After a few weeks of lower than average sales, with few new releases, the Japanese sales charts have largely recovered in vigor this week, although for once not as a result of the Nintendo DS. Instead it is Sony’s new expansion of the Minna no Golf (aka Everybody’s Golf, aka Hot Shots Golf) franchise which has lifted the charts with a highly impressive debut for Minna no Tennis. Banpresto’s samurai themed anime license Rurouni Kenshin has also performed strongly, debuting at number two. While there has also been unexpected success for Capcom’s God Hand, which despite input from Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami was expected only to be niche release. With last week’s number one Tales of Phantasia: Full Voice Edition on PSP falling as far as number seventeen in its second week, Namco’s portable Ridge Racer sequel seems unlikely to fare any better with a fairly weak opening at number seven. Meanwhile, Sega’s latest attempt to tap the Brain Training market at number eight has performed better than many of its previous efforts but still seems unlikely to match the success of Nintendo’s own titles. Despite an improvement in software, hardware sales are still down on previous weeks with the Nintendo DS selling “only” 135,363 units. For the first time in many months the PlayStation 2 sold more than the PSP at 34,189 units to 26,995. The Game Boy Advance family of consoles sold 3,601 units while the Xbox 360 slipped to below 1,000 for the first time at 928, ahead of the GameCube at 630.

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