Japan charts: Third place debut for Enter the Matrix

Atari's Enter the Matrix has entered the Japanese market, with a relatively respectable debut at number three for the title, while Nintendo's Mother RPG series takes the top spot thanks to a resurrection on the GBA.

Bandai is doing the honours as publisher for Enter the Matrix in Japan, and third place really isn't bad for a western-developed game - a testament to the strength of the franchise globally, if not to the quality of the game itself.

Topping the chart this week, however, is Nintendo's Mother 1 + 2 on the Game Boy Advance, a remake of the classic SNES RPG titles which made their way to North America under the name Earthbound. It's thought that the GBA release of the original games signals a forthcoming resurrection for the franchise on the GameCube.

Speaking of resurrections, no, your eyes do not deceive you - there is indeed a Dreamcast game in the top ten, at number five no less, as Playmore's The King Of Fighters 2002 proves that there's life in the old format yet, given the right software. Another of the SNK franchises now owned by Playmore takes the number six slot, as Metal Slug 3 brings its hardcore 2D sidescrolling action to the PlayStation 2.

As you might expect, all of these new releases helped to lift the market significantly, and it was up 48 per cent over last weeks low point. In hardware terms, the GameCube enjoyed a boost to 20,000 units sold this week thanks to the release of the Enjoy Plus Pack, which bundles the Game Boy Player with the Cube. The PS2 BB pack saw a downturn from 22k units last week to a mere 9k this week, however, with market analysts Media Create speculating that the bar to entry into online gaming, especially in terms of software and hardware set-up, is still considered too difficult by the mass market.

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