UK Charts: Lego Star Wars forces its way to No.1

Eidos-published title Lego Star Wars has jumped one place to become this week's best-selling title in Britain, giving the publisher its first UK number one in almost a year and knocking Midnight Club 3 down to number two.

The Traveller's Tales developed game saw an 18 per cent increase in sales over its debut week, according to the latest figures from Chart-Track - and sales are likely to continue to be strong in the coming weeks as the theatrical launch of Star Wars: Episode III looms close.

Two new titles debuted in the top ten this week, with Jester Interactive's TT Superbikes coming in at number five, while NCSoft had its best chart debut yet with Arena.net's massively multiplayer title Guild Wars, which uniquely doesn't charge a monthly subscription fee to players.

Further down the ranking there were new entries for Nintendo's Star Fox Assault at number 23 - a slightly disappointing start for the Namco-developed title - while Take Two's Close Combat: First to Fight came in at number 28, and Vivendi-Universal Games' Empire Earth II debuted at number 30.

There wasn't much movement in the top ten aside from the new entries, although Ubisoft's Brothers In Arms dropped two places to number 11, while Microsoft's Jade Empire also dropped out of the ranking, falling five places to number 12.

The main missing in action title this week was Capcom's survival horror title Haunting Ground, while the PC version of Cold Fear, Spikeout: Battle Street on Xbox and Sprint Car Challenge on PS2 also failed to dent the ranking.

This coming Friday sees a busy week for retail in the UK, with Star Wars fever continuing as the official movie tie-in game launches across four formats (Xbox, PS2, DS and GBA), along with the PC version of Pariah, Square's impressive GBA title Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and Nintendo's eagerly awaited DS title Yoshi's Touch and Go.