GameFly Rental Chart Highlights: Week Ending August 22

This week's GameFly video game rental charts for North America, specifically relating to games rented via the games-by-mail service for the week ending August 15th, show popularity over multiple game formats. Capcom is undoubtedly happy with the surprise success of Darkwatch, which managed to oust Madden NFL 2006 as the king of the all-format GameFly charts this week. Madden itself has dropped back to #2, possibly partly due to the copies of the game being unavailable for new rentals in the intervening week. In third place is God of War, still hanging in there since its March release. As a first-person shooter -- albeit one starring a vampire in the Old West -- Darkwatch proved slightly more popular on Xbox than on PS2. It repeated its Madden overthrow performance on the Xbox-format rental charts, with the third place going to Destroy All Humans!. PS2 players still slightly preferred Madden NFL 2006, which remained at #1 there, as Darkwatch and God of War took second and third. As for the GameCube, the Madden party is over there entirely. Oddly enough, the platform Mario built is currently dominated by three M-rated shooters: possession-based FPS Geist has debuted at #1, while Resident Evil and Killer 7 maintain their staying power at #2 and #3. The Game Boy Advance, at the least, is staying true to its reputation as a primarily kids-oriented platform as Dragon Ball GT: Transformation sticks around for another week at #1, just ahead of Pokémon Emerald at #2. Replacing Zelda at #3 this week is Fire Emblem: The Sacred Sword. The rule of thumb for PSP thus far has been that a new game released means a new #1 on the rental charts, and this week upholds the tradition. Death Jr. surmounted middling reviews to take #1 ahead of previous favorites Coded Arms and Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition, which dropped down to #2 and 3. The Nintendo DS, on the other hand, is still populated by old standbys Kirby: Canvas Curse, Meteos, and Nanostray -- but the just-released Nintendogs is almost certain to storm Nintendo's new handheld on next week's charts.