Japan Charts: Sega's beetle battling title debuts at No.1
The Japanese software market showed signs of picking up from its recent slump last week, with Sega's The King of Beetle Mushiking: Greatest Champion leading the recovery with strong first week sales.
The Japanese software market showed signs of picking up from its recent slump last week, with Sega's The King of Beetle Mushiking: Greatest Champion leading the recovery with strong first week sales.
The GBA game, which is adapted from an arcade title which has proved hugely popular around Japan and has also been exported to overseas market, sold around 208,000 units in its first weekend, and is expected to continue selling strongly through the summer.
In some ways The King of Beetle could be seen as Sega's answer to Pokemon; the game is a card collection title which draws on the traditional Japanese children's hobby of capturing and raising stag beetles, which is also where the creator of Pokemon found his inspiration.
Further down the ranking, six more new release make it into the top ten, with Koei's PS2 RPG Zill O'll Infinite at number three, selling around 31,000 units, and Nintendo's Chibi Robo on the GameCube at number four, selling around 28,000 units.
Tecmo's latest Pachinko PS2 title, Rakusho! Pachinko Slot Sengen 3, comes in at number six, while Konami's Coded Arms becomes the first PSP title to enter the ranking in several weeks, in at number seven this week.
Anime-licensed title Futakoi Alternative: Love and Girls and Machineguns is at number eight for Marvelous Interactive, while Nintendo's Advance Wars: Dual Strike on the DS has a slightly disappointing debut at number nine.
Only three of last week's top ten entries remain in the chart this week - with Nintendo's DS Training for Adults: Work Your Brain being the top-ranked, at number two.
In hardware terms, the DS is the top selling console in the market once again this week, with almost 31 per cent market share, followed by the PlayStation 2 on just under 27 market share.
The PSP, with slightly over 19 per cent share, suffers the ignominy of being outsold by the Game Boy Advance SP, which takes just shy of 21 per cent market share thanks to a surge in popularity caused by the launch of The King of Beetle.