GameFly Rental Chart Highlights: Week Ending July 18

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 July 18th, show popularity over multiple game formats. Electronic Arts' football juggernaut -- now quite literally the only game in town -- has sacked the charts, with NCAA Football 2006 debuting at #1 across all platforms. Sid Meier's Pirates!, the Xbox version of the PC remake of the beloved classic, stands at #2 ready to plunder as much of the rental market as it can get its hook and hand on, and Destroy All Humans! is in third place, perhaps already beginning to succumb to Earth's strange atmosphere and ecosystem. The same lineup repeats in precisely the same order on the Xbox charts: NCAA Football 2006 first, Pirates! second, and Destroy All Humans! third. Replace pirates on the open seas with vengeful Greek warriors, and the PlayStation 2-only chart starts to look pretty familiar at all: apart from God of War filling Pirates!' role at #2, it's the same story on Sony's system, as NCAA 2006 places in first and Destroy All Humans! in third. Things are more interesting on the GameCube, where for the first time in quite a while, no first-party game has a spot in the top three on a system known primarily for its first-party games. Capcom in particular benefits from the shakeup, with its Killer 7 at #1 while Resident Evil 4 regroups at #2. Third place is the unremarkable Fantastic Four movie game -- maybe people got tired of renting Star Fox Assault yet again. The situation is reversed on the Game Boy Advance, which is dominated by first-party titles. Pokémon Emerald continues to enjoy its returned mastery of the handheld market after some time in the lower reaches (second place) of the chart. Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones is #2, while the long-lived Zelda: The Minish Cap sticks around in third. Kirby: Canvas Curse takes back the top rental spot on the Nintendo DS, and Meteos is still its main contender at #2. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory continues its surveillance at #3. On the PSP, nothing's changed after the recent influx of new software: just as last week, Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition is #1, Coded Arms is #2, and Dead to Rights: Reckoning is #3.