Japan game charts: October 9-15

Friday brings us another fresh batch of Japan software sales statistics from entertainment analysts Media Create Co., Ltd. Based on the firm's figures for sales of the most popular console games, the week saw a bit of a dip compared to the previous week. For the week of October 9-15, the top 100 games sold a total of 949,807 copies, or about 73 percent of last week's top 100 sum of 1,301,313.

Although this week underperformed the running average for the business year, it outperformed by a wide margin the second week of October 2005, during which the top 100 collectively sold 512,623 copies. Media Create notes it was a tough week for the newcomers; of the 10 new games that made their top 100, only two--Final Fantasy V Advance and Bleach: Blade Battles--broke 10,000 copies.

Zooming in on individual games, Pokémon Diamond and Pearl continued to sell at a brisk pace, moving 159,443 and 116,051 copies, respectively. The number two game, Square Enix's port of the 1992 Final Fantasy V for the GameBoy Advance, also made a fairly strong debut showing with 124,840 units moved in the latter half of the week.

While Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 for the PlayStation 2 was knocked out of the top position, it hung in at fourth place. Another anime-derived PS2 title, Bleach, fared well, landing at number eight in its first week. Also proving remarkably popular for a game devoted entirely to quizzing players on their knowledge of Sino-Japanese characters, KanKen DS placed sixth for the third week in a row.