Mario back on top in slow Japanese charts

An extremely slow week of sales in Japan has seen New Super Mario Bros Wii return to the top of the software charts, albeit with only 37,000 unit sales.

Traditionally a number one Japanese title is expected to sell at least 100,000 units but with only one new entry in the whole top 30 sales this week have been abnormally sluggish.

New Super Mario Bros Wii has sold more than 13 million units worldwide, with Japanese sales alone now at 3.7 million. With sales still going strong the game is already one of the best-selling titles of the current generation.

With much of the rest of the chart largely unchanged from the previous week the only notable changes were the sharp fall for Atlus' hardcore dungeon crawler Etrian Odyssey III. The game fell from number one last week to number seven, in large part due to stock issues.

Low sales also saw evergreen titles Wii Fit Plus and the budget re-release of Monster Hunter Freedom Unit return to the top 10, at numbers nine and 10 respectively.

The sole new entry of the week was Atelier Judie The Alchemist of Gramnad for the PSP at number 13. A remake of an earlier PlayStation 2 role-playing game from publisher Gust, the title sold less than 11,000 units.

• 01 New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii)
• 02 Fist Of The North Star (PS3)
• 03 Pro Baseball Spirits 2010 (PSP)
• 04 Pro Baseball Spirits 2010 (PS3)
• 05 Friend Collection (DS)
• 06 Pokemon Ranger: Tracks Of Light (DS)
• 07 Etrian Odyssey III (DS)
• 08 Yakuza 4 (PS3)
• 09 Wii Fit Plus (Wii)
• 10 Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (PSP)