Japan Charts: Market lifts as horse racing title tops the charts

The Japanese software market has reversed the slump seen in the past fortnight thanks to the launch of a number of popular new titles, headed up by Enterbrain's Derby Stallion 4 which debuted at number one in the ranking.

The horse racing title - which falls into one of those unique Japanese genres which are almost completely unfathomable to most western audiences - sold almost 300,000 units in its first week on sale.

That placed it comfortably ahead of the second place title, another new release which seems unlikely to ever see the light of day outside Japan, Muscle Man Generations. The Bandai-published title sold some 84,000 units.

Four other new releases also made it into the new charts, with Capcom's GBA title Mega Man Zero 3 at number five with sales of abour 39,000 units, followed by another Capcom title, PS2 RPG Crimson Tears, which sold around 32,000 units.

Nintendo's Mario Golf: Advance Tour on GBA made it in at number seven, with the wireless adaptor enabled title selling about 28,000 units. The final new release in the charts was Idea Factory's PS2 title, Generation of Chaos IV, at number eight.

Last week's number one, GBA title Kirby: Labyrinth in the Mirror, dropped to number three in the ranking, while the hugely successful PS2 remake of SNES classic Dragon Warrior V is at number four this week.

The other two older titles in the chart, at number nine and ten respectively, are both GBA games - the super-budget priced Famicom Mini: Super Mario Bros and GameBoy re-make Pokemon Fire Red.

In hardware terms, the success of a number of GBA titles propelled the pint-sized console to the top of the rankings again, with almost 48 per cent market share, while the PS2 slipped to just over 45.5 per cent share. The GameCube is practically squeezed out of the ratings this week, down to under 6 per cent market share - although that's still well over ten times the sales of the Xbox, which has only 0.44 per cent share.