Dragon Quest, Metal Gear, Street Fighter Lead Japanese Charts

The recently stagnant Japanese sales charts finally saw some excitement last week with the release of three high-profile video games for three different platforms. Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and Super Street Fighter IV debuted in the top three positions on Media Create's weekly Japanese sales charts for the week ended May 2. Square Enix's DS game Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 led the rankings with unit sales of 624,000 units. The game is a spinoff of the highly-popular Dragon Quest role-playing franchise, and involves gathering and raising monsters. The original Joker released in Japan in 2006, and a year later in the U.S. Following Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 was Konami and Hideo Kojima's latest, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker for PSP. While the title enjoyed strong sales, it still came in nearly 200,000 units behind Joker 2, with 434,000 units sold during the week, although it did release a day later. Super Street Fighter IV also debuted during the week, selling 81,000 units on PS3 and 28,000 on Xbox 360. The title is a substantially updated version of the 2008 hit Street Fighter IV. Last week's number one game, Square Enix and Cavia's Nier Replicant for PS3 dropped to number nine this most recent week. Games that fell off the list from the prior week were the PSP games Tokyo Mono Hara Shi: Karasu No Mori Gakuen Kitan from Atlus, Falcom's Ys: The Oathin Felghana, Konami's Pro Baseball Spirits 2010, Nintendo's DS game Pokemon Ranger: Tracks of Light and Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion -- Game of the Year Edition for PS3. Below are Media Create's weekly Japanese charts (thanks this week to andriasang.com):