GameFly Rental Chart Highlights: Week Ending October 17

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 October 17th, show popularity over multiple game formats. The top three games on the cross-platform chart are all shooters this week. SOCOM 3: U.S. Navy Seals, Sony's latest tactical squad shooter, takes the waypoint of #1 on the charts, and #2 is the more traditional first-person shooter Far Cry: Instincts, the franchise's debut on consoles. At #3 is Ultimate Spider-Man, Activision's, ahm, third-person webfluid shooter game. Yes. SOCOM 3 is also #1 on the PS2 charts, a given since it's #1 cross-platform and exclusive to the system. Otherwise, Marvel is still holding sway on the system, as X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse stands tall at #2 and Ultimate Spider-Man is still a swingin' #3. The Xbox charts might not have an exclusive on SOCOM, but they do have one on Far Cry: Instincts, and that's what shows up at #1 on Microsoft's system. The rest of its chart, too, is dominated by Marvel, but in reverse order as if to prove its difference from Sony. Ultimate Spider-Man is #2, and X-Men Legends II is #3. Though both Sony's and Microsoft's charts share games also available for the GameCube, the GC rental chart is once again resolutely populated with system exclusives, and Nintendo-published ones at that. Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, the first console RPG developed with the franchise, reigns at #1, while Mario Superstar Baseball sits on deck at #2 and Battalion Wars holds steady at #3. The Game Boy Advance is equally strange these days, with another from-left-field pick showing up at #3, behind Dragon Ball GT: Transformation at #1 and Pokémon Emerald at #2. This week, the third-place game on the GBA is Danny Phantom: The Ultimate Enemy, a Nickelodeon-licensed action game. The rest of the chart is as normal, so it's not quite clear where the Danny Phantom mania came from. The Nintendo DS enters into its second Nintendogs-free week, and a rare occasion when nothing in the top 3 is published by Nintendo. Konami's Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow still rules the roost, and Atlus' Trauma Center: Under the Knife has progressed into #2. New at #3 is Capcom's Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, an unlikely success of a legal melodrama game. New blood has even entered the PSP charts, as Virtua Tennis rockets to #1 and SSX On Tour debuts at #2, displacing Burnout Legends, which drops back to #3.