Mario on the DS again paces the charts in a week that saw new Xenosaga, Megaman and Tekken games.

Courtesy of Media Create we have the latest weekly sales figures from Japan.

Impressive is no longer quite adequate for the pace of New Super Mario Bros. in Japan. Again the title has sold in the 6 digits (over 100K again this week) and is showing no sign of slowing down...much like the DS Lite hardware sales themselves. In fact, the two seem to be largely in step when it comes to drawing in consumers. The week did have several notable new game releases however: the PS2 saw the third and final game in the Xenosaga series with Episode III, the PSP was gifted with a brand new high profile fighter in Tekken: Dark Resurrection and the DS itself saw the return of the venerable Rockman line (Megaman in the West) with Rockman ZX. ZX, largely a continuation of the popular Zero series from the GBA, has drawn raves from fans of the series and should see a European release later this year.

Meanwhile, (copy/pasted from last week) the DS Lite continued its romp through Japan. Though the PSP experienced a small surge in sales (likely due to the release of Tekken), nontheless Japan remains DS-centric. This will not change anytime soon with the mammoth releases of Final Fantasy III next month (complete with recently announced limited edition DS Lite) and Dragon Quest Joker. Apparently a bit of buzz has been building over a certain duo of little monster-catching-battling games as well. There just may be something to this Pokemon Diamond and Pearl...

Software Chart July 3 - July 9

• 1) New Super Mario Bros. - (NDS, Nintendo) - 134,568
• 2) Xenosaga Episode III - (PS2, Bandai Namco) - 123,847
• 3) More Brain Training - (NDS, Nintendo) - 50,634
• 4) Tekken: Dark Resurrection - (PSP, Bandai Namco) - 49,426
• 5) Brain Training - (NDS, Nintendo) - 33,771
• 6) Rockman ZX - (DS, Capcom) - 33,652
• 7) World Soccer Winning Eleven 10 - (PS2, Konami) - 31,228
• 8) Animal Crossing: Wild World - (NDS, Nintendo) - 26,234
• 9) English Training - (NDS, Nintendo) - 21,956
• 10) Dragon Ball Z - (PS2, Bandai Namco) - 21,255

Hardware Chart July 3 - July 9

• 1) Nintendo DS Lite - 149,454
• 2) Playstation Portable - 31,959
• 3) Playstation 2 - 23,332
• 4) GameBoy Advance SP - 2,818
• 5) Xbox 360 - 1,610
• 6) GameBoy Micro - 1,379
• 7) Nintendo DS - 1,009
• 8) Gamecube � 934