Japan Charts: Konami's Jikkyo Power Pro Baseball lifts market from seasonal slump

There was some respite for Japanese game retailers from the summer slump last week, as Konami's Jikkyo Power Pro Baseball 11 stormed into the charts, with the PS2 version at number one while the Cube version made number three.

Between them, the two versions of the game sold over a quarter of a million units, making up the lion's share of the market's partial recovery last week, which saw sales climbing to 182 per cent of the previous week's figure.

Also contributing strongly to the recovery was Atlus' PS2 RPG title Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner, which sold just shy of 100,000 units and was this week's number two title, while Banpresto's anime-based GBA title Konjiki no Gashbell! Makai no Bookmark completed a quartet of new releases at the top of the chart, coming in at number four with 22,000 sales.

Further down the top ten, sales fell off fairly sharply, but there were new debuts for Nintendo's latest GBA title in the Hamtaro franchise, Ham Ham Sports, which entered at seven, and Hackberry's PS2 Pachinko title (yes, another one) Pachitte Chonmage Master 3: CR Pachinko Yellow-Cab at number nine.

Last week's number one, Sega's Let's Make J-League Pro Soccer Club! '04, is at number six this week, while Sammy's Pachinko Slot! Fist of the North Star is at number five, and shows no sign of exiting the top ten any time soon - having already been resident there for well over a month.

In terms of hardware sales, the PlayStation 2 was boosted to slightly over 50 per cent market share by the launch of the "pearl white" limited edition console, leaving the GBA with just under 43 per cent market share, while the Cube made up the numbers with slightly over six per cent.