With the Japanese winter gift-buying season now in full swing, the software charts have seen another week of strong sales across the board. The number one seller is the final part of Level-5’s Professor Layton trilogy of puzzle adventures. The new Nintendo DS game sold an impressive 347,000 units – even more than the 305,000 unit debut of Animal Crossing: City Folk last week. The second-highest new entry, at number two, was what is known in the West as Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 on PlayStation 3. Konami’s annual sports sim sold 168,000 units on Sony’s lead home format. The Xbox 360 version failed to chart in the top 30, while the PlayStation 2 and Wii versions are yet to be released. New at number five is Konami’s collectable card game tie-in Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX: Tag Force 3 with 64,000 units sold. It is one of five PSP titles in the top 10 this week, four of them new entries, giving the portable format one of its best weeks of software sales ever in Japan. Spike’s Kenka Banchou 3 on PSP is at number eight with 54,000 unit sales. This marks the first time a new sequel in the role-playing and beat ‘em-up hybrid series has debuted on any format other than the PlayStation 2. The other two PSP debuts are a belated PlayStation 2 port of Warriors Orochi 2 from Koei at number nine with 46,000 units sold; and homebrew (or dōjin) PC port Higurashi Daybreak Portable at number 10 with 33,000 units sold. A DS adventure title also based on the Higurashi no Naku Koro ni visual novels appears at number 14 in the charts. Elsewhere in the top 30 Namco Bandai’s Tamagotchi Kira Kira Omisecchi on DS debuts at number 14. This is a far cry from the success of the earlier games in the series, which were at one time the best selling third party titles on the format. New at number 18 is Sony’s Patapon 2: Don-Chaka for the PSP, with Marvelous’ Harvest Moon spin-off Rune Factory Frontier on Wii at number 19. Takara Tomy’s Naruto Shippuuden Gekitou Ninja Taisen EX3 on Wii debuts at number 21 and Falcom’s Eiyuu Densetsu: Sora no Kiseki Set (aka Legend of Heroes) on PSP enters at number 26.

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