UK Charts: Hitman holds off EA's UEFA Euro 2004 for a second week at the top
Eidos' Hitman: Contracts has taken a second week at number one in the UK full price software charts, holding off EA's UEFA Euro 2004 Portugal title which debuted at number two.
It's a surprise result for the assassination-action title, since a new EA Sports football game would generally be expected to take the top spot in its opening week - but strong word of mouth for Hitman Contracts and minimal marketing buzz for Euro 2004 combined to give Eidos a fortnight of triumph.
The only other title of note to be released last week, Atari's graphically stunning Transformers game on the PS2, also made a strong debut this week - touching down at number five in the charts.
It was also a good week for anti-virus software, which continues to fill the cracks in what's meant to be a leisure software chart thanks to the arrival of yet another high-profile virus for the Windows operating system. No fewer than three anti-virus products make it into the top 20 as a result, let by Norton Internet Security at number three.
Konami's critically maligned Cy Girls is nowhere to be found in the charts anywhere, but Ignition's Pool Paradise just scrapes in at number 40 in the All-Formats chart, making itself into the third highest new release of the week.
It doesn't rank anywhere in the top 40 chart, but it was also a good week for Ubisoft's excellent (if incredibly niche) title Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, which rose 18 places on the GameCube chart to become this week's Cube number one.
The industry is largely preoccupied this week - some form of shindig on the west coast of the USA, we're reliably informed - but there's still time for a few new releases to sneak out on Friday. Most notable is Microsoft's eagerly awaited Ninja Gaiden, but GameCube fans can get their hands on apparently rather good RPG title Pokemon Colloseum, while Vivendi's excellent movie tie-in Van Helsing (PS2, Xbox, GBA) and Midway's well-received The Suffering also make their way onto shelves. Two hugely delayed titles also finally sneak out on Friday - Codemasters' Xbox version of Operation Flashpoint being one, and Konami's Boktai: The Sun Is In Your Hands being the other.