What's this!? The Gamecube makes a cameo appearance in the charts for the period spanning July 11th - 17th...

Courtesy of Media-Create, we have the most recent sales figures from Japan.

Japanese sales certainly seem to be picking up for the third straight week following an almost alarmingly slow period of sales. The week saw the debut of a number of strong titles that accounted for 60% of overall sales, with 6 placing in the top 10. Clearly, the popularity of Konami's beloved Powerful Pro Baseball series continues unabated as this newest edition placed twice in the charts, distinguishing even the languishing Gamecube. But whats this!? Another GC game! Leave it to Mario to once again make his mark on the charts, as this time the talented plumber danced his way into the 10 slot in Dance Dance Revolution with MARIO.

The DS continued to reside comfortably in the Top 10, this time with the brand new Naruto RPG 2 joining the "non-games" Brain Training and Gentle Brain Exercises. Finally, Mushiking styled the GBA as japanese kids (99.999% of them likely boys I'd imagine) continue to snap up the beetle-battler. Lets take a more digestable look:

Continuing its streak of best selling platform for the week, the DS gazed comfortably at its position in the charts as what seems like all of Japan braces itself for the release of Jump Superstars in a couple weeks. The DS is also closing in on becoming the best-selling platform in Japan for 2005 thus far...it probaly has a couple more weeks to go to surpass PS2 sales. Again, an impressive run. The overall ordering of the charts remained unchanged...so yes, please try not to point and laugh at the XBOX, kids. Its not nice.

Now lets take a look: