UK Chart Highlights | Metroid Prime Wii Crashes into Top 10, Zelda Holds Strong

With the new Zelda game on DS lighting up the chart last week, all eyes were firmly focused on Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, which launched last Friday. Can the Wii game hit higher than the second game did on GameCube? Well, with the onslaught of football games at the moment, life certainly was not going to be easy for the first-person adventure, and with reports of shortages right from launch, the game's first impact was always going to be in question. But with a large-scale media campaign, surely it was bound for decent success...

So, before we kick off with the main chart, let us take a look at the All Price Top 40, since there is quite a large amount of activity from Nintendo's budget-priced games this week. First up, Cooking Mama scoots back up into the Top 10, up three to No.10 after twenty-eight weeks on the chart, actually increasing in sales by 35%! No doubt 505 Games will be keen to see just how well its DS sequel can do in the near future...The original Brain Training bounces back up five to hit No.12 and its younger brother rises five to No.14. The other big seller, in the absence of the out-of-stock Wii Play that has disappeared from the Top 40, is Take 2's Carnival, which leaps up eight to No.17, mirroring its current US success. Big Brain Academy for Wii slides eight to No.20 and Bratz: Forever Diamondz drops nine to No.40.

The big news over on the Full Price-only Top 40 is that the entire Top 3 consists of football games. Last week's No.1 drops 38% in sales, falling two to No.3, whilst FIFA 08 sticks at No.2, actually climbing 14%. Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 hits No.1 across four formats (the DS and PSP editions are not out just yet). Surprisingly, the PS2 version was still the strongest, taking a 42% share, beating out the 360 game, which had to settle for a 30% share. Despite this strong football showing, Zelda: Phantom Hourglass holds steady at No.4, dropping only 11%, Ratatouille leaps up two places and 35% in sales, whilst The Orange Box drops three to No.6, down 40%. In at No.7 is Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, which is a massive improvement over Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, which barely scraped into the Top 40 a few years back. Just behind that is Halo 3, dropping three places and 26%, followed by High School Musical (DS version), which jumps five to No.9 and rises an extraordinary 62% in sales. Crash of the Titans rounds off the Top 10, proving to be massively more popular than Crash Boom Bang was on DS.

Juiced 2 moves up four to No.11, Tiger Woods 08 slides four to No.11, MySims is down two to No.13, Project Gotham Racing 4 falls from No.6 to No.14 and The Sims 2: Castaway is new in at No.15. The PS3's boost last week is short-lived it seems, as Heavenly Sword drops four to No.16, MotorStorm also slides four to No.17 and Resistance plummets from No.9 to No.20. In the midst of those games is a big jump for Sonic Rush Adventure, which leaps from No.30 to No.18. Thrillville also shoots up quickly, rising eleven to No.23 in its second week, whilst Drawn to Life is a rather random new entry at No.24 after weeks of obscurity, previously failing to even make the DS Top 30. Mario Party 8 falls seven to No.27, Rockstar's Table Tennis on Wii sticks at No.28, New Super Mario Bros. falls six to No.29 and Skate continues to tumble quickly, now down from No.19 to No.32. Super Paper Mario is also proving to be not quite as popular as expected, slipping a further nine places to No.33, Spider-man: Friend or Foe drops five to No.34 and the appearance of the 360 version of Virtua Fighter 5 helps the game back in at No.35. Rounding things off, Sonic and the Secret Rings drops from No.27 to No.39 and the Wii edition of Cooking Mama slips four to No.40.

On the Wii front, Metroid Prime lands at No.1, as expected, but surprisingly there is a strong showing for Carnival, which rises three to No.2, pushing Big Brain down to No.3 and FIFA to No.4. Ratatouille is really picking up steam, up seven to No.5, Mario Party holds at No.6 and Rockstar's Table Tennis climbs four to No.7 at the expense of Tiger Woods, which is down four to No.8. Super Paper Mario slips two to No.10, Sonic dips one to No.11 and Super Monkey Ball moves up another spot to No.12 thanks to its new budget price. Cooking Mama is up one to No.13, Zelda falls five to No.14, Boogie is up one to No.15 and Crash rises one to No.16. Lower down we have Resident Evil 4 sliding three to No.18, The Sims 2: Castaway only entering at No.19 and Wii Play nose-diving from No.2 to No.20! Thrillville on Wii enters at No.22, Red Steel is down three to No.25 and Trauma Centre shows no signs of being resurrected, sadly, falling a further two to No.26.

Zelda remains top on the DS Top 30, but High School Musical is nipping at its heels, pushing Brain Training down to No.3. More Brain Training holds at No.4, as does Cooking Mama at No.5 and Sonic Rush Adventure is back up four to No.6. THQ promotions must be going strong this half-term as it has massive success this week as Scooby Doo jumps eight to No.8, Drawn to Life gets its first taste of chart action, in at No.9 and The Incredibles catapults up ten to No.10. MySims slides four to No.11, Mario drops four to No.12 and The Sims 2: Castaway can only make it in at No.14. Lower down, Mario Kart falls four to No.21, Disney Friends is up eight to No.22 and DK: Jungle Climber has gone from the chart completely...

Finishing off this week, the 'Individual Format Top 40' list that is ranked by 'Units' shows just how much football games are dominating, with the three console version of PES2008 taking the top slots (PS2>360>PS3), pushing Football Manager down to No.4 and Zelda DS down to No.5. With FIFA 08 on PS2 at No.6 as well, you can see that Metroid entering at No.7 is very impressive indeed. High School Musical is storming at the moment as well, jumping to No.9, as is Carnival on Wii, up to No.14. Even Table Tennis on Wii is up to No.34! This means Nintendo's total for the week is 21/40...

Remember everyone that the image at the top is not representative of the actual market share and that if the above text does not appeal to you, the chart listings can be found in their original tabular format (copyrighted, hence this written article) by following the link below: