Tap! is shipping today, and to celebrate I challenged an old Let’s Tap! rival of mine to settle the score once and for all. His name is Aaron Palacios (you also heard him in Episode 1 of the SEGA Podcast), and we’ve been going head to head since we first started recording gameplay footage for the original US trailers.  So, without further ado, let’s get to it!

Just before the Tap Off begins – Aaron P. is on the left, I’m on the right wearing the Conduit T-shirt. we bust out some Wii boxes and pop in a copy of the game. First up on the menu is Rhythm Tap – the song: 365 Children. Also, there’s a really cool Sonic Heroes Plaque/Tile in the right hand corner of this picture – on it is a ton of different fan art we got for the game. (It was created when the game broke 1,000,000 copies.)

Round 1 was close, but Community came out on top…

Can’t Tap Fast? You need a blue orb texter tin to tap on! We had a few of these sitting around from earlier PSU days, so Aaron P. grabbed one to up his game a bit.

Not to be outdone, I grabbed an (unopened) SEGA Pico box nearby. Take that, Blue Orb.

Let me just say that this part was a mistake. I completely failed the third round because the poor Master System wasn’t picking up the vibrations, and I didn’t have the heart to hit it hard.

I’m sorry, Master System. We still love you.

A heated moment in Round 4. Unfortunately, the Xbox 360 doesn’t serve as a good Let’s Tap! tapping device. (It’s almost like the Wii and the 360 don’t get along, or something.)

Meanwhile, Aaron P. was rocking it up on an empty PS3 box. With our own little homage to the console wars in motion, Aaron P. ended up winning two straight rounds in Tap Runner – I blame the Mega Drive and X360′s hard cases.

The tiebreaker! Away goes the 360, and out comes a matted cover of NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams. This is a shot of us in a very close match, our tap runners just moments apart from victory.

In the end, the final score was:

• Community – 3 Wins
• PR – 2 Wins

An excellent Tap Off and some very special thanks to Aaron P. for accepting the challenge! I hope that all you guys reading have just as much fun as we did tapping on random objects – and don’t be afraid to throw down the gauntlet to your own siblings and friends!

We’re also curious to hear what you guys will be tapping on when your copy of Let’s Tap! arrives, so let us know in the blog comments below!

We’ve got a double shot of Prope and Yuji Naka today! In addition to Let’s Tap shipping out to retailers, we’re also announcing Let’s Catch! Let’s Catch is the second title from Yuji Naka’s Prope studio, and it’s available today for download from the Nintendo Channel store.

In Let’s Catch, players will experience a new twist on the game of catch in six different single and multiplayer modes to play. Excelling through good timing and hand-eye coordination, players will find themselves playing games that range from having players pass a bomb to other players before it explodes, test players’ ability to catch a fast ball, challenge players’ throwing accuracy and more.

Check out our trailer to see it in action!

For more screenshots, check out our Flickr set.

Let’s Tap is shipping to retailers today, and should be in stores by the end of the week! I had a chance to play this game last weekend, and my personal favorites are the Tap Runner, Rhythm Tap, and Silent Blocks games. In case you missed our videos about Let’s Tap gameplay, here they are. What are you most looking forward to?