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Japan Charts: Capcom scores another number one with Monster Hunter

Capcom continued its reign at the top of the Japanese charts this week with a number one debut for Monster Hunter, but the real news was the appearance of the first Xbox title of the year in the top ten - Tecmo's Ninja Gaiden.

Capcom continued its reign at the top of the Japanese charts this week with a number one debut for Monster Hunter, but the real news was the appearance of the first Xbox title of the year in the top ten - Tecmo's Ninja Gaiden.

Monster Hunter displaced Capcom's other top ten title, Onimusha 3, from the top spot after a two week reign, with sales of around 125,000 in its debut weekend, and helped to drive significant sales of the PlayStation 2 broadband adapter since it is an online title.

Ninja Gaiden was the next highest entry in the chart, at number four with sales of some 43,000 units. Sales of Xbox hardware almost doubled thanks to the launch of the game, although the console still had hardware market only fractionally above one per cent.

The GameCube also had a new exclusive in the charts, with Konami's Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes selling 37,000 units to come in at number six - not exactly a stellar launch for one of the company's biggest franchises, but then again Metal Gear Solid has never enjoyed the same popularity in Japan as it does in North America and Europe.

The other new release to make its way into the top ten this week is Bandai's One Piece: Going Baseball on the GBA, a sports title which makes use of Bandai's enormously popular One Piece anime franchise.

Overall though it's been a fairly quiet week for the Japanese market, with less than 800,000 units shifted by the Top 100 titles in total despite the wave of new titles in the upper echelons of the chart.

The Game Boy Advance and PS2 dominate the hardware sales charts as ever, with 45 per cent and 40 per cent of the market by units respectively, but both the Xbox and GameCube put in stronger performances than last week - with Xbox at over one per cent market share for the first time this year, while the Cube rallies back up to over 12.5 per cent of the market after sliding below 10 per cent for a number of weeks.

Pos. Platform Title Publisher Released
1. PS2 Monster Hunter Capcom 11/03/2003
2. GBA Famicom Mini: Super Mario Bros Nintendo 14/02/2003
3. PS2 Onimusha 3 Capcom 26/02/2003
4. XBX Ninja Gaiden Tecmo 11/03/2003
5. GBA One Piece: Going Baseball Bandai 11/03/2003
6. GC Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes Konami 11/03/2003
7. PS2 World Soccer Winning Eleven 7 International Konami 19/02/2003
8. PS2 Sengoku Musou Koei 11/02/2003
9. GBA Pokemon Fire Red Nintendo 29/01/2003
10. GC Custom Robo Nintendo 04/03/2003

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Author
Rob Fahey avatar

Rob Fahey

Contributing Editor

Rob Fahey is a former editor of GamesIndustry.biz who spent several years living in Japan and probably still has a mint condition Dreamcast Samba de Amigo set.