Manga Based Fighter Tops Japanese Charts, Other M Sales Decline

Namco Bandai's One Piece: Gigant Battle for Nintendo DS debuted on top of the Japanese retail game sales charts this week, outselling all other games by a wide margin. For the week ended September 12, the DS title sold 131,854 units, with the number two title, Capcom's Monster Hunter Diary: Pokapoka Ailu Village, immediately following with 55,569 units sold, announced tracking firm Media Create. One Piece: Gigant Battle is a fighting game based on the popular manga series One Piece, and features gameplay similar to that of Smash Bros. or the Japanese-only Jump Superstars, which also included characters from the One Piece manga. Nintendo's Metroid: Other M, which made its debut last week at number three, dropped to number five this week with just 11,239 units sold—only 24% of what it sold the previous week. Other new titles this week include Vitamin X: Evolution Plus and Sengoku Efuda Yuugi: Hototogisu Tairan for PSP, which landed at numbers eight and 10, respectively. Games that fell from the top 10 include Square-Enix's reprint of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and PSP fighting game Bleach: Heat the Soul 7. Yuke published UFC 2010 Undisputed 2010 made its debut this week, but failed to reach the top 10, landing at number 16.