Dragon Quest IV Leads Japanese Game Charts

After months of below average-sales, even for the traditionally quiet autumn period in Japan, the Japanese sales charts have suddenly exploded into life with four titles selling over 100,000 units and a top ten composed of nine separate new entries. Leading the pack is Dragon Quest IV on the Nintendo DS, with 597,000 units sold in its first week. This beat the debut of Dragon Quest Monsters – Joker for the Nintendo DS by just over 3,000 units. However, as a re-release of the PSone remake of the NES original the game could not hope to match the success of core iterations in the franchise, where Dragon Quest VIII on PlayStation 2 sold over 2 million copies in its first week. Also enjoying considerable success was the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 versions of World Soccer: Winning Eleven 2008 at numbers two and three, respectively. Known as Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 in Europe the PlayStation 2 version sold 294,000 units and the PlayStation 3 version an impressive 141,000 units. At number four, Mario Party DS was the only survivor of the previous week’s chart, with a third consecutive week of sales above the 100,000 mark. With a new lifetime-to-date total of 460,000 units, the game has now easily outsold Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii, which this week has fallen to number eleven. New in at number five this week is the Wings of the Goddess expansion pack for PlayStation 2 massively multiplayer online game Final Fantasy XI, with 68,000 units sold. Published in Japan by Nintendo themselves, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games for the Wii debuted at number six with 63,000 units sold. Meanwhile, Sega’s Dinosaur King collectable card game, based on the Mushiking game mechanic, has proven a hit on the Nintendo DS at number seven, with 57,000 units sold. The sequel to what is known in the West as Mega Man: Star Force was actually the fifth best selling title of the week with 74,000 unit sold. However, with sales split between two Pokemon style SKUs the game charted only at numbers eight and nine. The final new entry of the week was a PlayStation 2 based pachinko simulator from local publisher Hack Berry, with a still creditable 36,000 units sold.

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