CM4 holds firm at the top
Still Champion
Championship Manager 4 was the UK's top selling game once again in a chart that was largely unchanged from the previous week, with no new entries.
Of the games that did hit the shelves last Friday, only EA's The Sims (now out on Cube and Xbox) and MGS2: Substance (released on PS2 and PC) made a sizeable dent in the charts, propelling the respective titles up to No.3 and No.5 respectively.
Eurogamer favourite Super Monkey Ball Jr made just No.6 on the GBA chart, while Acclaim's dreadful platformer Vexx was justifiably absent from any chart, despite being available across multiple platforms. Even ISS3 didn't excite the PS2 punters, failing to make even the PS2 Top 20.
Splinter Cell continued to perform well, holding firm at No.2, while Capcom's disappointing Devil May Cry 2 slipped one place to No.4. Nintendo's stupendous Zelda: A Link To The Past provided GBA SP owners with some RPG goodness at No.6, and Xmas stalwarts The Getaway and Vice City occupied the No.7 and No.8 slots respectively.
Bizarrely, Focus' Driving Test Success leapt up to No.9 (must be the good weather), while the rest of the chart remained static for the most part.
The GameCube revival appears to have stalled already, with Metroid Prime already tumbling down the charts at No.14 after just three weeks - and worryingly was the only Cube exclusive title in the listings, despite all the current discounting activity. Even the Top 40 Full Price chart revealed only one other Cube title - Super Monkey Ball 2. Worrying times indeed for the beleaguered format.
The Xbox, meanwhile, fared even worse for exclusive titles: the best-selling Xbox-only title, Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, slipped out of the Top 40 after just one week (justice!), although 18 multi-format Xbox releases made the chart.
The GBA revival was limited to Zelda, Sonic Advance 2 and Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced - further proof that only big franchises sell on the format, while the PC had another positive week, with three exclusive titles figuring strongly in the chart - Delta Force: Black Hawk Down holding its own at No.10, with C&C Generals up to No.16.
The charts are unlikely to change a great deal for some time, with April not proving to be a particularly strong month for new releases. Top tips for next week include Primal and Freelancer, with lower entries likely to include Microsoft's wacky Kung Fu Chaos and Take-Two's Vietcong.