Amazing. Simply amazing. Once again Animal Forest is released in Japan, once again it's just an improved version of the original game (this time around for the e-Card Reader) and once again the game sells very well. Or is it Viewtiful Joe which sells very bad ? For a first week, Joe's sales are average, better than GIFTPIA worse than Naruto. By the way, maybe I should start career in divination , Enter the Matrix is out indeed as I was planning last week. Good riddance ! Well, hopefully the fate of Animal Forest will inspire Nintendo: release the game in Europe and focus on original licenses.

It's been swift and (almost) painless, GIFTPIA, Famista and Zelda are out. Horribly enough, the 2 new games, Enter the Matrix and Sonic Adventure DX, are crappy as you probably know, but rank high still. Sonic's sales are quite good while Enter the Matrix might already be gone next week, hopefully. On a brighter note, the game number 1 in the ranking is Mother 1+2 on Game Boy Advance with a good 134.900 units sold.

Zelda is back !! Hurrah !! After 5 weeks away ! The game keeps selling well ! It's been released for 27 weeks now, 7 months ! Still alive and kicking, wow ! Except this Zelda hyper-enthusiasm, there's not much to say: Pokemon Box lost one spot, Naruto keeps still and both Famista and GIFTPIA fall hard. There was no new release this week, though today (June 19), Matrix, Sonic DX and Magical Pumpkin are released in Japan; we'll see about them next week.

Bye bye Rune II ! Nothing new this week. Not very surprising, the only release was Frogger, who would buy that frankly ? Pokemon Box is not number one anymore and don't do well so far despite being very cheap. But here again, who would be interested in buying that (a management software) ? The only impressive title is Naruto, this long time runner grabbed another spot this week.

They did it. At last Nintendo has a title at the number 1 spot in the Japanese ranking chart, and once again it is thanks to Pokemon ! Famista started well too, number 8, despite some rather weak sales. For a third party game, Naruto keeps doing well, just the opposite of Rune II which, as we predicted, is falling fast, already behind GIFTPIA ! Next week, we'll see if the two new entries manage to hold at the top.

There hasn't been a new game for a month, but here comes one finally: it's Rune 2 (aka Lost Kingdom 2 in the West) and it's far from being a hit. It's one of the weakest start since we follow the top 50 with a small 8.500 units sold. Naruto almost did as well and it's been there for nearly 2 months... Expect Rune 2 to have a short life in the chart, people don't like cards RPG (and they're right, but why don't game makers understand that ?). Next week should be more interesting, we'll see if the Japanese remember the NES era and how much of a friendly greeting they'll give to the popular Famista. And, most important, we'll see how well Pokemon Box sells. It might be a good teaser to measure Pokemon's attraction power on GameCube. A very important process for Nintendo.

It's aaaall so quiet... Soul Calibur II is out, so is Zelda, again. Hope they'll come back soon. Only Naruto and GIFTPIA are left. Good luck guys ! you have to keep your position until reinforcements arrive in a few days.

Not much to comment this week. Sales are stable, some of the games just exchanged their position.

A few things to comment this week. First off, Zelda is back in the ranking, from the 63rd to the 47th spot, quite a jump ! Go, go Zelda ! On a less hysterical note, GIFTPIA slides down; it seems it's going to be hard to sell more than 100.000 copies (Nintendo though only needs to sell 73,530 copies to make the game profitable !). Since last week, sales for Naruto outpass sales for Soul Calibur 2 ! In 3 weeks Naruto did what SC2 did in 5. The next weeks should be very quiet with no new GameCube games coming till May 23.

There's always a GameCube title by Nintendo in the top 50; it could become a saying. Zelda won't spend its 20th week in the ranking, but GIFTPIA came to succeed. Only 3 GameCube games are left and sales for Naruto and Soul Calibur 2 keep falling. Not really brilliant in a chart overwhelmed with PS2 and GBA games. It might even get worse in May, with only a few games announced. Can we expect good results from Rune 2 and Famista 2003 ?

No new entry this week. A pretty bad week for GameCube as all the sales fall and three games leave the top: Shaman Soul King, The Baseball 2003 and Product Number 03.

As we predicted 2 weeks ago, Naruto started very well in the top at the 4th rank, beating Soul Calibur 2's first week sales. In the meanwhile, Megaman quit and Dokapon joined, while Zelda's sales suddenly bumped up by 18 ranks. The Baseball 2003 keeps improving slightly; a good surprise for Konami ! The other games are down.

All GameCube games sales fall this week except one. Believe it or not, it is Konami's The Baseball 2003 - Battle Park Declaration Perfect Play Pro Baseball (hell of a title...) which manages to climb in the top 50 for the first time, although it's been released for 3 weeks already ! While most games sales collapse, this one improves and makes a surprise entrance in the ranking. Amazing Japan...

Metroid Prime is out of the top 50, so is Hikaru no Go, which stayed only one week ! Enter Soul Calibur 2 with good sales but nothing really impressive, Shaman King Soul Fight which proves Bandai games do well on GC after the succesful One Piece - Treasure Battle, while Product Number 03 seems to be a disappointing game with both average sales and reviews. We'll see also in 2 weeks what the popular Naruto can do in matter of sales.

Sales are quiet the week before the 'big day' (today, March 27, with both the release of Soul Calibur 2 and PN03). A popular game of Go (sort of Japanese chess) made it up to the 29th spot, the other games are slowly sliding away. After a month of release, Metroid Prime still doesn't reach the 100.000 units sold.

This week Mario Party 4 goes out of the top 50 once again. Only Zelda improves its sales, overtaking the Nintendo Puzzle Collection.