Japan Charts: Another Square Enix No.1 as Kingdom Hearts debuts on GBA

The eagerly awaited Game Boy Advance instalment in the Kingdom Hearts series, Chain of Memories, has entered the Japanese sales charts at number one, selling over 200,000 units in its first weekend.

The game is the first Kingdom Hearts title to appear on Nintendo's handheld, and the Squaresoft / Disney crossover series is set to continue on PlayStation 2 in the coming months with the arrival of Kingdom Hearts II.

Sales of 200,000 units in three days is an impressive figure for a GBA title, although it's less than half the level of sales achieved by the original Kingdom Hearts in its first week on PS2, when it sold a massive 465,000 units.

Korean-developed role-playing title Magnacarta comes in at number two in the chart, with the PS2 version of the game, which was originally created for the PC but was ported to the console under the guidance of Sony Computer Entertainment Korea, also racking up respectable sales.

In third place is Microsoft's Halo 2, although the sales fall-off between second and third place is quite significant; however, it's still a good achievement for the Xbox, given that last week's chart also had an Xbox title in the top ten in the form of Tecmo's Dead Or Alive Ultimate.

Only one other new release makes it into the top ten, with Marvelous getting yet another new version of Harvest Moon in at number ten - this time the PS2 version, titled Harvest Moon: Oh! Wonderful Life.

Three of Nintendo's first-party GBA titles help to stack up the rest of the ranking, with The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap at number four, Mawaru Made In Wario at number six, and Pokemon Emerald at number nine, while another Nintendo title, Mario Tennis GC, is at number four, giving the firm four of the top ten titles.

In hardware terms, the PS2 is still dominating the market following the launch of the new slimline model, and has around 57 per cent market share compared with around 38 per cent for the GBA SP - while the Cube bypasses the Xbox in the ranking once again, outselling it by a margin of just over four to one but achieving just four per cent market share in the process.