UK Charts: Sonic Heroes returns to the top spot

Sega's Sonic Heroes is back at number one this week, marking a third week at the top for the title some eleven weeks after its launch, while Acclaim's World Championship Rugby also made a strong challenge at the top of the chart.

Despite general critical derision, Sonic Heroes is Sega's biggest UK hit in years - thanks largely to an excellent advertising campaign and a multi-platform release which has seen the bulk of sales on PS2, but good numbers on Xbox and GameCube also.

Sonic and friends held off a challenge for the top spot from Acclaim's World Championship Rugby, which rose three places to number two, while last week's number one, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, dropped back to number four this week. However, the actual difference between the number one position and the number four position is a mere 500 units, illustrating how close the competition at the top of the charts is at the moment.

The bulk of the titles in the top ten are several weeks old, however - Norton Internet Security 2004 has been in the charts every week this year, as has EA's FIFA 2004, which this week leads the three football titles in the top ten (FIFA at number six, LMA Manager at number seven and Sony's This Is Football 2004 at number eight).

The fact that most of the games jostling for position in the top ten are older titles is unsurprising, though, given the weak performance of recent new releases. The highest ranked new title in the chart is Konami's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which came in at number 19 in the full-price chart, while Sony's Rise to Honour slipped in at number 30 a week after its retail debut.

Sony will no doubt be disappointed with the performance of Rise to Honour, which was given a significant chunk of the company's booth at E3 last year and employs the (undoubtedly expensive) talents of martial arts star Jet Li in the lead role. However, it's often been suggested that SCEE has a tendency to under-promote SCEA-developed titles in Europe, and this seems like a perfect example of that trend.

The only other new release which makes it into the chart this week is Deep Silver's quirky and generally well-received Singles: Flirt up your Life, which debuts at number 36. The biggest mover in the charts, though, is Coktel's The Cat In The Hat, which climbs twenty places to number nine in the full-price ranking - assisted, admittedly, by some hefty retailer promotions and price slashing.

Missing in action this week was DreamCatcher's PC first person shooter Painkiller, which was nowhere to be found in any all-format chart, although it did crawl in at number 13 in the PC chart.

Next week sees the launch of Codemasters' TOCA Race Driver 2, which might reasonably be expected to make a serious bid for the top spot in its first week. Rockstar's launch of Manhunt on PC and Xbox could do well, although poor word of mouth from the PS2 version may hamper sales, while Big Ben's Dance:UK Xtra Trax is bound to sell fairly solidly as the dance mat craze continues.

As ever, you can check out the full set of charts [right here].